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Technology

    Traditional Data Storage 
  • Pencils and paper. Incredibly simple, lightweight and almost 100% reliable in all conditions as long as it's not wet. A lot cheaper than those i- and e- items, and much more secure; unlike a computer file, someone needs physical access to the document to read it. Even before there were reliable ballpoint pens, you could carry a cheap lead pencil in your pocket, get it wet, dry it out, drop it off a cliff, find it again, leave it in a drawer for ten years, and it would still write as well as the day it was made.
    • An anecdote about the space race says that while the Americans were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a high-tech pressurized pen that could write in Zero-G, the Russians simply shrugged their shoulders and said, "Meh, we have pencils."note 
  • A codex, i.e. leafs of paper bound together. That is, a book. These thoroughly tromped scrolls which damaged the paper with curvature, were hard to navigate since they needed to be rolled, and couldn't have sections replaced or repaired. Although it may or may not be about to be replaced by e-readers, for the last few thousand years there has been no more economical and efficient means of containing information.
    • The comparison to e-readers is particularly appropriate... the book may not be electronic or have an internet connection, but it never runs out of batteries, doesn't have problems with funny formats or DRM, doesn't break when dropped, doesn't cost $200 to replace, and if your friend borrows a book, you can still read your other books. E-readers have a lot of advantages (and, indeed, many e-reader critics seem to gloss over how much space is required for, and how friggin' heavy even a dozen books can be—to say nothing of the fact that with an e-reader, you don't have to deal with the Contemptible Cover), but books definitely fit this trope. As far as space-efficiency is concerned, one way around this for books and articles in the public domain is printing double-sided 4-pages per side, which can be performed easily with home laser printers. If it's difficult to read, then a book magnifier helps here. The boring old binder makes it easy to hold all your articles and things in one volume.
      • E-readers are, in turn, this to electronic tablets. Unlike the latter, their function outside of reading is limited, but they are much less expensive, use less eye-damaging technologies for their screens, and they consume very little power, allowing for their batteries to last much longer.
    • Related: There was a tongue-in-cheek science fiction story (possibly by Isaac Asimov). In a distant future, all books and libraries have long disappeared being replaced by microfilms due to their better storage capacity. One character pointed out the shortcomings of microfilms such as the need for a relatively expensive high-tech equipment to read it, equipment that can broke and must be replace at a certain cost, etc; not to mention that you need a constant source of electrical power. Then someone came up with a brilliant idea: what if we take each frame of a certain microfilm, magnified it and print it on a sheet of white paper, let's call it a page; then we put each page on top of each other and bound them together then put some covers on it for protection... et voila! we (re)invented the book.
    • To quote Carl Sagan: "For the price of a modest meal you can get the history of Rome".
    • Or for the non-historically inclined, an introductory undergraduate book on a subject or field has an incredible amount of knowledge. For the price of a more expensive meal (students will generally be willing to give you some strong opinions on costs here!), you can get hundreds or even thousands of years of knowledge in a single book.
  • Map and magnetic compass. Most of all, they do not need electricity nor special gadgets to use.
    • Map, magnetic compass, sextant, slide rule, Nautical Almanac and logarithmic tables will get you anywhere in the world. Without electricity or availability of satellite connections or telephone field. No bluewater sailor should ever leave the port without those six inexpensive items — which may decide between death and survival when things get really pear-shaped.
      • Add in a reasonably accurate timepiece so you can determine your longitude. The more accurate the better, but really, anything that's within a few minutes of being right is fine. Measure the angle between Polaris and the horizon in the Northern Hemisphere and by a similar method for the Southern Cross in the Southern Hemisphere and you know your latitude.
  • For disaster communications, the humble AM/FM radio receiver. Cellular networks often go down in an emergency, whether due to loss of power or overloading. Amateur radio operators love to tout ham radio for disaster preparedness, but it requires a license. Simple AM/FM receivers are ubiquitous and can be bought very cheaply. You likely have one or even several of them around the house. Even though it's one-way, ordinary broadcast radio is a very effective way to disseminate news and information in an emergency. Even if local stations were knocked out, it would still be possible to pick up distant AM signals at night due to the skywave propagation effect. It's even possible to navigate using radio stations if you didn't have a compass. Pilots used to do just that before VOR navigation was introduced. This is why disaster preparedness instructions recommend a battery-powered radio in emergency kits. If you don't have a portable radio, you could use your car radio in a pinch if the power went out. It's also a dirt-cheap form of entertainment in normal circumstances and entertainment programming can keep up morale in a disaster.
    • Similarly, 2-way radios a.k.a. walkie-talkies allow for communication from up to a mile or two away, are very reliable in sending and receiving audio, and don't need a data connection to function thus allowing them to function even in a wide-area power outage, making them useful especially amongst security and emergency-response personnel even as the proliferation of smartphones and digital calling apps make analog radio look less and less cool.
    • In what refers to AM/FM radio, of note is that it's typical in dumbphones to have a FM radio — simply plug in headphones for it to work. Smartphones and tablets carry the chip that allows them to receive FM transmissions, but it's often Dummied Out.
    • For decades the standard way in Germany to warn people about disasters (natural, industrial or "The Russians are coming") was sirens and advising people to turn on the radio with information on what happened and what to do. Then the Cold War ended and for some reason it was thought the only warning function of sirens was military, so a lot of them were dismantled. Instead, as "everyone is on the internet now", it was deemed more efficient to inform people via apps and rely on news media to get stuff across via TV and Internet. Then the 2021 floods happened and beside badly unprepared local and state governments a big part of the issue was that when the decision to warn the population was finally taken, the phone and internet networks in many places were already down and overloaded. People who had installed the correct app (not many did) might have gotten a push notification, but who'll read that at 2AM? A siren at 2AM? Yeah, that'll get you up and turning on whichever available information / asking the neighbors what's going on. Another Boring But Practical technology Germany thought it could do without was so called "Cell Broadcasting" which is a cell phone tower delivering the same message to all phones in range — regardless of whether they are a roaming phone of a different provider, whether they have credit left and even whether they have a SIM card active. Cell Broadcasting needs a lot less bandwidth than mobile data based apps and it can be targeted pretty precisely to where it is needed (a big problem with apps is overwarning for events that are a few hundred kilometers over). Of course as this is Germany and Germans like to complain, the media and the populace tore into the governments who had taken those decisions over the last couple of years.

    Hardware 
  • Good old tactile keyboards over cooler, more "advanced" touch screen keyboards. Why? Because you can navigate a tactile keyboard solely by feel while keeping an eye on the display. Touch screens are, well, flat and more time goes into looking at finger placement than would on a tactile keyboard. In fact, some mechanical keyboards built over 20 years ago, particularly the venerable IBM Model M (which is still manufactured to this day by Unicomp), still work with modern equipment, and are favored by modern typists because they provide excellent tactile feedback, are impervious to water, and never break. Find one single other 20-year-old peripheral that still works without modification or adapters on your new computer. There have also been cases where people have still typed on tactile computers with damaged monitors. If the monitor of your touch screen is damaged, you're fucked.
  • Mechanical keyboard users often swear by "brown" switchesnote . They are suitable for all types of use, providing tactile feedback to let you know when you've pressed hard enough to trigger the switch, while being relatively quiet compared to their clicky counterparts and having just the right amount of operating force for most users.
  • The mouse. Compare the speed and efficiency of the mouse versus trackballs, touchpads, joysticks, Wiimotes, or touchscreens, and the mouse will win 100% of the time outside of specialized video games. The ability to stop on command, move it around freely, and have clear predictability make it the dominant form of pixel selection input for the foreseeable future.
    • Human-machine interaction studies often use a model called Fitts' law to calculate how easy it is for a user to accurately move a pointer from one point to another in a straight line. Since the responsiveness varies from device to device, each one is associated with a certain coefficient, and the mouse generally comes surprisingly close to a person's bare hands as reported in this paper around page 34.
      • Fitts' Law has two implications for computer UI design. The first is that targets are proportionally easier to acquire as they increase in size. Remember that the mouse moves on a flat surface that's precisely mapped to the screen and unlike with a touchscreen, a mouse cursor cannot move past the screen's edge. MacOS was first to take advantage of this with their "mile-high" menu bar i.e. anchored to the top of the screen. If your mouse cursor can't leave the screen, your target's size in the X direction is effectively a mile high, and thus far easier to hit than a menu bar attached to a moveable window. Similarly, ever wondered why it's so easy to, say, close a full-screen application, or open the Start Menu, in Microsoft Windows?note  Four of the five easiest points to target on a screen are the four corners, where the effective target size is infinite in both X and Y dimensions. No accuracy needed, you just slam your mouse in the corner and click.
      • The other relation noted by Fitts is that the ability to acquire a target is inversely related to distance i.e. the closer it is, the easier it is to hit. Therefore, the fifth of the easiest points to acquire is ...the place your cursor is already sitting (distance = 0). This is the basis for context menus, such as those introduced with Windows 95. Even easier than dragging your mouse cursor away to a menu or toolbar.
      • Also worth noting is that most devices tend to be either absolute-positioning with precise coordinates across a limited physical range, like a touchscreen, drawing tablet or the right stick of a Steel Battalion controller, or relative-positioning with tracking changes from the last known position, like a trackball or flight stick that controls rate of change. The typical computer mouse blends the best of both worlds, with the lack of physical bounds that a relative-positioning device can offer, and the precision of an absolute-positioning device on a mousing surface of fixed size.
      • This is why the mouse is the First-Person Shooter controller of choice: one never needs to worry about running past the edge on a sufficiently large mousing surface (just lift and recenter when completing your turn), while being able to make a quick snap-shot by flicking the mouse a set distance to bring the crosshairs to a certain point on the screen. (Also, your view in an FPS will spaz out if you try to control it with a true absolute positioning device like a drawing tablet in pen mode, because the game sees constant relative mouse movement away from center.)
    • Design-wise, the standard, "bland" computer mouse vs "gaming mouse", due to the "bland" mouse always being cheaper than a "gaming" mouse.
    • Brand-wise, Logitech and Microsoft. True that their cheaper models usually has a bland design, but they're quite durable for the price vs longevity count compared to other mouses from the budget that is usually a Shoddy Knockoff Product.
    • A more specific example would be the wired mouse. Yes, wireless mice look a little cooler by default due to being wireless, but wired mice are much less prone to breaking (due to, of course, being wired), and eventually save on AA batteries over time.
      • The wired vs. wireless debate extends to other peripherals, such as headphones and computer networking, with many of the same advantages and disadvantages.
  • In relation the above, keyboard shortcuts and mouse button commands. No touchscreen interface has yet come up with anything so quick and convenient for input. Many who mastered keyboard shortcuts can use them so well that they rarely have to use a mouse and type really fast, and right-clicking is just plain practical for many quick command options. Even moreso when it comes to copying/cutting and pasting large chunks of text, where the "hold down and (often fiddly) drag" input of the touchscreen is extremely slow and ponderous in comparison.
  • While we're on it, boring old PCs over flashy tablets in general, for similar reasons. Marketing for certain tablets can go on and on about how it's the "post-PC" era, but their relative cheapness, mass producibility, and tactile input means that they'll likely stick around for a long time. Until the day comes that someone creates something that can replace the tactile input of a PC, we really won't be in the post-PC era for awhile.
    • Don't forget computing power. Even a basic laptop will outperform a tablet, to say nothing of a high-end gaming desktop.
    • Plus, just try writing a term paper, essay or novel with a tablet sometime.note  Yes, you can buy a keyboard for your tablet, but at that point you just have a netbook that costs more and does less than a regular one.
      • It's also worth noting that all those "post-PC" devices still require PCs to program and compile the very software that they use. Until a typical smartphone or tablet allows its user to develop new applications from scratch and publish to the respective app store once complete, without the aid of any other computing devices, PCs will still exist, because you can't run Xcode on iOS (only macOS) and you can't run Android Studio on Android.
  • Tablets, on the other hand, also can count as this. Sure, they do not have the gaming performance of PCs, but they are much cheaper and still able to perform basic tasks, such as browsing the Internet or playing Youtube videos. Also, nowadays many PC applications, such as the Microsoft Office suite, have tablet-optimized versions that are much cheaper than the PC ones, or even completely free. And of course, they're stupendously portable and can be carried around in a messenger bag all day. Their smartphone cousins are also handy if you got some homework due later but you're on the move, like you're getting ready to work a job. The onscreen keypad can be operated surprisingly quickly and pairs well with the aforementioned Office suite. Likewise, if you plan to use it for very basic usage (Internet browsing, media consumption, etc) a low-end tablet will perform it almost as well as a high-end one, with the plus of being considerably cheaper.
    • For Rhythm Game players, the app market for tablets offers rhythm games that are similar in feel to arcade rhythm games (some notable examples include Arcaea, Phigros, and Cytus), but without having to spend a fortune on arcade credits on a regular basis or hundreds of dollars at once on a specialized controller, let alone buying the cabinet itself, while being much more portable at the same time.
  • Any and all utilitarian IT standards. ASCII text, for instance, doesn't come with fonts, or nifty accents, but every Goddamn computer in the world can read it. Dial-up internet access is slow and inconvenient, but everybody who has a phone can use it for low cost.
  • Universal asynchronous receiver/transceivers (UART). Very slow by today's standards, but every freakin' computer system has one and can understand it. Messing with a microcontroller that for some reason doesn't? You can bit bang your own in software easily. And depending on your communication needs, it requires 2-3 wires at the minimum.
    • Serial communication in and of itself. It's boring to send everything one bit at a time. But when you consider that trying to send data in parallel signaling and timing issues that limit how fast you can push data out? Now it becomes practical.
    • For that matter, parallel port communication. Doesn't even need a voltage translator (it uses 5V) or a serial-to-parallel converter. Just connect straight to your microcontroller pins.
  • For computer cooling, the heatsink and fan.
    • While liquid cooling looks awesome and phase-change cooling sounds like space-age exoticness that cools your processors to freezing temperatures easily, both are really expensive (relatively) and both have inherent problems with moisture (liquid for obvious reasons, phase-change will create condensation around exposed electronics). Liquid cooling can also potentially become contaminated if not maintained properly note . And the only thing lowering a part's temperature buys you, if you're not hitting thermal thresholds, is lifespan note  and possibly reduced noise, due to being able to run fans at lower speeds.
    • Most mainstream CPUs include a basic air cooler in the box. While not designed for performance and are often loud under load, they are more than adequate for keeping the CPU cool at stock speeds and are typically easier to install than most aftermarket coolers.
    • An air cooler, if properly maintained and as long as the heatpipes aren't compromised, can often outlast the entire system.
    • There's always the idea of aligning the fan intakes, and by extension the PC case, to receive cold air from an AC unit. Allows your desktop to receive cold air directly. Same for propping up a laptop using a laptop stand, and placing it in the pathway of cold air from a AC unit, especially if that stand has inbuilt fans to blow air over the laptop's air intake vents, and to blow away hot air from the outlet vents.
    • There's also using a standing fan, or a simple table fan aimed at the desktop or laptop too. And even more so, if the AC is turned on.
  • In a lot of PC technology, it's better to go with the more boring midrange parts at best than going all in for high-end. Why? Various reasons:
    • Everyday use programs are already optimized as best they can to run reasonably well on a wide variety of systems. For example, Windows can run on tablets with almost no tweaking as of 2014, which was something unthinkable without serious sacrifices several years prior.
    • For networking, the fastest speeds are usually not standard equipment for years after its introduction. That means that if you want the fastest network possible, you're going to have to buy peripherals and equipment to take advantage of it. Case in point: Gigabit Ethernet has been a consumer standard since the early 2000s to 2018, even though 10-Gigabit Ethernet and even faster standards like Fibre Channel have existed in the enterprise in that timespan. The main reason the faster standards haven't trickled down isn't just the expense for the NICs, but the cables spanning the entire network.
    • High performance requires many high performing components, even if you have some slight leeway depending on your use case note . A powerful graphics card is an expensive paperweight if you have a low power CPU which can't feed it instructions fast enough. A powerful CPU will need fast memory to a point to ensure the CPU can retrieve data fast enough to avoid waiting around doing nothing. You need more powerful cooling and a power supply which can provide the required output. You need more expensive motherboards which can support the higher end components. And so on. Not only do the costs of the individual components go up rapidly note  but so do the costs of the other components needed.
    • Ultimately, the price-to-performance ratio diminishes rapidly, and various factors beyond your control can kill performance.
    • Even if you are a gamer, most games will run just fine with a moderate-performance PC. You might have to tone back some of the more outstanding visual effects, but they aren't absolutely necessary to enjoy most games, and there is more to a game than just its looks.
    • The APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) or going by the Intel jargon, Intel HD Graphics. Sure it won't really play an AAA game with breathtaking visual effects and top framerate, but playability and performance-wise, they're starting tocatch up.
      • Alternatively, a console. Possibly (before the Digital Distribution era where lots of physical games require updates to be able to run if any physical release exists at all) the biggest appeal of gaming consoles is the ability to plug one in and immediately start playing games with zero setup beyond that. Your graphics or framerates won't be as good as a high-end or even midrange PC, but evidently consumers are fine with this compromise.
    • A boring, opaque PC case. Most "gamer" PC cases allow you to show off internal parts through tempered glass window panels, but flashy lights and tempered glass panels are not for everyone. The solid side panel in an opaque PC case lacks the transparency of windowed panels like the glass panels, but also negates the risks of having shattered glass pieces, in favor of structural durability.
  • Integrated (aka on-board) graphics. While demanding tasks such as playing the latest triple-A games, 3D modeling, and video editing all but require a discrete graphics card, integrated graphics are more than adequate for everyday usage, such as web browsing, streaming videos, and running most productivity programs (e.g., word processing, spreadsheets, accounting, etc). As their name implies, integrated graphics do not have additional power draw or put out excessive heat, which is partcularly helpful for laptops and small form factor desktops. For PC gamers on a budget, integrated graphics, particularly on AMD's APUs, have evolved enough where they can play older or less demanding games at least 30 FPS, although graphical details may have to be turned down in certain games.
    • On this note, current entry-level graphics cards are a nice middle ground. As technology advanced, their capabilities and miniaturization did so as well. Many entry-level graphics cards can be powered from the PCIe slot itself. Low-profile models are common too, so small office computers can also be retrofitted. Bear in mind that an entry-level graphics card should be using high-speed graphics memory chips (ex., GDDR5) and not slower system memory chips (ex., DDR4) in order to get the best performance, as Gamers Nexus demonstrates for the Nvidia GT 1030.
  • As with midrange computing hardware, midrange A/V equipment is a better bet than the latest high-end equipment, simply because there's a lot more content for hardware that's been around for a while. There are still way more movies on DVD than there are on Blu-ray and even on Netflixnote . DVD may not boast HD video and better audio but you can find an abundance of movies at thrift stores and big box retailers making it easy to build a collection. Unlike streaming, DVD works even in the event that internet is spotty or nonexistent.

    There's also more HD content designed for 1080p and 720p than for 4K. Indeed, most HD broadcasts are still only 720p due to limited bandwidth and ATSC 1.0 standards (first written in 1996) not supporting 1080pnote . For the longest time, there were still more standard definition than HD sets out there as well. The advantage of buying mid-range equipment is that the early-adopter bugs have been ironed out and format wars resolved.
  • A simple can of compressed air can work wonders for a slow PC. Computers will throttle the processor if they get too hot. Laptops, with their cramped spaces, are especially susceptible. Blowing the dust bunnies out of the fan intake and heatsink will have the CPU running at full speed again.
    • Alternatively, you can use a handheld vacuum cleaner to suck up those dust bunnies.
  • Playing games on lower settings such as lower resolution, lower refresh rates, and adjusting the game's graphics settings to be lower may not make the game look amazing, but most games today still look good even on the lower to mid-range of visual fidelity, and is beneficial in several ways:
    • Getting your game to look great and running it at high frame rates will have your energy bill increase due to the computer needing more power to process the advanced graphics and higher frame rates. Playing games on a lower setting will use less power, thus saving you money on the electric bill.
    • The cost of having a more powerful PC comes in the form of more heat being produced. Unless you use water cooling to keep your component's temperatures low (which itself is an expensive start-up cost and has its own risks), the heat has to go somewhere and that somewhere is in the room the PC sits in. In the winter, this is a non-issue since you want the room to be warm when it's cold outside, but on a hot summer day, the last thing you want to do is making the room even hotter and run the risk of your components overheating and throttling back to prevent damage. By lowering your settings on the PC and/or the game you're playing, your PC will produce less heat and thus make your room not as warm.
  • Dumb phones, in particular, the flip phone:
    • They may not look as flashy and high-tech as the last-generation smartphone and their best feature may be a crappy VGA camera, but dumb phones are often very inexpensive and don't require a costly data plan. With fewer features, a dumb phone is much more simple to operate, a big consideration for less technologically-minded people like senior citizens. Even some tech-savvy people deliberately choose to use a dumb phone instead of a smartphone to be free from distractions (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, etc); many parenting experts also cite the same reason, as well as cost, for giving children a dumb phone as their first phone rather than a smartphone.
    • For flip phones specifically, the folding design makes them much more compact and easier to carry in your pocket than many smartphones. The folding design also prevents accidental "pocket dialing". The only real Achilles' Heel of a flip phone is the hinge.
    • And, of course, there's the issue of battery life. If you don't use it that much (and there's not much to do on a dumb phone), you can keep a dumb phone charged for days (and up to two weeks for some of them) plus the bonus if they use a standard micro USB for charge of being able to be charged wherever there's a USB port as long as you've the cable. Most smartphones won't make it through a day of normal use.
    • Dumb phones are often more robust than a smartphone. If the main screen gets damaged on a dumb phone, it can still be used to a limited extent with a tactile keypad; if the screen breaks on a smartphone, it becomes unusable since the screen is its main interface.
    • Speaking of smartphones, mid-ranged smartphones are this to high-end, as most can do the job you need for a smartphone just fine, with good enough camera quality, enough RAM and storage and most people, outside tech-savy ones, wouldn't see much difference in screen quality.
  • The vibrate option on cellphones. Sure, it doesn't let you show off your personalized ringtone that everyone is dying to hear, but it's very useful in noisy environments and, in places that demand reduced noise levels such as libraries and inside smaller stores, it'll notify you of a call or new message without pissing off everybody around you. Not only that, but if you put the cellphone on the right surface, it can be suitably loud enough to get your attention. And you can stage cell phone races with your friends!
  • Plastic construction for portable devices seems like this compared to the metal-and-glass builds on high-end devices, particularly smartphones. This goes double for the digitizer surface on a touchscreen, since plastic scratches more easily than glass. However, plastic has the perk of being shatter-proof when dropped, whereas your typical glass-sandwich smartphone is likely to be spiderwebbed on both sides and in need of expensive repairs. Also, with the advent of tempered glass screen protectors, scratch protection need not be sacrificed, offering the best of both worlds.
  • The humble 3.5mm TRS/TRRS headphone jack, used for decades until the iPhone 7 suddenly made it trendy to abandon it. Wired headphones do not require charging, have better audio quality where even the best Bluetooth audio codecs are lossy by nature, and because it's a separate jack, one can still use the main USB port for charging and/or data transfers. It's also a far more durable port than USB-C and Lightning, while not requiring a specific rotation. Best of all, it's such an established standard that finding replacement headphones is trivial, and said headphones will work on nearly every device you can think of, with adapters if necessary. Try that with USB-C headphones, where even the adapter dongles don't consistently work between smartphone models!
  • Wired Internet connections, at least for devices with Ethernet ports. They may not have the convenience of being usable anywhere within proximity of the router, but they are far more secure without needing passwords at all, and are far more stable, making them much better suited for streaming and online gamingnote . Also, since Ethernet is decades old, you can often network much older computers with newer ones for file transfer purposes through Ethernet, as it's often the only interface they have in common with modern systems.
  • External storage devices (USB sticks, SD cards, and hard drives (or an SSD) in general). Cloud storage is handy, but they hardly give enough storage space unless you're willing to pay for more storage and the servers hosting the cloud could fail or be hacked. Cloud storage also requires an internet connection, which can be extremely troublesome if your connection is bad or suddenly goes down when you need to download something important. External storage can be stored anywhere you want and storage devices rarely fail. Naturally, external storage devices do take up space in your home/office and you have to plug them in or power them on every time you want to access their data, but you'll have immediate access to them without needing anything additional.
  • Sneakernet. Sure, an internet connection of a few GB per second sounds nice, but when large anounts of data are involved, nothing beats a plain old courier with a data drive. Or a truck.
  • Resistive stylus-based touchscreens. While they can't support multiple touches at oncenote  and you can't use fingers effectively on them, they allow for a degree of precision that capacitive touchscreens don't have (useful for browsing mobile websites and certain video games like Etrian Odyssey and Trauma Center; try playing those on a capacitive finger-based screen), and don't require special styluses to operate; anything that's pointy but relatively blunt (so as not to scratch the screen) can be used to manipulate them. Sadly, these are going out of style, with the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS effectively serving as the last bastions of traditional stylus-based touchscreens.

    While some smart-devices do allow for stylus input without clunky rubber-tip styluses, they do require a very specific kind of proprietary smart stylus, such as the Apple Pencil for iPads and the Samsung Note's dedicated stylus. If you lose either of them, have fun shelling out cash for a new stylus!

    Software 
  • Command line interfaces. Beloved by programmers and techie types, they can be a lifesaver when trying to do things designers of GUIs never intended. They also allow servers to run "headless," without a keyboard and monitor and accessed remotely.
  • Microsoft PowerPoint and its clones allow for fancy presentations involving colorful backgrounds and exciting text effects and slide transitions. However, the best way to get your point across tends to be a simple, plain background with few (if any) text and transitional effects and tasteful use of images and clipart, rather than something out of a typical MySpace page. Unfortunately, many students up to high school (and in many cases, even in university or even after schooling) don't get the hint...
  • Application programming in general uses this trope. While you can make all sorts of obfuscated C or use fancy loops, recursion and stacked subs, the vast majority of work will be simple mathematical and string operations, basic SQL calls (>95% of which are simple select, update, insert, and delete statements), and for or while loops. In fact, going exotic or esoteric makes your code harder to read, harder to maintain, more prone to bugs, typically much slower, and more likely to fail in the next operating system upgrade. See this article on The Daily WTF. Attempting to pull those kinds of tricks is often a fireable offense in many software development shops.
  • Utilitarian fonts like The Times typeface.
    • Courier and Courier New as well. They're clean, monospace (fixed-width) fonts used by many programmers and those who work with documents where positions of characters matter greatly.
    • Likewise, Helvetica, Arial, and Comic Sans. Stylish and easy to read.
    • A note about Comic Sans: it's popular with those starting out on comics and computers because it's interesting (Thanks Batman!). It's hated because it's popular and seemingly obnoxious. But research suggests, and said research has been made more widely known by popular media, that Comic Sans is good for those with dyslexia.
    • Verdana is also a common and effective typeface for Net text.
    • This site uses Trebuchet (though newer devices are more likely to display Arial).
  • "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Sure, this might sound lazy, but rebooting fixes so many software issues.
  • This was one of the original goals behind the design of UNIX. The use of data stored in flat ASCII files, simple algorithms and programs built from small components was a breath of fresh air for computer scientists and programmers in the '70s. VMS users laughed at the incomplete features but Unix's simplicity made it very easy to port to new machines. In legacy environments, most programmers still prefer Unix-like systems because the development environment in Microsoft Windows was comically baroque and while around the 7 era was getting better, still require numerous redistributables to be installed.
    • UNIX's security model is very simple, yet could protect against a wide range of vulnerabilities. Since everything about the computer is treated as a file in UNIX, you have three types of permissions: read, write, and execute (or search in directories). You also had three groups: the owner, the group the owner is in, and everyone else. All of this data can fit into 9-bits and can be represented by three numbers. The concept of the superuser or root user is also very robust. In Unix, users run as normal users and only certain users are allowed to escalate privilege by "going root", typically with the sudo command. Contrast this with Windows XP encouraging users to run as administrator all the time and no "sudo" for administrative tasks. This made XP about as secure as Swiss cheese. Windows effectively emulated sudo with UAC in Vista.
  • Open-source software often isn't as pretty or as feature-filled as proprietary equivalents, but it generally does at least 90% of what you'd need to out of that sort of software, is at least reasonably lightweight, and is, of course, completely free. Oh, and there's pretty much always going to be at least one open-source program that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, for cross-platform productivity. And last but not least, the source code being available to the public means that the more code-savvy can pinpoint exactly what's wrong with their software and either point the precise issue to the developer or even fix it themselves.
  • While Hollywood Hacking might make breaking computer security look incredibly complicated, one of the most reliable methods is the simple dictionary attack. A dictionary attack simply means trying a list of words as a password. This works surprisingly well because a lot of people use weak passwords and use the same passwords everywhere.
    • An even more useful way to get someone's password is to ask them for it. Most hackers agree that social engineering attacks (where you act like someone in authority and demand information or access) is one of the simplest and most reliable hacking techniques out there.
  • Fortunately, computer security is also quite simple. The most important step many security experts recommend is keeping your software updated to close security holes. Yeah, your computer bugging you to update your apps and OS may be an annoyance, but get around to it or you'll wish you had done it sooner. The other big thing they recommend is using good passwords and unique passwords to thwart dictionary attacks mentioned above.
  • Do you really, really want to keep something on a computer safe? You could spend lots of time keeping everything up-to-date, run all sorts of firewalls and security software ... or you could simply unplug it from any networks. Even if someone could do near-magical, Hollywood Hacking-level stuff, there's simply no way to hack an unconnected computer, short of physically going to it. In the IT world, this is known as "air-gapping", and is a lot more common than you might think. While there are attempts to "hack" an "air-gapped" system, this inevitably requires physical access to the system.
  • A spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, or LibreOffice Calc. Wanna run a business? Manage a budget? Keep track of inventory? Payroll? Sales Leads? Expense Reports? Track trends over time? Math in general? Better get familiar with a spreadsheet. It is monotonous and damn near insanity inducing, but man, is it practical. It's still way better than trying to do all these calculations by hand. There's a reason that early Killer Apps for computers were spreadsheets. There is even an entire career field dedicated to it (data entry specialists).
  • LibreOfficenote  in general is this. It lacks many of the bells and whistles of Microsoft Office, and you can run into issues using it in an environment where MS Office is used predominantly with scaling templates and getting another computer to use it, but it does everything that a normal user would need (especially a college student), has extensive support from a vibrant community of enthusiasts who do things like make their own templates and instructional videos, can save work into a format such as PDF easily, and, most importantly, has an auto-save feature that will save your work every few minutes, so if your computer crashes or updates before you have a chance to save your work, you don't have to start from scratch. And best of all, it's entirely free.
  • Microsoft Paint. Sure, it's not as flashy or filled with useful tools like Photoshop and IrfanView, but if you just need to save a picture you found online or want to do a simple drawing, nothing beats MS Paint. MS Paint has been on every iteration of the Windows OS since 1.0; just hit Windows+R, type in "mspaint", and go.
  • Paint.NET is a good middleground for those who need more features than what MS Paint offers (e.g., layers, transparency, etc.) but don't want or need the complexity of Photoshop or GIMP.
  • Plain text editors may not give you any options to really format text, but they are handy for simply taking notes, documenting something, or writing code. Microsoft Notepad is one of the most, ahem, notable examples (similar to mspaint, just hit Win+R and type in "notepad"), although other text editors exist to give you some extra tools to work with (syntax highlighting, customizable indents, changing letter case in bulk, etc.). In fact, there are a fair number of programmers who prefer to do their work from enhanced text editors rather than full-on integrated development environments, citing their greater flexibility and lower memory usage.
  • While email has largely fallen by the wayside as a means to have long-distance textual conversations, mostly being relegated to workplace communication today while chat apps like Discord and text messaging are the preferred means of friendly chat today, email is still useful for casual conversation today since there are dozens of free email account providers out there (Google's Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Microsoft's Hotmail, and so on), you don't need a dedicated device to use your email (You can use your own computer or phone, or go to the local library and use one of their computers if you don't have your own devices), and because email isn't centralized, if one email provider goes down the entire email platform doesn't grind to a halt. It's also perhaps one of the oldest forms of "cloud storage"; if you need to transfer files from one computer to another that you use, you can just email it to yourself.
  • The humble .csv (comma separated value) file. It is a plain text file, with rows of data, and each value separated by a comma. Doesn't have fancy formatting, tabs, or other genuinely useful tools that an Excel file can have, but is loved by IT Admins and programmers everywhere for how easy it is to have a script read. In addition, there are a variety of programs specifically designed for editing .csv's, for those who don't like working with plaintext, and spreadsheet applications like Excel and OpenOffice Calc have .csv support.
    • On that note, using spreadsheets as a rudamentory database for storing information that an application will use later. An example is with games, where said spreadsheets may contain information about items, enemies, etc. A developer can tweak things by opening up a spreadsheet app, finding the value, updating it, and having the application reload it (which it may do every time it goes into a relevant zone). This contrasts with having to use some database tool and learning its nuances.
  • The Linux kernel is generally this. It's not a flashy microkernel that has loads of super-cool features (unlike GNU Hurd, L4, NT kernel and XNU), being a crufty good ol' monolithic kernel, nor the most secure kernel (unlike BSD). What makes up for that though is the sheer modularity Linux has, enabling it to be ported to countless architectures and configurations and it is still very secure.
  • Similar to email, while SMS messaging is being challenged by apps like WhatsApp, SMS will likely stick around for text messaging simply because everyone with a mobile phone has it, from basic flip phones to the latest smartphones. That said, this only applies if you're texting those within the same country, as international SMS can cost a considerable amount.

    Miscellaneous — Technology 
  • The Zippo cigarette lighter. An exceedingly simple design that succeeds largely because its simplicity means that it will rarely ever fail. As long as you have a handful of flints and maybe a replacement wick, it'll serve you for years. You can feed the Zippo its specially formulated fluid, camp stove fuel, gasoline, moonshine, practically anything, and it'll still burn. A Ronson might become unusable due to the head or threading of the fuel compartment stripping out; on a Zippo, you just pull out the inner body from the main case. There's a reason the brand has been sold, largely unchanged, since 1933. The company turned 90 years old in 2022 and has manufactured over 500 MILLION lighters, and every single one of them is guaranteed. "It works or we fix it for free" is a trademark of the company.
    • Zippo's creator was inspired by an exchange with an Australian soldier, who he noticed was using an IMCO (a very plain-looking lighter with a stamped metal casing) as opposed to a fancier Ronson. The soldier's response when asked why sums up the trope perfectly: "Because it works, mate."
  • The BIC cristal is a very minimalistic, yet functional ballpoint pen. It is about as un-flashy at school as it gets, and yet because it is so simple and reliable, it is nothing short of the most sold pen ever, with over one hundred billion units produced. Its design barely changed at all since its inception in 1950, with the only differences being the ball's original steel being replaced by tungsten carbide and the addition of a hole in the cap to prevent choking.
  • Laboratories might not be the most exciting places on the planet, no matter what Dexter's Laboratory may tell you, but the people who work in them take care of the scientific details that crack the case for those on the front lines.
  • Speaking of laboratories, the invention of glass. It may be fragile and prone to shattering if heated or cooled too quickly (or dropped on the floor) but it conducts heat fairly well, refracts light, is easily cleaned, and cheap to replace. Oh, and it's transparent. A lot of work in science couldn't be done without it. On a more day-to-day level, it's nice being able to look out of windows and let sunlight in without causing a draft.
  • Duct Tape. While what you can do with it is amazing, in and of itself? Not that exciting, but cheap and widely available. Ironically, it's terrible on ducts, since it's not good at handling the rapid and repeated temperature changes.
  • Masking tape isn't as memetically badass as duct tape, but it has myriad applications, from holding smaller things together to mounting posters to labeling. It's easy to tear off pieces with just your hands too; you don't need scissors.
  • Electric fans. Though not as powerful as air conditioners, they generally provide sufficient cooling, and keep air circulating, all at a lower operating cost and without the need for tedious construction; you can even get a small battery-operated or USB-powered fan for your desk or to wear around your neck. You also don't need all doors and windows closed for them to function properly. Fans can be supplemented with a misting device (usually a bottle of water with a mist sprayhead) if you need further cooling that doesn't involve an AC unit.
  • Electric engines are so simple that they were invented before the light bulb. Their efficiency is well above 99% and many of them can run for decades without any needs for shutdown or repairs. The fact that nobody thinks much about them, yet everybody uses them just serves as further proof that they are this trope.
    • What's more, electric engines are versatile. Put a propeller on the shaft, you got a fan. Put a drill bit on the shaft, you have a drill. Put a grind wheel on the shaft, you get a grinder...etc
    • Electric engines can also have their shafts spun fast enough, to become generators.
  • The greenhouse or in an even more reduced form just clear plastic spanned over the fields. It is nothing fancy, but it allows growing fruits and vegetables that would not grow as fast or at all in that climate without it. The Netherlands have managed to feed half of Europe based on plastic sheets and greenhouses, even though their tomatoes and cucumbers have the reputation of being nothing but water and tasting of precisely nothing.
  • Drip irrigation is a system so simple yet genius, it's amazing it took so long to be invented. Unlike older types of irrigation, water is not sprayed on the plants from above but released close to the roots from beneath. This can reduce water consumption by up to 90% and greatly reduces problems such as soil salinity which is often a result of doing irrigation wrong.
  • Chain Lifts on roller coasters. They are not as exciting as launches, however, they are much more reliable than launches.
    • In terms of launches, LSM launches are not as forceful or energy efficient as hydraulic or pneumatic launches, but they are also much more reliable and safe (hydraulic launch roller coasters tend to break down a lot, and pneumatic launch coaster Do’Dodonpa has caused spinal cord injuries).
  • The Haber-Bosch process is a fairly basic chemical conversion that turns nitrogen from the atmosphere into a more reactive form. If that sounds boring, consider that it meant that chemical fertilizers could now be produced out of thin air, in unlimited quantities, from anywhere on earth, vastly improving crop yields and the life cycle of fields. Without this breakthrough, it would be literally impossible to feed the current population of earth. It's become so ubiquitous that half the nitrogen that composes your body right now probably came from a chemical plant running this process.
  • Quartz watches. For a few dollars, you can get a watch that's water resistant, shock resistant, and is accurate to within 30 seconds per month. Mechanical watches, though considered more interesting by collectors, tend to gain or lose several seconds per day and are much more sensitive to shocks and temperature changes than quartz while being more expensive. To put it another way, a $10 Casio is probably more accurate than a several-thousand-dollar Rolex.
    • Digital LCD watches may sacrifice aesthetic for function, but they provide the time in an easy-to-read format and often come with a few useful functions such as a stopwatch, timer, and displaying the time in other time zones (if you have long-distance friends or business contacts, for example). Many LCD watches also have a light-up mode for checking the time in the dark, although some analog watches can also do the same with glow-in-the-dark hands.
    • A basic battery clock — either on the wall, or a shelf. While smartphones can easily replace alarm clocks (though only if they are charged), and watches do the same job, clocks are still all over homes and workplaces. We still need to be wearing our watch to see the time, and most workplaces frown on overt smartphone use during work time. The clock on the wall persists because it's still the easiest way to see the time.
  • Seven-segment displays. When compared to other types of displays, they look rather ugly and are sharply limited in what they can display, but they're very cheap to implement into an electronic device and are adequate for displaying numbers.
  • In this day and age of biometrics and physical authentication, the password, or passphrase as they're called in more security-minded circles, remain the most effective way of safeguarding one's personal digital data. Biometrics can be rendered useless by bodily disfiguration, physical dongles render you likely SOL if you lose them, but a strong and easy-to-remember password stays in your mind once you've taken a little time to commit to it. A lengthy mnemonic with some symbols and numbers that only the user(s) can possibly remember is even better, ensuring that brute force is highly impractical.
  • The refrigerator and freezer. Most are big, boxy creations that lack the "flash" of other, fancier kitchen gadgets. And unlike multi-purpose tools like a dishwasher or stove, they only do one thing—store food. But that one action has probably changed human history more than any other object in the kitchen besides cooking itself. Even in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, bulky "iceboxes" only kept food fresh for a few days at most, requiring near-constant purchases of meat, vegetables, and dairy products, to say nothing of actually buying the ice to keep the machine cool. Then refrigeration and freezing technology were perfected in the 1900s...and everything changed. Suddenly, "big box" supermarkets sprang up left and right, which choked out small markets (how many towns still have a greengrocer?) and changed suburban landscapes while helping raise the automobile to prominence; jobs like milk and ice delivery became obsolete, as people could keep their dairy foods fresher longer and no longer needed to buy ice in the first place; meat preservation was possible, which in turn led to a steep decline in foodborne illnesses; demands for produce boomed; new industries and frozen food producers became powerhouses (Ore-Ida, Birds-Eye, Mama Celeste, and more); women—traditionally the "homemakers" of this time period—were given more freedom, as making meals no longer required an entire day of shopping for, preparing, and serving food; food storage itself, including Tupperware (and its subsequent parties!), became an industry unto its own; and life, in general, was never the same, especially as people began to adapt their diets to the new rules. That big box humming in your kitchen probably isn't the most appealing thing in there, but few other appliances can truly say that they totally changed the course of human development.
    • And it just so happens that the best way to preserve organs, tissues, blood and pharmaceutical compounds for later use in medicine, is with refrigeration and freezing. AKA cryogenics and cryopreservation. From there, the humble big box humming away in the corner of a kitchen or hospital lab, just gained even more respect and acknowledgement in shaping human society, and saving lives.
  • The Compact Disc doesn't have the visual flair of the vinyl record or the nostalgic kitsch of the cassette tape, but it's cheap to manufacture, small enough to easily store and transport, doesn't wear out from repeated playback, lacks surface noise, and can remain in good condition indefinitely with minimal effort (issues like playback-affecting scratches and disc rot are more often than not the result of easily avoidable mistakes). Additionally, although the merits of digital audio vs. analog have been debated for as long as digital audio has existed, a well mastered recording can still sound just as good (if not better) on CD as on vinyl or tape. It's for these reasons that CD sales, while very modest compared to vinyl, are still steady enough to ensure new releases on the format well after the rise of digital downloads and streaming (with the Classical Music and jazz crowds being particular devotees thanks to those genres seeing the most benefits from the CD's advantages).

Vehicles and Transportation

    Cars 
  • Regular, ordinary cars in general. They lack the ruggedness of an SUV or pickup or the power and sleekness of a sports car, but are more efficient with gasoline, are usually the cheapest new cars you can find, and they won't make your insurance rates sky rocket. Newer such cars also come with various safety features such as front and side airbags and proximity sensors that will raise your chances of avoiding or at least surviving an accident more than a sports car will, as most sports cars sacrifice safety features and other luxuries in order to achieve optimum performance. Most importantly, since they are the most common cars on the road, replacement parts can easily be bought new for lower prices and/or salvaged from junkyards compared to sports and luxury cars.
  • Cars as a means of transport in general. We have machines that can fly through the air or zoom along rails at hundreds of miles an hour, but the simple car is still one of the most ubiquitous forms of transportation the world over. The reason is simple, it's cheap to build and maintain roads.
  • On that note: Older cars amongst regular cars are generally cheaper and still have a good amount of efficiency, even if they have over 100,000 miles on the engine. They also have less modern features on them that can and will fail at some point, making repairs much simpler. (It's not uncommon for all those sensors on a modern car that detect failures with the powertrain and brake systems to fail in and of themselves!) All it really takes to maintain this car is a decent understanding of mechanics and keeping an eye on your car's fluids. Decent or extraordinary maintenance can turn these older cars into...
    • Used cars may not have the newest features and looks, but they have already suffered the biggest depreciation and their weak and strong points are well-noted. The weak points are also more likely to have been fixed by prior owners.
  • The Citroën 2CV, a small, unassuming car that eventually became France's answer to the Beetle, with over 3.8 million produced (not counting the numerous variants) between 1948 and 1990. This car is so versatile, it can drive almost anywhere. One 2CV drove all the way from Paris to Yokohoma.
  • The van. Ugly, ungainly and largish, but it can deliver both people and goods, and anything which can be laden manually, such as furniture, machinery, gear, luggage, packages and parcels, can be delivered with a van. You can use a van as a mobile storage, a minibus, a camper and sleep in one, and the fuel economy is not usually worse than that of an ordinary car.
  • Minivans (or MPVs, as where you called) once had that "soccer mom" stigma in America but became appreciated for having the passenger and cargo capacity of an SUV without the gas-guzzling property; granted, a minivan can't typically go off-road, but if you just need a vehicle for everyday purposes, that isn't necessary. This gains minivans a popular status in Asia and Europe where people use them as family vehicles. Their standard maximum engine power was increased thanks to fitting highly-tuned V6s into the smaller engine bays. Also, unlike with regular vehicles, their sliding doors can be very helpful in tight parking spaces, when the driver's door can't open easily, depending on how accessible the back is for the driver. The seats are often completely removable as well, letting you lower the weight when when extra seating isn't needed and increase storage space at the same time, and they can even be converted into a camper van with some creativity.
  • Japanese kei cars are small, dismally underpowered and slow at first glance, but they are actually tall and roomy, and they can handle better than most regular cars due to their narrow sizes. Mid-engined kei cars like Honda S660 and Mitsubishi i deserve this mention.
  • Much of the ex-Soviet, now Russian, automobile industry embodies this trope. Rough roads and climate conditions don't play well with modern vehicles that haven't been explicitly built to withstand them, and those that have are usually far too expensive for a land with a long history of chronic monetary scarcity. As a result, the typical Soviet/Russian car up until a few years ago relied on dated designs and uncomplicated, robust and cheap componentry, but paid the price with low performance, low efficiency and ghastly safety standards. Even the half-hearted attempts of the Soviet Age to implement the Western luxuries like automatic transmissions failed when repairs and maintenance would have been prohibitively expensive. This has slowly been changing, with many cities seeing more and more imported cars of recent design, but it's been a slow process — the Lada Riva, based on the seventies-era Fiat 124, has only been discontinued sometime between 2010 and 2012. And if you go to places where the cold and warm seasons are rather classified as "lethally freezing" and "slightly survivable", you can bet you'll still be seeing a lot more Lada Nivas than Range Rovers.
  • Small trackday cars like the Lotus Elise, Mazda Miata or Caterham 7. They may lack the babe magnet capabilities of sports and super cars, the sheer power numbers of muscle cars and the daily usability of both, but they can beat them on race tracks and winding roads.
  • On that note, even the ordinary pick-up truck qualifies. While some you have your "crucks" and your "Oversized pickups for fashion and compensation", the majority of them are massed produced utility vehicles designed take a decent amount of cargo and one or two people and move them from one place to another. The basic design of the pick-up truck hasn't changed in over half a century. It's safer then many other vehicles in most types of common collisions because Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest SOB on the road. It's so damn utilitarian that if an ordinary pick-up truck is properly maintained and driven normally, you can even get more mileage and years of usage out of a good truck then a car and have average to better than average gas mileage.
    • Toyota pickups in particular have a reputation for being Made of Indestructium, which keeps resale values high even on models dating back to The '80s. They even tend to compete surprisingly well with domestic Ford and Chevrolet pickup trucks down in the Deep South, where trucks are as common, if not moreso, than sedans and SUVs.
    • Compact or "quarter-ton" pickups - small, versatile trucks, usually with smaller engines for better fuel economy, not much larger (and sometimes smaller) than most passenger cars and (at least in their early days) lacking a lot of "luxury" options. Examples include the Chevy S10, the original run of Ford Rangers, and the Mazda B-Series. Beloved by contractors, tradespeople, and anybody who wants an inexpensive daily driver that prioritizes cargo capacity over passenger space. New ones are mostly a thing of the past in the US (though it's quite common to see older ones still on the road), thanks to EPA regulations that accidentally incentivized manufacturers to focus on larger, less-efficient trucks - though with the rise of hybrid and electric vehicles, come commentators are predicting a comeback.
  • 90s body-on-frame SUVs also qualify. While new models might have stuff like GPS and leather seats, the old ones have the offroad and hauling capabilities of trucks while being able to carry more people. You also shouldn't forget that running ones can be bought for under $2500 or £1500.
    • The smaller SUVs from the late 90s and early 2000s are another example. They were derived from compact cars and typically seat five (driver + four passengers) about as comfortably as a large sedan does while having the cargo capacity of a minivan. They also have all the safety features and creature comforts contemporary cars had. 4WD/AWD plus decent ground clearence and (relatively) high torque engines means they can go off-road, handle 5-6" of snow without flinching, and can tow a small trailor in a pinch (assuming a tow hook has been installed).
  • Diesel engines fullfill this trope. While they might be less powerful and cool-sounding (and much heavier) than gasoline ones, they are also more frugal with fuel and have more torque. Audi used their diesel engines to beat the 24 Hours of Le Mans. However, as became evident in The New '10s, diesel engines have huge problems with particulate and nitrous oxide emissions that engineering seems incapable of fixing for an acceptable price, which hinders diesel adoption greatly in the United States with its strict emissions standards — doubly so in California. On the other hand, Mazda didn't give up completely on compression-ignition and developed a diesel-style system for use with gasoline with their Skyactive system, which allowed them to close the gap between gasoline and diesel while also reducing emissions through a more efficent burn.
  • The 2011 Mediocrity is an intentional exaggeration of this trope.
  • This is Toyota through and through, not the best in any field, except probably reliability.
    • Downplayed for Lexus, which could, depending on your taste, be seen as Awesome and Practical or this trope for luxury brands. They're not as powerful or high-tech as say, Mercedes, Audi, or BMW, but they're comfy, built to last, and hold their value much better than most other luxury brands.
  • The Ford Crown Victoria model of sedan isn't cutting-edge in style or modern luxuries, but they have a good history as a fleet vehicle, starting a strong economy for third-party replacement parts. If a one is bought from a Police/Taxi sale, there's a good chance that the vehicle had routine maintenance and may be able to take a second owner another 100,000 miles with timely trips to a mechanic. Your friends may not be amazed by your ride, but parking one of these at your residence may scare off trouble-makers who are familiar with the sight of the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. The Crown Vic engine isn't powerful enough to impress sports car fans, but this is partly because the engine is designed to last a while rather than give thrilling acceleration from 0.
    • Its Panther platform stablemates, the Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car, offer more luxury features on the same V8, RWD, body-on-frame configuration as the Crown Vic and even share many of the same parts, making them almost equally maintainable for someone who would like a more upscale version.
  • Simply driving smoothly with gentle applications of the accelerator and brake pedals and keeping your speed at the speed limit on the highway (when traffic conditions allow it) will get you solid fuel efficiency and make you a much safer driver to yourself, your passengers, and drivers around you. Your Drives Like Crazy friends may think you're boring to ride with, but others who ride with you will thank you for being a driver they can trust and ride comfortably with. Similarly, other drivers may give you the stink-eye for driving at what they consider to be a slow speed, but that's why multiple lanes on highways exist.
    • Cruise control. It will set your speed to a desired constant and use the most fuel efficient settings. You can save up to 3 liters per 100 km by simply using the cruise control when driving on highways. Usually, driving a constant 90 km/h speed is likely to be the optimum between fuel economy and time spent on driving.
  • The jerry can (or jerrican). A simple fuel container at the surface, its simplicity betrays a sophisticated nature. It was designed to be operable without a pump, funnels, or a wrench (at least one of which was required by most of its predecessors), and the multiple handles mean that empty cans can be carried two in each hand by a single person, and full ones can be carried by two people at once. The 'X' mark you see on the side is not just for show; it reinforces the sides and allows the contents to expand without warping the container. It's one of the first German technologies adopted by the British in World War II; the Allies often used jerrycans in place of their own fuel containers whenever they could acquire them. Even now, the jerry can design has been used in more civilian goods, like liquid detergent and gasoline cans.
  • Motorcycles 500cc and below (We're looking at you, Piaggio Vespa scooters). Sure, they're not high speed powerhouses like the Suzuki Hayabusa or a badass bike like a Harley-Davidson in the 1200cc range, but they're light, can reach sufficiently fast highway speeds, are easier to handle (weight being part of it, not being twitchy being the other), and are insanely efficient (250cc bikes can routinely achieve 80MPG, 500cc bikes maintain a Prius worthy 55MPG). There's a reason why many motorcyclists suggest new riders to get something in that range.
    • In many South East Asia countries (especially Indonesia), even smaller 110 cc and 125cc, both automatic and "semi-auto" variants are pretty much embodient of this trope, with it's affordability by majority of the populations, ease to operate and modify to suit many purposes, also rather convenient to drive on narrow and extremely crowded streets typical of South East Asia countries.
  • Manual transmission. It lets you to choose the most efficient gear and reduce speed without braking simply by switching a smaller gear. It is easier to repair than automatic and less prone to malfunctions. Having a manual transmission can improve your fuel economy by more than 2 liters per 100 km compared to automatic. This efficiency becomes apparent especially when driving on winding small roads with lots of curves, such as mountains, as switching manually between gears without braking is far more fuel efficient than braking. In mastered hands, a manual transmission gives better control of acceleration and deceleration, as well as allows you to use engine braking, which can be incredibly useful on those situations.
  • On the other hand, it can be argued that automatic transmissions are this trope in the United States, owing to their sheer ubiquity (you actually have to go out of your way to find a stick-shift for sale, and said cars are frequently more expensive because those cars are often high-performance models), much reduced cognitive load when driving, greater fuel efficiency than manual transmissions as of the late 2010s (and even before then, the manual needed to be used with a fair amount of skill to beat out the automatic, and a lot of people can't do that), and most importantly, no fear of rolling back on hills (and possibly into another car behind you) or stalling the engine, especially in stop-and-go traffic where you may be rear-ended by an inattentive driver who thought you were going to move forward like everyone else driving a slushbox.
  • The Ford Focus is frequently mocked by car enthusiasts for its dull design, relatively unimpressive specs, and the fact that its extremely high sales numbers have caused people to get sick of it by virtue of sheer overexposure. However, it has those sales numbers for a reason: It's a comfortable, efficent, cost-effective and reliable car.
  • The Toyota Camry and Corolla, as well as the rival Honda Accord and Civic. All of them tend to be the epitome of the Mediocrity parody video mentioned above. In fact, millionaires who want to stay millionaires will very likely drive Hondas or Toyotas because they are so cost effective.
  • Volvos before the Ford buyout were famed for being ugly, slow, and absolutely indestructible.
  • While Germany's Awesome, but Impractical Maut (Toll) System took its toll in form of endless delays, scandals and empty political promises, Austria has the Picker...which is just a sticker.
  • Racing cars have to be quick, but they also must be reliable ("To finish first, first you must finish"), so often races and championships are won by the less flashy, sometimes slower, but ultimately more simple, easy to use and best tested cars. Particularly noticeable in top level motorsports at the end of the 1960s. In Formula One the championship was twice won by the plain Brabham V8 — less powerful and advanced than the Lotus Ford Cosworth, and less glamorous than the Ferrari or Eagle cars, but usually more likely to be around at the finish. At the Indianapolis 500 jet turbine cars had a brief vogue, and were very fast, but always broke down before they reached the finish. In the Canam sportscar series, where the rule book was very light and all kinds of innovations were tried, the races were dominated by the Mclaren cars — essentially a big V8 engine attached to a well sorted-out chassis with few other tricks.
  • Specification racing series like the IndyCar and Japan's Super Formula series don't get all the press that Formula One does and don't have all the flashy technology that allows the later to have superior cornering, but because the former two must follow strict specifications and suppliers with very little room for modification, the cars are considerably less costly to build and field, reliability is generally very high, the drivers are very evenly matched and have to use their talent to win without relying upon creative engineering to give a superior car.
    • The cars themself may be relatively boring-yet-practical, but the spectators generally get a very entertaining battle for which team has the best driver and crew. Also, despite the cars being relatively mundane in the world of open-wheel racing, Indycar driving is Difficult, but Awesome because the driver has to be proficient at both road courses and oval-like tracks which demand different approaches to be successful on. Oval-like tracks look technically boring, yet for the drivers, the Indy 500 is a grueling race and winning this race carries a great amount of prestige.
    • Speaking of crew, the pit crew in any racing series isn't the most glamorous part of the race necessarily, but the driver isn't going to get very far without a team to change tires, refuel, adjust the downforce to correct handling problems (if applicable). The driver also needs their crew chief on radio to communicate vital information and change strategy accordingly.
  • The basic Inline-4-cylinder engine option in cars was this for a long time. They weren't as potentially exciting as their contemporary V6 options but they were noticably better on fuel economy, and even performed surprisingly well in more up-market models where drivers still want good fuel efficiency. Technological advancements improved Inline-3 engines for those who wanted even better fuel economy and didn't need even the power of an I4. Also, regardless of era, an Inline-4 and below is very mechanic-friendly, with all the spark plugs often easily accessible on top of the engine, requiring no more than two camshafts to operate the valves, and with variable-valve-timing systems provinding an intergal method of allowing fuel economy at lower engine speeds and higher performace at higher revolutions. Inline-3 engines are even simpler, ligher in weight, and even more fuel efficient plus benefitted from similar technological enhancements as Inline-4 setups.
  • Block and Oil pan heaters are rather simple in design and operation. You plug them into a socket, and they heat up the engine block and oil pan of a vehicle. Not fancy, but they help start up engines during cold weather, by helping the fuel and air mix combust properly during initial startup, by preventing fuel from condensing in the cylinders due to cold weather. And by liquifying the cold, congealed oil and even bringing it up to optimum viscosity quicker. This reduces wear and tear that the engine components experience, when the oil flow is sluggish in cold weather.
    • On that note, heated air inlets also help with initial startup and driving in cold weather, by heating up the engine faster and ensuring fuel combusts properly to reduce pollution, using waste heat from the exhaust pipe.
    • A common hack to introduce hot air to help initial start up, is with a hairdryer or heat gun aimed into the air inlet of an engine. Let the engine run with said hot air blowing tech for a spell, then remove it. The engine's freshly generated heat will take over from there.
    • Some companies even make heat exhangers for vehicle exhaust systems, that allow waste heat to heat up engine coolant, thus helping with bringing engines to optimum operating temperature faster.
    • As for heating up the vehicle compartment to defog the windows, and warm up the interior to ensure occupant comfort, one can simply place an small electric heater inside on the floor, and let it run for a while to heat up the air inside.
    • It's a common practice in temperate countries, to drain engine oil into a container after driving the car in winter, like when coming home from work at night. Then the oil is stored away inside the garage overnight, where it gets to stay warm and runny. Come morning, the oil is poured back into the engine, where it can start flowing as if it were a normal, warm sunny day, instead of being cold and needing heating up. If you wanna expedite the process of heating up, you can heat up the oil first before pouring it in, especially if the container is an automotive oil kettle that can be put over a heat source, like a candle.

    Railway 
  • In the days when the Cool Train was hauled by steam, the most common and useful steam locomotive was the 0-6-0 goods engine (think Donald and Douglas). The long boiler allowed the locomotive to build up a lot of steam and conserve it, so the locomotive would not need to be cold-started every time it needed to move. As all the wheels were driving wheels, the locomotive had a lot of tractive effort for its weight. It had more adhesion than the 0-4-0, but could go more places than the 0-8-0. The 0-6-0 was not fast, but it was a powerful little machine, and every country that used steam locomotives used the 0-6-0. Examples would be the New South Wales Z19, the Prussian G 3, the Caledonian 812, the LMS Fowler 4F, the GWR Dean Goods, the North Eastern 1001 class, the North British C Class, the Great Central Class 9J and the USRA 0-6-0. The NSWGR Z19 class was in service for almost a CENTURY.
  • In North America another example is the 4-4-0. It wasn't as flashy or fast as later engines but it handled rough terrain wellnote  and was very simple mechanically, making repairs easy. It is also (at least for Americans) the most recognizable design of steam locomotive.
  • The Hungarian 424 "Buffalo" class 4-8-0 engines served from 1924 to 1984. The Buffaloes were popular because they were extremely simple engines, cheap to build, able to pull nearly any train, and very easy to repair or upgrade. They became the largest locomotive class in Hungary. The design was replicated for use in Yugoslavia, and fifteen of the engines were even sent to North Korea. Today, at least seven of the 500+ 424s have been confirmed to survive.
  • The British Black Five served right up until the final days of steam in August 1968. Over 800 were built, for anything from top-link expresses to local pick-up goods trains, and 18 survive in preservation.
  • The German class 52 "war locomotive". Its immediate predecessor, the class 50, a comparatively lightweight 2-10-0, was introduced shortly before World War II. During the war itself, the Reichsbahn required insane amounts of steam locomotives capable of pulling whatever trains on whatever (standard gauge) tracks and made of materials that didn't have to be imported. The class 50 was stripped and simplified so much that it was possible to build more than 3,000 locomotives in three years. When the 50 had been simplified to the max, it became the 52, an almost absolutely no-frills austerity locomotive of which more than 6,000 were built in less than three years—an average of about six a day. Originally, they were designed to operate no longer than five years. But their utter simplicity made them so robust that they would survive the next several decades in some places. Poland, for example, used unreconstructed 52s labeled Ty2 and Ty42 in regular services until the early 1990s and still has two operational Ty2, and the Soviet Union still had hundreds of former 52s with only few modifications on stand-by as a strategical reserve in East Prussia when it was dissolved in 1992. Similarly the USATC S160 2-8-0 was widely used throughout Europe after the war
  • Diesel shunting locomotives, or switch engines for American railfans. One of the best examples would be the Köfnote . One of the least remarkable German locomotives. It came up in the early 30s as a small shunter with an internal combustion engine (some had gasoline engines, most had diesels), and although easily ignored, they were a common sight on big and small yards and stations for decades. In fact, when the Bundesbahn began to phase them out in the '80s and '90s (the Deutsche Bahn AG put the last one out of service in 1999), there were plenty of buyers for these small, cheap, simple and reliable machines, and countless ones are operational still today.
    • The honorary mention goes to VR series Dv 12 which was introduced to service in 1962 and is assumed to remain in service until at least 2027. It is used both for shunting work and for main-line operation, both cargo and passengers.
  • Diesel locomotives in general. They are rather plain looking, and do not have the charisma and romanticism of the steam engines nor the glamour and dashing speed of electric engines. But they are extremely versatile, mechanically reliable, economical to use, extremely durable and have extremely long service lives. The same engine can be used on shunting, hauling passenger trains and hauling freight trains. Moreover, they are independent of availablility of electricity, can be run on cheap fuels and easy to repair and overhaul. Some diesel locomotives may have up to seventy years' service lives, and fifty years in service is not uncommon.
    • A noteworthy example: the Budd Rail Diesel Car, or RDC. A self-propelled unit with a cab at each end, possibly a baggage and/or mail compartment, and basic un-reclining seats that you would find in an average city bus. No food service, no frills. 398 were built, and their cheap operating costs kept passenger service alive on routes throughout North America (and one in Australia) that would have been shut down otherwise. Many still survive; in Canada several have been rebuilt and continue in revenue service more than six decades after their introduction.
    • Similar to the above, the ALn 668 (Automotrice Leggera a nafta, Light Diesel motor car). After World War II, the Italian railways found that most of their fleet was destroyed or rapidly becoming too obsolete to operate, and needed, among other things, a light railcar that was reliable, cheap to buy and maintain, easy to operate, and modest performance, and FIAT not only managed to provide one with almost completely off-the-shelf technology, including a couple of repurposed truck engines (and it was two only because specifically requested, one would have sufficed), the resulting train was so good it was in continuous production in multiple variants from 1956 to 1983, and in Italy was only phased out in 2023. Also, it was considered reliable enough that FIAT used one, the ALN 668.1999, as a prototype for a number of new technologies, including ones adopted in the modern high-speed trains.
    • Railbuses. Basically railcars with one or two internal combustion engines and as many parts as possible that were originally designed for buses. Cheap to make, especially when ordered in larger numbers, cheap to maintain, lightweight and therefore cheap to operate and easy on the tracks. They may not look fancy, they may not be fast, they may not be that comfortable to ride with only two axlesnote , they may only have one classnote , they may not be quiet unless you sit in a trailer, but nobody knows how many branch lines they have saved from closure.
    • All this said, steam locomotives are not without their advantages over their replacements. Maintenance is complex and time-consuming, but all you need to run them is water and a combustible fuel source. No need to produce or import diesel fuel, no electrical grid to maintain. During the Cold War, some European countries kept steam locomotive stockpiled in the event that a nuclear war rendered diesels and electrics non-functional. Some African countries, particularly apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), maintained or even rebuilt steam locomotives long after neighbouring countries had retired them. Both had generous coal reserves but no oil of their own, and few countries were willing to sell it to them.
  • A livery related one: The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad's black and yellow livery which it applied to later diesels. It was not as dashing or gorgeous as the original purple and silver livery applied to its first diesels. But the original livery often faded due to the southeast's brutal sun, requiring a repaint every two years to keep the colors of quality. This was a problem the black and yellow livery lacked, and it saved the company $100,000 annually.
  • The Glasgow subway system: No one gets lost.
  • Yes, straightening curves, eliminating level crossings and laying good tracks in good state to get speeds up to 100 or 125 mph may sound incredibly boring compared to High Speed Rail but it can shave hours of the travel time, make the line much more economically viable and drive the political consensus in favor of more expensive investment. And the best of all: The costs of new high speed lines is usually measured in billions the costs of those "boring" upgrades is usually measured in millions. With an m.
    • This goes to show in Japan more than anywhere else: The Shinkansen lines are maintained by fixing even small booboos over night while the lines are closed for some nine hours. So while Germany has high-speed lines that were opened in 1988 and have to be closed for months, chunk for chunk, and basically completely rebuilt, the Tokaido Shinkansen has been as good as new since 1964 in spite of enduring many more trains per day.
  • Speaking of curves, the X2000 is what happens when a tilting train is designed in the same country as Volvo. It's basically a push-pull train with only one seatless power car, so no driving power distributed throughout the train. And the power car doesn't tilt. So the X2000 doesn't look as awesome as other tilting trains while tilted because there's always one untilted vehicle sticking out. But there's no technical reason for the power car to tilt, and the X2000 is the world's only electric tilting train that doesn't need pantographs that sway to the sides against the tilting motion of the carbody underneath — because the only vehicle on the train that carries pantographs doesn't tilt.
  • Trams. Or streetcars or trolleys or whatever you call them. A lot of them are just glorified buses on rails and have a relatively low top speed. But they're still a really effective and efficient way for large groups of people to get around in a big metro — and can often carry more passengers than buses.
  • Continuous brakes. They eliminated the need for cabooses (in North America) and brake vans (in the UK). To a diehard Rail Enthusiast, a freight train is incomplete without one at the end; a train that ends abruptly with a boxcar or tank car just isn't the same. But continuous brakes are safer and more efficient, and it saves time and energy when you don't have to shunt a brake van or caboose.

    Air Transport 
  • What's the most sold airplane on earth? A Boeing? An Airbus? Some ultra cool fighter jet that can atomize any target in a 5 000 mile radius? No. It's the humble Cessna 172 — a four seat piston plane that may not look like much and can't do many fancy things, but it is cheap oh and it's still being produced over sixty years after the first one was delivered.
  • On that note, passenger jets may not look as badass as fighter jets, and they can only travel at subsonic speeds, but they are extremely instrumental to mass immigration, trade, tourism, post/mail, and overall keeping global civlization and economy moving the way it does today. At the turn of the 20th century, the only way to get from one end of the Pacific or the Atlantic to the other was by boat, and the journey would take weeks. Today, a jet can get you across in less than a day.
  • Long-range twin-engine jets such as the Boeing 777/787 and the Airbus A330/A350 may not have the majestic air of the Boeing 747 and even bigger Airbus A380, but a big part of why these sorts of twin-engine aircraft are in vogue is because they can do what quads can do with greater fuel efficiency. Plus, half the engines means roughly half the maintenance needed, as well as less noise, meaning that they can land at airports where a 747 would set off noise complaints from local residents.
  • The Boeing 737. Compared to longer-range aircraft, it may look ugly as sin, having earned the nickname "Fat Albert" due to its fuselage to wingspan ratio, but it's been the go-to choice of aircraft for short- and mid-haul flights for decades only in the 21st century facing serious competition by the Airbus A320 family. In fact, it's the oldest Boeing airliner that's still being produced today; while it has gotten modernizing upgrades to keep up with the times, the 737 brand name isn't going away any time soon.
  • Contrary to what the Sexy Stewardess trope may tell you, the real value of flight attendants lies not in serving you meals and drinks with a smile, let alone in a fanservice-y outfit that no reputable airliner's dress code would permit today, but the training they undergo to maximize the chances of passengers getting out of the aircraft quickly and safely after an emergency landing. They're also trained in first aid procedures in case of a medical emergency on board; this is why they were originally required to be registered nurses.
  • Low-fare airlines may not offer anywhere near the level of service that the big airlines had at the height of the Jet Age of the 1960s, but plenty of passengers are willing to put up with the cattle car experience for those cheap ticket prices as long as they just get where they're going.
  • Stopovers on flights may add extra travel time and are overall tedious to sit through, but remember: airplanes need to refuel. On some flight stops, you can even take the time to temporarily get off the aircraft and just allow yourself to stretch and relax after being cramped on the plane for hours.
  • Propellers over jet engines. Jets get you there faster, but propellers are far more fuel-efficient. Most air-based cargo transport is done with propeller-based aircraft.
  • The civilian version of the C-47 mentioned above in the Eisenhower quote, the Douglas DC-3, was very successful in its own right. Several hundred of them are still flying today in active commercial service around the world, simply because nobody ever really designed an aircraft better suited to rugged conditions. The common saying among pilots is that "the only replacement for a DC-3 is another DC-3."
  • Regional airliners are often considered The Scrappy of airliners by the flying public due to their small size and the subsequent need to gate-check large carry-on bags, but they open up a lot of smaller communities to air travel, many of which would likely be isolated without these planes transporting them to larger airline hubs.

    Spacecraft 
  • The Russian Soyuz spacecraft are often derided as being crappy, outdated spacecraft compared to NASA's capsules and the space shuttle. The space shuttle has since been retired, and no real replacement has yet been developed for production. There's also the Progress, an unmanned version used as transport craft. The first Soyuz capsule went up in 1967. They are still being used to this day — ironically, also by NASA astronauts due to the aforementioned lack of a shuttle replacement.
    • Similarly, the R-7 rocket family, which was originally designed as an ICBM and was not good at it (its use of liquid oxygen meant it could only be kept on standby for a day at most, and it required guidance from ground stations that presumably wouldn't last long during a full-scale nuclear war). As a space launch vehicle, however, it was excellent and is often touted as a fine example of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Still in service today, and all manned Soviet/Russian missions were sent to space by this very rocket.
    • It is questionable if Soyuz can be called outdated. Well, the basic construction has been quite similar since beginning, but the avionics etc. have been revised many times. With their Kurs navigation subsystem, Soyuz and Progress spacecraft can automatically rendezvous and dock to space stations. Could be possibly considered Simple, yet Awesome.
    • The Soyuz's three-part designnote  is actually considered superior in some ways to the two-part Apollo design (the less of the ship that returns, the less mass is needed for the heat shield and retro-rockets).
  • One of the reasons that the Russians have made so many of the space firsts. They have used sturdy and robust system, with simplified electronics as opposed to the bleeding edge of their US and European counterparts. So, end result, a slight frost the night before a launch doomed the Challenger. Russians routinely launch in blizzards.
    • As Richard Feynman pointed out, it wasn't a failure of Awesome, yet Impractical tech that doomed the Challenger, but the desire to lower costs by cutting corners and using sub-par materials, allowing outright broken components to be within "tolerable stresses," and endless politics and outright lies about the safety of space travel that caused the Challenger disaster
    • The Apollo program was an exception to the traditional "bells and whistles" US approach. Hardware was simple and reliable. It routinely performed above specifications. Apollo 12 was launched during a thunderstorm and was struck by lightning twice, but still got Conrad, Bean, and Worden to the Moon. The Saturn I, IB, and V are the only space launch vehicles never to have suffered a major failure in service, with the worst problems being premature engine shutdown (Apollo 6 and 13)note , and the third stage refusing to re-ignite (Apollo 6).note 
  • SpaceX has made a 'space-pencil' like development in building its rockets. Instead of building them vertical as many agencies do, they build them horizontal, erecting them only on the launch pad, saving huge costs on facilities (don't need a VAB, a long shed will do), transport (a big truck, but nothing like the crawler-transporter) and construction (essentially the whole length of the rocket can be accessed at any time). It helps that they also use ball-joint connections between the stages rather than explosive bolts, because the ball-joints don't need to be removed every time there's a fault caused non-launch, they just lie the rocket down again and wheel it back to the facility. In other words, what the Russians always did.
  • Unmanned space exploration. While it may not be as captivating to the public as astronauts walking through, say, the sands of Mars it's way faster and cheaper -as to send people to space means to send with them the logistics at the very least for the voyage, unmanned missions requiring far less, and current spacecraft propulsion is quite limited-, and especially safer than sending people up there especially when as in the case of Venus we do not know what may exist beneath all those clouds, thus it's better to lose a robot or several than a living crew, and allows us to develop technologies to use in the future. And if things go well a spacecraft, be a probe/lander/rover, can operate way longer than a human and even become a cultural icon of their own -just ask NASA's Mars twin rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity" or the "Voyager" probes. Another big advantage is that unless you insist on sample return, there is no need to bring the robotic mission back, which means enourmous fuel savingsnote  and besides that you can either extend the mission if the probe still worksnote  or do something that results in the destruction of the probe at the end.note 

    Infrastructure 
  • The most common style of exit between a freeway and a surface street is the "diamond", a simple construct that doesn't require an excessive amount of space, channelized ramps, or extra bridges. Just four ramps providing full access in all directons.
  • In the U.S., the Interstate Highway System. The single largest government project in world history, a network of precisely engineered high-speed, high-volume superhighways connecting every major population center, manufacturing center, farm and natural resource. Available to everybody who owns a car (which in the US is very close to everybody period), all the time, mostly without tolls, restrictions, or checkpoints/barriers. Of course building and maintaining it is a political nightmare, precisely because of the boring but practical nature of routine repairs and the tax- and fee-averseness of virtually all Americans. The gas tax (which is supposed to cover all highway costs and never did) was last raised under President Bill Clinton and is a fixed cent amount, not a percentage. Go figure.
    • There's also the even older system of United States Numbered Highways (i.e. US Routes). It's more than three times as long as the Interstates and was built after World War I to address the transportation issues the US faced during World War I. It currently connects all but the most remote parts of the Continental US to each other. If a US Route can't get you there, one will at least get you close. In some instances, a US Route is the only paved road directly connecting two communities.
    • One odd part of the US highway system, compared to other countries, is the lack of tolls needed to use it. By law US Routes can not be toll roads except under very specific conditions. Interstates also can't be toll roads unless there's also at least one alternate paved route that doesn't require a toll.
  • Paved surfaces in general. They support the weight of heavy vehicles and equipment far better than dirt or gravel roads or grass will, and they don't turn into mud when it rains. Entire armies have been destroyed and the course of wars changed because of troops and supplies getting bogged down in the mud at some key moment instead of being able to get to where they needed to be.
    • In addition, when you are dealing with airplanes, paved airfield surfaces can not only support heavier aircraft, but are also much safer (an airplane getting a wheel stuck in the mud while trying to land can have catastrophic results). Once you have a paved runway, it's nice to have some place solid to park the plane so it won't sink or get stuck while it's parked, whether this means a concrete or asphalt apron or just a simple hard stand, just big enough to rest the plane's wheels on. Also remember that planes usually launch and land flying into the wind for aerodynamic reasons, and that any plane taxiing up the runway will block any other planes from using it, and consider the simple expedient of installing a taxiway parallel to the runway, meaning planes can land, pull off the runway, and sedately taxi to their parking spaces without holding up the landing pattern.
    • Similar to paved surfaces, solid foundations for buildings. A large concrete slab, despite being fairly heavy itself, will much better distribute the weight of a building over a wide area, meaning you will have less issues with the ground settling beneath it and possibly causing the structure to fail. Even tents can be vastly improved by laying a solid surface to built them on (in addition to concrete, wooden platforms and metal mats can be used for this).
  • Numbered and single-letter streets are often not the most fancily-named streets, but they have the side utility of being usable as rough indicators of distance. For example, if you're on a street called 1st Street and your friend tells you to meet up with them on a street called 15th Street, you know right away that you need to travel 15 blocks, rather than having to consult a map.
    • Fractional street numbers such as 6 3/4 Street—for example, in Rochester, Minnesota, where the street grid is essentially Cartesian coordinates.
  • Rest areas on highways. Typically, they have restrooms and vending machines for snacks and drinks. Not the fanciest accomodations, but they're cheap to construct and provide a place for drivers to safely stop and get some air before resuming on their way, and they're most likely to be found on rural highways where towns and shopping centers may be scarce.
  • Stop signs are a simple method of traffic control in smaller-scale road networks, and don't need electricity to runnote .

    Miscellaneous — Vehicles & Transportation 
  • Plain bicycles can be this. They are typically inexpensive compared to other types of bicycle (or many vehicles) but they are very practical. Most are hassle-free vehicles (no registration nor licenses are required, just buy and use straight out of store), versatile, environment-friendly, and easily repaired. Although limited by users' strength, they are versatile enough to navigate both pedestrian space and motor traffic. Throughout Europe it is often faster to take a bike than any other mode of transport in major cities. In cities like Amsterdam or Copenhagen every class and age group will bike to work and leisure activities. A cheap bike costs less than a tank of gas and lasts for years if taken good care of. Most repairs can be done by every moderately competent mechanic.
    • The Sturmey Archer AW internal gear hub: Originally designed in the 1930s as a mix of parts from their other hubs to provide a low-cost seller, the hub became the standard gear system for bicycles up until the 10 speed fad of 1970s. Unbelievable reliability has kept it in production for over seventy-five years.
    • The Viet Cong (as in the "rice farmers" that stared down the United States Army at the height of the Cold War and won) transported much of their goods, supplies, ammo and food along the Ho Chi Minh paths using bikes. Those bikes were so overloaded they couldn't be ridden anymore, but they could be pushed, needed no fuel, no food for mules or horses and what little infrastructure they needed was virtually impossible to destroy through aerial assault. In the game of whack-a-mole the US Air Force might totally incinerate one path only for the VC to push their bikes down another. Never before in the history of warfare has such a simple yet stable logistics been shown to beat even the most advanced military machinery of its time.
    • Like in Europe above, in many parts of Asia widespread car ownership was until recently (or is still) too expensive for most of the population, so bicycles became popular in the 20th century for their low cost. Nowadays big cities tend to have better mass transit so it's not needed as much, but it's still not uncommon to get around by bicycle in countries like China and Vietnam.
  • Tugboats. Small, hardy craft designed to help maneuver bigger ships around in the confined spaces of a harbor. They could also be used to move cargo around by having them tow barges around (very handy for loading and unloading a large vessel in shallow water). During the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor, Navy tugboats were hard at work fighting fires, towing ships free of their moorings (either to get them out of harms way, such as the Vestal being pulled away from the burning wreck of the Arizona, or to clear lines of fire for ships docked next to each other). When the battleship Nevada was severely damaged while making a run to the sea, she needed to be beached quickly to avoid blocking the harbor entrance. The Tugboat USS Hoga helped to shove the crippled and burning dreadnought into the shallows and continued to help Nevada's crew fight fires (with the additional help of the seaplane tender USS Avocet). The Hoga would spend the next several days fighting fires in the harbor and assisting with Damage Control.
  • For hobby-grade r/c boats, constructing the hull out of wood rather than fiberglass or carbon fiber. Wood does not carry the same cachet of a hull made of high-tech composites, and are often sold in kit form, requiring you to build it yourself (Glass hulls are almost always sold ready to accept their hardware.) However, wood is cheap, and, if built correctly, just as strong as fiberglass (though not carbon fiber, although its use is largely limited to large scale boats.)
    • For gas r/c boats, the humble Homelite and Zenoah engines. Converted Homelites (they are typically used for yard equipment) powered the first gas r/c boats, while Zenoah released the first dedicated marine engine, the G23. Its successor, the G260PUM, is the most popular engine in the hobby. Stock, they will reliably power most hulls at a respectable speed. When modified by a skilled engine builder, the G260 can chuck out about 6hp (increased displacement and/or aftermarket top ends can further increase that,) up from a claimed 3.2hp, and can push the fastest hulls up to 100 mph, depending on setup, hull, and conditions. The Zenoah is so ubiquitous, that every other brand of gas r/c engine is designed to fit in the same footprint, and parts commonality is, well, common. The only realistic challenger to the Zenoahs crown are the RCMK engines, which are sold for not much more than a stock G260, but can develop 5hp, in addition to far better after-sale support.
  • Skis and the slightly more awesome dog sled for moving across snow. One of the reasons Amundsen won the race to the South Pole (and, you know, survived) was the use of these two simple methods of transport. Scott on the other hand wanted to use high tech mechanical crawlers that soon broke down due to the extreme conditions. There have been claims that Scott and his men didn't even know how to ski, usually with the implication that they would have survived had they known.
    • Another contributing factor to Amundsen and co.'s survival is the understandably less advertised fact that unlike engines, sled dogs are edible.
  • When new aircraft and vehicles are introduced you may notice they look just like... planes and cars, with no wild, amazing, exciting concept designs. The problem is we've already found the best aerodynamic shapes for these things, and to vary too much would harm fuel efficiency. So yep, it's the same-old-same-old, but still incredibly practical.
  • The standard issue American yellow school bus:
    • Neither fast nor flashy, yet incredibly sturdy, many of them have taken a second (or third) career carrying passengers of all ages throughout the "third world". If the alternative would be walking, you tend to appreciate a simple technology that can take a licking and carry on ticking well beyond their designed lifespan.
    • Even when old buses aren't exported overseas, surplus school buses can often be had for less than US$10,000, depending on their age, mileage, and condition. They can used as a farm vehicle by removing most of the body, creating a long flatbed truck. Some people convert old school buses into motorhomes, whose accommodations can range from spartan to rivaling professionally-built luxury RVs.
    • Another popular re-use of old American school buses is as Food Trucks. You have a lot of room to work with for stuff like the kitchen (comparatively speaking, food trucks are always kinda cramped), if you're going for an "Americana" feel the iconic and recognizable design wins you hearts and minds (and primes your customers for what to expect in terms of food) and unlike some of the more exotic constructions you might come up with, they are usually easy to get street legal even in countries with exceeding standards like Germany's TÜV.
  • Public transportation.
    • Transports countless passengers every day to their destinations en masse, eases traffic congestion on major roads since passengers are keeping cars off the road, and for passengers who cannot drive (either due to the costs of buying a car and the related costs like insurance and registration, or being unfit or unwilling to get a license), a good public transit system helps them get around without having to rely on friends or expensive taxis for rides, likely saving them tons of money. If you can get a seat on public transit, you can do things that you can't behind the wheel, such as homework, reading books, and messaging your friends. In areas where traffic congestion practically turns streets into parking lots, a good metro system may be the only way to get where you want at a reasonable speed.
    • Bus systems are about as "boring" as public transportation can be: they have a smaller capacity per vehicle than railed systems, and don't have the ability to bypass traffic like them. However, they're much more versatile, being able to reach areas that rails cannot; aren't taken out of service by a damaged rail; cheaper for the city to operate, since they don't need their own designated track; and more convenient for very short distances, given the flexibility of their stops in comparison to rails. They may not be the preferred mode of travel, but they're nonetheless the most likely choice. Japan continues to use buses alongside its world-class rail system, while in South America they're the dominant form of transportation due to the continent's difficult terrain.
    • Bus rapid transit systems consist of dedicated and physically-separated lanes with bus stops that are designed more like train stations, combining the efficiency of railed transit (since only buses can use the lanes) with the aforementioned versatility and relatively low cost of bus systems. An effective compromise for areas that suffer from severe traffic congestion, but don't have the population density to warrant investing in a rail system, such as the largely-suburban San Fernando Valley.
    • Even in places like Southern California where automobiles have historically been the favored means of transport, busses gained traction due to rising traffic congestion, and the migration of city residents to outlying suburbs such as the Inland Empire. The express lines became very useful for commuters due to their limited numbers of stops, and the ability to enter the express lanes and bypass highway congestion, all for a still-modest fare due to the rising price of fuel and vehicle expenses. It's not as elaborate as a bus rapid transit system and has the drawback of still being affected by traffic conditions, but utilizes existing toll-routes and infrastructure to still circumvent significant congestion, so it's relatively easy to implement.
    • Low-tech bus passcards and similar don't have the same flair as using your phone as a pass, but they're still worth considering as passcards work even if your phone is absent or happens to be out of battery. The bus company's passcards also don't have much issue with farebox compatibility, are very quick to scan when kept at the ready, and don't require any digital cash transactions in and of themselves. If the pass is lost or left behind, there's still paying with cash or even using the required phone app as backup options.
  • The cargo container has radically transformed shipping over the last 60 years. Instead of moving dozens of boxes or barrels one at a time, you just put them into a single cargo container and move that. Standardize the size of cargo containers and you can have trucks, ships, and traincars specifically designed to carry them, and infrastructure to transfer them from one to another. Simple, boring, and so useful that it is difficult to imagine doing it another way.
    • To put this in perspective: one of the many difficulties the US, particularly the Navy, faced during WWII was loading cargo and munitions on ships in a timely manner. (As you can see above, the US was busy shipping a lot of cargo overseas to allied forces and its own.) There were two serious proposals that would speed things up over the time-honored "have a guy lift it onto the boat" — hydraulic power-assist gear, and standardized shipping containers. Take a wild guess which one they chose to pursue.
    • It also vastly reduced the amount of cargo lost to damages and "damages" (read: theft by the crew) during transport.
    • Cargo containers have also provided a secondary boon: you don't need warehouses to store cargo for loading or unloading. You simply drop the container in a convenient spot and leave it there until it's time to move. If you're shipping cargo to remote areas or places with minimal infrastructure, the humble seacan acts as its own storage building. And once the cargo has been removed, there's countless uses for the container ranging from being used as storage sheds to actual homes or emergency shelters. Indeed, in a response to a natural disaster the containers used to deliver emergency supplies can be just as important as the cargo that was shipped in them.
  • The sailboat. Cheap to use — it takes its energy from the wind, and its range is limited only by its storage of food and potable water. The Bermuda rig allows to sail into almost any wind direction except straight into headwind, but you can always tack. Even a small sailboat (smaller than 1.8 m overall length) can be used for a transoceanic voyage. And a 3.6 m one for circumnavigation note . Sailing ships remained in regular use for bulky cargoes that weren't particularly time sensitive until a few years after World War II. The last "Grain race" from Australia to Europe around the "roaring fourties" (a particularly windy stretch of ocean at 40°-49°S) happened in 1949. In light of rising fuel costs (a sailing ship has none, but it needs more crew and you can't store goods on deck as easily) and increasing carbon dioxide concerns there are now efforts to reintroduce some sort of 21st sailing ship to the freight market but thus far they haven't made much of a dent on the market.

Daily Life

    Lifestyle 
  • Do you hate that person who keeps saying or doing annoying, but benign things you seriously don't like? Simply ignore them. Chances are, they are not going to pleased. and will probably will want to stop. Unless those actions are dangerous, it is unlikely someone would want to keep doing something to annoy you. After all, when was the last time someone ignored you and you felt like you defeated them?
    • It should be noted, however, that ignoring does not work 100% of the time. In fact, contrary to what teachers say, ignoring a bully, even/especially a verbal bully, can actually make the problem worse. This is because ignoring & doing nothing sends the bully the message that their victim is unable to do anything to stop them along with giving them emotional satisfaction that they have power over their victim.
  • Anyone successful can tell you the power of delaying instant gratification. People would turn down short-term pleasures in favor of long-term rewards. College students who party every day are likely to wind up in dead-end jobs. Students who studied hard ends up being the ones who graduate and has an easier time finding jobs. Adults who spend their days watching TV and spending money on useless things might not become rich in the long term. It’s exactly what the trope is about: choosing something less appealing but can give long term-benefits.
  • An additional rule on Murphy's Law: "If something looks stupid but it works, then it's NOT stupid."
  • A healthy lifestyle. Regular exercise, a balanced diet, and refraining from unhealthy habits like smoking and junk food doesn't particularly impress anyone, but the reduction in risk of cardiac disease, cancer, stroke, etc — nevermind feeling good — add up to a longer, happier life.
  • Exercise itself is this on multiple levels:
    • The obvious: many consider exercise itself boring, yet it is supremely practical. Almost nobody does not want the benefits of exercise, but the hard work and boredom deter many from even attempting it, or drive them to quit if they do.
    • Free weights and dumbbells continue to be not only more versatile but produce better results than machines that cost thousands of dollars and do less. Professional bodybuilders to this day prefer free weights for most exercises, using machines only for specialized targeted exercises.
    • Running, swimming, and cycling continue to be the premier forms of cardio exercise. Machines that simulate these always come with physical drawbacks, like not developing minor supporting muscles used for balance. A pair of shoes and a sidewalk is just as effective for losing weight as spin classes and translates to a practical ability.
  • Education. Regardless of how you get it (e.g. self-teaching, an institution, or getting homeschooled), skills such as reading, writing, and basic mathematics are of the most important things you need to function well in life and contribute to society.
    • Public universities and community colleges, while lacking the small class sizes, accommodations, and prestige of their private counterparts, still provide helpful courses with reasonable financial returns while also offering lower tuition fees (the average public college in US has a tuition of $9,410 compared to the $32,405 of most private colleges). In fact, many public colleges have higher return-on-investments than even some private colleges.note 
    • Vocational training for skilled trades. While they lack the prestige that comes with a pedigree in higher education and are often sneeringly looked down upon in media as "ditch digging" jobs, such career fields pay surprisingly well due to high demand, unionization, and lack of qualified workers, and many of them are more or less recession-proof (i.e. no matter what the economy is doing, people aren't going to stop needing welders, construction workers, plumbers, electricians, or HVAC specialists).
    • Mental arithmetic programs look super awesome when young children are able to add, subtract, multiply or divide several large numbers within seconds, but those skills run into a brick wall when it comes to advanced concepts like algebra or quadratic equations. These programs teach mnemonics to round up or down and simplify large calculations, but not the logical progression of mathnote , and more often than not prevents the understanding of such concepts. Nothing has beaten simple, sequential, logical math training for thousands of years.
    • When it comes to studying, as horrible as it can be, is very effective in learning. All you need to do is learn the basic concepts, make connections (like we often do here at TV Tropes, TOO MANY TIMES), and then challenge your understanding. The process is uncomfortable, but you can learn entire subjects by this framework. After all, when has this framework for learning failed you when you wanted to learn about your favorite franchise?
    • Speaking of speed reading, that stuff is a myth. Technically, anyone can read up to 600 words a minute and scan through pages of text in seconds. Remembering and, more importantly, understanding what you read requires meticulous reading that averages at around 250 words per minute (for English, at least).
    • Professional teachers find it hilarious when TV and movies portray all those fancy and exciting teaching techniques, where the teachers bring a gun to class, or force their students to stand on tables to engage their creativity. Simply and clearly presenting one concept, getting the students to practice it until it has been mastered, then presenting a similar but slightly harder concept, mastering that, and then repeating that routine over and over and over and over again until the student graduates, is still the most effective way to guarantee consistent results.
      • Some people may say this technique is boring and kills creativity. A good teacher (like Bruce Lee) will tell you that students can learn to experiment and express themselves creatively after mastering the basics, but doing the opposite is far more difficult.
    • People have been touting that the latest technology, from TV to video cassettes to the CD to computers to IPads to smartphones to the internet would be replacing teachers soon, but it hasn't happened yet. Students still learn best with an active, human role model they can interact with, who can also make corrections on the fly, and customize the class to their optimum ability.
      • In relation to another post above this, all that fancy technology has yet to replace the most common teaching aids: paper and black/whiteboards, because they easily facilitate the aforementioned presentation and practice routines.
      • Seems to have changed if only slightly by the later 2010s, with the rise of computer-integrated Smart Boards, websites like GLOW and Moodle at universities, and measures made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these still all require operation and management by a teacher, and when possible, usually work in tandem with paper materials.
      • Paper is the most awesome and versatile teaching material. You can transform it into worksheets, books, letters, scripts, lists, instructions, papercraft, maps, diagrams, illustrations, treasure hunt clues, toys, puppets, decorations, and writing materials for pencils, crayons, pens, chalk, paint, whatever. With just a little imagination, you can turn your boring class into an exciting, engaging adventure for any age group, any class, in any part of the world, all for the low, low cost of... a pile of paper (which you can easily dispose and/or recycle and reuse later).
    • Everybody hates exams, but they are still the most effective way of measuring aptitude, knowledge, and attitude (you can't have gotten a high GPA without some hard work and effort). They're also the most cost-effective method (coursework needs time, resources, and well-trained teachers to grade and record, and you need to trust that the teachers won't juke the scores), and they provide some assurance to workplaces and educational institutions that applicants have the necessary skills to join their organization.
  • Financial planning isn't the flashiest or necessarily exciting, but setting up an IRA or 401(k) account(s) can really pay off down the line. The money in the account is effectively locked away until the legal retirement age, but the more you deposit up to the legal maximum, the more compound interest you acquire.
  • Simply living within your means, not buying anything too extravagant, and boring ol' responsible financial management. Sure, you may not be able to "keep up with the Joneses" on the latest flashiest toys, but those become pretty insignificant when compared to not having to take out a 3rd mortgage or having enough money in the bank for when life decides to take a piss on you.
    • Besides, there's half-price sales and seasonal blowouts to help you out with those toys you're dreaming of. Patience pays off.
    • Buying secondhand. Why pay full price for anything which you can get just in good shape half the price slightly used?
    • Thrift shops. While the merchandise isn't new most of the time, it is possible to get several items, particularly clothing, very cheaply, and some people even expressly go to thrift stores in hopes of finding hidden treasures. Also, if the thrift shop is run by a charitable organization, the proceeds can help people in need.
    • Private label (aka store brand or generic) products, depending on the product. Store-brand products are typically cheaper than their name-brand equivalents without the need for coupons. Most store-brand products and name-brand products are often made in the same facility. While some store-branded products aren't as good as their name-brand counterparts, for many grocery and medicine cabinet staples, there is often no discernible difference between the name brand and the store brand.
  • Stairs. They're so common that no one thinks about them. Elevators make traveling up and down buildings faster and more convenient, but they are prone to breaking down and require frequent maintenance to keep running effectively. Stairs can almost last forever and all they require from you is some physical movement of your legs to go up and down, thus you also get some exercise in your daily life. Escalators are automated stairs that move you up and down, but even if they do shut down, you can still walk up and down them like a normal staircase. They have one huge downside though in that they are an insurmountable barrier to people in wheelchairs, baby strollers, and the like. Increasingly stairs are thus supplemented by barrier-free means of access.
  • The zipper. So simple that most never even consider them unless they get a body part stuck in one but they made dressing and undressing much easier and faster than the previous alternatives of lacing and/or using lots of buttons. Whether pants, shirts/coats, or shoes, there's a kind that you can simply zip up and go.
  • Getting a full eight hours of sleep every night (or day, depending on when you're typically awake). Sure, caffeine might help offset insufficient sleep a little bit, but honestly, getting enough sleep every night is what keeps you not only awake during the day, but also alert and able to focus on what you want or need to do.
  • Designated Drivers at parties, bars, and other situations where alcohol is involved. They may not be as interesting to talk to when you're drunk, and they're skipping out on alcohol that they might want to drink, but they do so in order to get their friends home safely in a way that doesn't involve expensive taxis (or similar services like Uber and Lyft that are just as costly), long walks, or public transit that's inconvenient, unsafe, or unavailable (e.g. due to not running during early AM hours). If you have a friend who chooses to stay sober at a social event or venue so that they can get you home, thank them; it is good manners to buy the designated driver the coffee, energy drinks or pop they would like to have. Being a designated driver is also a way to save on party expenses.
  • Labeling your belongings, especially ones that you carry with you, with your name and contact information (usually a phone number or email address). First, this creates some sort of distinction between your items and others' identical-looking items. Second, if you lose something that's labeled with a means of contacting you, it means that if someone has the good sense to try to return it to its owner (you), they have a way to get in touch with you; while it doesn't guarantee that you'll get what you lost back (it could still get outright stolen by someone), at least it raises the chances that you'll get it back.
  • Big Box stores and Convenience stores are less flashy than going to a mall or a shopping district, and the merchandise isn't as fancy as you'd find at a boutique, specialty store, or even a department store, but darn if you can't find just about any staple items you need in one place at a reasonably affordable price, despite the substantial markup at convenience stores. Online shopping takes these advantages and obviates the need of leaving the house at all.
    • In Japan, convenience stores are a major industry, known for offering a surprisingly wide variety of services and products, and many foreign travellers consider Japanese konbini a national treasure unto itself and miles above the convenience stores they have back home.
    • The mini-mall. These small shopping centers are rarely flashy but can house a wide variety of small shops, from major, established chains to small local businesses to even government/public services (it's not uncommon for license branches to be found in mini-malls).
  • Sewing. A simple activity, pushing a needle with thread through clothing. A very simple activity, but when it allows you to mend your own clothes instead of you being forced to buy new ones all the time, you stop taking it for granted. Military troops, especially rangers and infantry, take sewing seriously as it reduces wear and tear time for their uniforms out in the field.
  • Identification cards, and by extension, driver's licenses. That little piece of plastic showing your photo, name, address, and date of birth is practically vital. It not only proves you are who you claim to be, but it also proves that the information is genuine (unless it's out of date). Simply not having your ID when needed can spell a whole mess of inconveniences or even troubles. Applying for a new bank account? Need ID for it. Buying cigarettes or alcohol? Need ID. Wanting to buy a car? Need ID for that. If you ever lose your belongings and your ID was with them, it also serves as a way for someone who finds your stuff to know where to send them back to.
    • Passports, while generally a bit bulkier, are also accepted as ID at nearly all places that require it, and you need them to travel between countries. They also have longer periods of validity than most states' and countries' identification cards. Furthermore, if you live in the U.S., you need to upgrade your state ID by October 2020 for domestic air travel due to Real ID laws, which in most states requires not only paying a fee and a visit to the local DMV but also multiple documents proving your legal existence and residency...or just use your passport, which is not affected by the Real ID system.
  • Water has many applications that wouldn't be possible if we didn't have it:
    • As a beverage, water is the blandest drink you can have, but it also keeps you hydrated and can quench your thirst very easily. You can also add powered mix of various flavors to water to give it flavor while still retaining the benefits that water gives.
    • Water can be used to cool you down on a hot day. Fans and air conditioning can keep you cool, but they can jack up the electricity bill and can't be used during a blackout. A quick shower can help you cool yourself down and wash away the sweat accumulated on your body.
  • Giving cash as a gift. While not the most thoughtful gift, which is why many people discourage it, it allows the recipient to buy whatever they want wherever and whenever they want. For a slightly more specific alternative, one can give a gift card to the recipient's favorite store/restaurant/other business, allowing them to pick out what they want. Or you can get them a prepaid debit card mentioned below. There are cards themed for birthdays, Christmas, and graduation. After all, even Fred made a Christmas music video about it!
  • Prepaid debit cards. Unlike traditional banks, which are only typically open Monday through Friday during usual working hours less public holidays, a prepaid debit card can be bought at many grocery stores, superstores, pharmacies, and convenience stores during their business hours and maintained 24/7 by online banking. A prepaid card is useful if you don't want your bank-provided cards potentially lost, electronically compromised, or stolen, such as on vacation. These cards use the same payment networks as conventional bank-issued debit and credit cards in brick-and-mortar and online stores. For parents of teenagers, a prepaid card is useful for teaching a teen how to manage money, and for parents of college-aged adults, it provides a convenient way of sending and receiving money, especially if a student is far from home. However, the major downside of prepaid debit cards over those issued by a traditional bank is the various fees to use the prepaid card, such as the initial purchase/activation fee, monthly maintenance fee, ATM withdrawal fees, and cash reload feesnote . They are also very undesirable for renting hotel rooms or cars, or other services that mandate a deposit hold, because holds released on these cards take a preposterously long time to be released customer-side — sometimes up to a month, as opposed to 1-5 business days for bank cards. Nonetheless if you just plan to use them for everyday small transactions, they can be quite useful.
  • Customizable rewards credit cards, particularly when immediately paying back the loan to earn bonus cash. If you get the credit card from your bank, than payback is even easier as its tied to your account you're using anyway. They don't have as high a percentage as more specialized rewards cards but you can customize which category gets the highest percentage (usually 3% rewards) and that category isn't restricted to a single place in the event that you can't obtain the item you're looking for from said place. For example, you can specify that the 3% reward is for "online shopping", making it just as effective on any online store and not just one. The 2% category can be for a versatile category such as any grocery store and wholesale market and not just one particular store, so just by shopping for your regular groceries, you can earn rewards. This is also a great way to build your credit score by proving that you're the type who likes to pay back loans as soon as possible.
  • Standard versions of products, as opposed to "Gamer" variants, or variants with other such taglines, such as regular keyboards and mice, office chairs, etc. The standard is typically more plain, but are often more cost-effective and just as well built, if not better (since Gaming Chairs tend to be racing chairs, which are much less comfortable for most people). Subverted with some gaming mice, however, which do have the tangible benefit of faster, more accurate mouse movement compared to cheaper generics, as well as gaming keyboards which tend to be mechanical keyboards known for comfort and durability, although there are many cheaper mechanical keyboards that don't look as glitzy or have all those fancy macro keys while still being just as built to last.

    Work 
  • Work in general. Sure, it's boring and tedious for many people (though some people have jobs that they genuinely enjoy), but it's how you make money to pay for your needs, and almost everything we enjoy or need is created or improved by it.
    • Work gives you also meaning in your life, a chance to socialize with other people, and a sense of belonging in the community.
  • Those niggling behind-the-scenes clerical tasks you either don't know or care about or might not want to come within a century of? Office workers are those little jars of oil that keep their department running like clockwork. Think of them as real-life Worker Units.
    • To give you an idea of the effectiveness of these workers, the Bolshevik Revolution had famous leaders like Lenin and Trotsky who preferred being revolutionaries and didn't care as much for the paperwork and bureaucracy. They handed it off to a volunteer named Stalin, who proceeded to use the incredible powers delegated him to become a political powerhouse who took control of Russia even after Lenin specifically wrote that he shouldn't be given that power. Remember, Stalin's official position was General Secretary. It may not be as grand a rise to power as a fast-paced presidential campaign, revolution, or Awesome Moment of Crowning, but it worked.
  • Maintenance workers are almost the exact same thing, except that they take care of the grounds on which we earn our living. Almighty Janitor exists as a trope for a reason.
  • Want to make sure something goes right? Come up with a list of steps you need to accomplish a task, write them down in order, and then get working on the task, crossing off each step once it is completed. Congratulations, you have invented the checklist. One of the reasons why airliners crash so rarely is that the flight crew goes through a printed checklist before takeoff. Early in The New '10s, the World Health Organization trialled a similar checklist for surgery. It resulted in an average drop of one-third in deaths and major complications, and is being widely adopted. It takes up one side of A4 or US letter paper.
  • This is the fundamentals of Risk Management. Every course of action will have a low, medium, or high risk along with low, medium, or high benefit.
    • Ideally, you will want the low-risk-high-benefit option. Failing that, you should take low risk-medium benefit one. Failing even that, go for the low-risk-low-benefit option.
    • Whenever you're thinking of taking medium or high risk, you should ask yourself whether you can tank the losses/escape relatively unscathed if your course of action backfires/fails.
    • If your answer to the question above is "yes", then the risk factor has dropped from medium/high to low, and you can safely take the option.
    • In short, never take medium risk, let alone high, as by that point you are taking an uncertain gamble. Only take such options when it has become a safe gamble, aka low risk.
  • Food prep may be seen as bottom-of-the-barrel for those with high-paying salaried jobs, but those who work in food prep, particularly in restaurants/eateries, are why you can just pony up cash to have food made for you instead of having to do it yourself. Plus food prep can improve kitchen skills at home, even letting one make delicious meals for friends and family thanks to the honed recipe organization skills. Additionally, these skills are crucial when you take on additional responsibilities in the kitchen and can even be a gateway to management or even chef work if one so desires. And like with vocational skills, even during a crisis such as a pandemic, food preparation jobs remain in demand and can be crucial for providing relief meals for impacted communities.
  • Retail and customer service jobs can sound nightmarish to anyone who's never worked in that area. And, yes, it can be a bit tedious (or aggravating, depending on the kind of customers who frequent your store). However, such jobs often teach skills that are incredibly useful both for building one's career and simply going through life (i.e. learning to quickly do math, handling cash, communication, persuasion, patience, reading people, etc).
  • When writing a resume, keeping it simple and to the point really helps. Too many details can make it difficult to zero in on what the company is looking for. It's also best to tailor the resume to be familiar by looking at successful sample resumes sent to the same company, which may seem to stifle creativity, but because you'll "speak their language", they'll appreciate it. Simple resume templates are also the way to go, with minimal to no borders and decorations since they consume extra ink/toner and tend to distract.
  • Housekeepers don't have the most glamourous jobs in the hospitality industry, but without them, you'd be checking into messy, stinky rooms at your hotel of choice.
  • Any job considered "essential" that can't be shut down without seriously disrupting society, ranging all the way from hospitals to emergency dispatchers to grocery store workers and truckers. Often not the most exciting jobs, tend to pay less than "professional" jobs and will often cause said professionals to tease and make fun of you for not having a "real" job, but as COVID-19 taught all of us society pretty much needs these positions working to make modern life possible for everyone else. And because they're essential, the only situation where you face being laid off is if the company is going under, and finding a similar position at another company often doesn't take long. It helps that many of these jobs are great for teens and young adults looking for money and job skills, and for some of them it ends up being easiest to simply keep climbing the ladder until they retire as leadership or even company management.
  • If you're in charge of a business and the people who work for it, simply paying your employees a livable wage, giving them a comfortable and welcoming work environment, scheduling their work such that they can enjoy life outside of the job, and overall being a Benevolent Boss will make those employees happy and want to stick around for the long-haul, which can help keep your business running smoothly. Who knows? Maybe you will be stinkin' rich after some time!
  • If your feet hurt after so much walking, you could use a massager to soothe the pain, or just elevate it. This way the blood will flow from your body to your feet, and you will feel better in no time, without taking out your wallet, and all you need is an elevated surface. Give it a shot!

    Language 
  • Clear and plain writing is easy to understand.
  • When you're writing dialogue in fiction, writing "(Character) said," with an occasional adjective to indicate tone (e.g. that a character is being sarcastic) to credit dialogue fulfills its purpose — explaining who is talking in a way that doesn't distract from the dialogue. By comparison, Said Bookism can lead to people laughing at the dialogue verb, while omitting the dialogue tag can make things confusing, especially in conversations involving three or more people.
  • Letter-based alphabets such as Cyrillic, Latin, and Greek are this compared to languages that have different characters for each word, such as Japanese and Chinese dialects. While hanzi and kanji are beautiful ways to convey language, there are thousands of each, and they are all specific to the angle of each stroke. Simple combinations of letters may be dull and repetitive, but they're far easier to memorize and write down.
    • Japanese zigzags this compared to Chinese. The former can be written in syllabic characters in the form of kana, whose pronunciations are constant. However, most written Japanese includes kanji in addition to kana, and Japanese kanji generally have more possible pronunciations than Chinese hanzi.
    • Korean hangeul combines the letter-based simplicity of the aforementioned Western alphabets with the phonetic properties of Japanese and Chinese. It looks as elegant as other Asian languages, but without the need to look up how every individual character block is read. Once you learn some fairly consistent alphabet rules, you realize that each block actually tells you how to read it.
  • Learning a few of the most common foreign languages. Sure, speaking Irish Gaelic or Uigur might be nice to brag at parties with, but if you want to be able to communicate with most of the world, you should opt for Spanish, Mandarin (Chinese), English, or one of the other "world languages". If you can read Mandarin, you won't have problems making yourself understood to any literate Chinese, even if they speak e.g. Cantonese. If you speak Spanish, you will be able to make rudimentary conversation with Portuguese speakers and might even understand what Italians are saying. English is so widespread that its advantages are probably not even worth mentioning. Arab and French together cover most of Africa that English does not and if you're lost even with them, try a regional language like Swahili (East Africa). Even in places where English is not the official language, enough people are fluent that you will probably be able to get by even if you aren't fluent in one of the other common languages.
  • Just about every reputable foreign language course will teach you basic, "academic" forms first. They may not sound as cool as the slang used in foreign entertainment, but these standard patterns are the foundation from which you'll expand your know-how of the language. Generally speaking, those who natively speak a foreign language respond better to "person who sounds overly formal and polite but is clearly trying their best to communicate with me" than "idiot foreigner who probably picked up the language from watching TV and doesn't understand the cultural elements of what they are trying to say".
  • When it comes to orthographic systems, spelling stuff like it is pronounced usually makes it easier on both those who need to read and those who need to write. It comes with downsides, such as sometimes losing etymologies, loanwords that are present in many languages not looking the same (words like "photography" are spelled with an f in Spanish, ph in French, fnote  in German and so on), the need for periodic updates of orthographynote  and upsetting those who think memorizing arbitrary spellings makes them better people. It's no accident that in the (highly unphonetic) English orthography variations that sacrifice etymological spellings for simple, more phonetic spellings ("thru", "tho", "color") are more common in the U.S. which has a reputation for practicality and less common in the more "aristocratic" U.K.
    • In the Latin alphabet, there is apparently a slight (but measurable) benefit to spelling every noun with a capital letter in the beginning and no non-noun. While this makes Magical Capital Letters impossible, it improves reading flow and reading comprehension. This is especially notable when one has to deal with longer sentences. Such as in German. Guess which language is the only one to still regularly employ this system? Why, German, of course.

    Fashion 
  • The Little Black Dress exists because of this trope. What it lacks in pizzazz, it makes up for in timelessness and the fact that black doesn't clash with any body types or skin tones.
  • Same goes for the little black dress's masculine counterpart: the three-piece suit. While many people decry men's fashion as boring, the basic suit has endured with only minor changes for over a century because, simply put, why fix what isn't broken?
  • In a similar vein, the buzzcut has emerged as one of the most popular men's hairstyles, with relatively little variation over the course of decades. It isn't flashy, but its simplicity and ease of maintenance make it timeless and universally popular across all races and hair textures (it is the most popular haircut among black men). Even minor stylings such as tapering or "fading" the sides don't date the look (within reason). It's one look that any man can pull off, and many have gotten essentially the same haircut their entire lives because it just works.
  • Straight-up going bald means you sacrifice having cute or cool hairstyles, but you can save lots on hair care products simply by not having any scalp hair to take care of. Plus no pesky nasty lice can call your head home if there’s no hair for them to nest in. It's also more socially acceptable than partly-intact balding hair; can't worry about looking older than you are — and not in a flattering way — if you just shave the problem off. Being bald is also advantageous for cosplay; can't worry about your real hair sticking out from under your wig if you don't have any on your scalp to begin with. Admittedly, baldness is much more socially acceptable for men than women.
  • In an ironic contrast to baldness being considered this trope for men, some women forego shaving their body hair for this reason, feeling that doing so is ultimately Cool, but Inefficient as it offers little practical advantage (outside of certain activities such as competitive swimming) and (contrary to popular belief that's only applied to women and not men) body hair isn't actually as unhygienic as it's made out to be. Going "natural" can save one lots of time in one's daily routine and money from not having to purchase and maintain shaving equipment. And while the look can certainly draw unwanted attention and reactions, some either choose to ignore the needless criticism or they're reclusive thus making random strangers' reactions a total non-issue. Body hair also helps keep one warmer in colder weather, so some choose to skip on the shaving but only during the winter.
  • Regular, comfortable clothes. Spend a few months rehearsing/acting in a corset, hoop skirt, and high heels if you don't believe so. Anyone who works in a professional environment would agree. One of the greatest joys in an adult's daily life is getting home after a long day at work, stripping off the rigid work clothes one has to wear in order to convey the requisite "professional" appearance (and the accompanying work SHOES), and getting into nice, comfortable, cottony sweats, pajamas, or similar, and soft socks and/or house slippers. You know a woman is in for the day when the heels and bra come off.
  • Bras that match your skin color. Plain and un-sexy, but if you're wearing white or light-colored shirts and don't want your bra to show through, these are the only option.
  • Sweatpants are anything but associated with sharp fashion sense, but they're comfortable, let the skin breathe easily, and quite versatile—they can be used for running, lounging around the house, sleeping, and even everyday out-of-the-house wear.
    • Yoga pants have all this and are reasonably acceptable for wear in casual social situations without throwing an immediate impression of slovenliness.
  • Basketball shorts, in the same vein as sweatpants, are similarly unfashionable but great for hot weather if you just want to throw on something suited for a relaxing day.
  • The jacket: It's just a piece of fabric fitted for human use with sleeves, but good lord is it truly useful, you can take it off much easier indoors, and for people in colder climates, where jackets often become large, bulky masses meant to keep you from freezing over, can really make things easier, as indoors the temperature can rise by 20 degrees or more. Just try not taking it off and see what happens.
  • The technology that made the jacket as we know it possible: the button. A simple piece of material attached to an item of clothing that goes through a corresponding hole. Despite the simplicity, it revolutionized clothing when it was invented in 13th-century Europe; you could now make snug-fitting clothing that would keep you warm through the cold winters much more easily. Earlier fasteners, like laces, tended to leave an open space that let the air in; not so with buttons.
  • The Converse All-Star: It's a simple, inexpensive, and very durable all-purpose shoe dating back to the 1920s. They were originally marketed to basketball players (who destroy shoes while playing) and derived from a shoe first marketed in 1917 as "Non-Skids". The thick rubber sole provides good traction, good foot protection, and decent cushioning while the thick canvas uppers of the high-top versions provide effective ankle support. Professional basketball players would continue to use them into the late-1970s, with a few players retaining them into the 1980s.
  • Cosplays that are made of modern everyday clothes, or "casual cosplay" as some call it. All you need to do is buy the clothes and accessories at someplace cheap like a thrift store, make some modifications as needed (such as adding embroidery patches or shirt designs), put on a wig or dye your hair, and you're good to go in a low-maintenance, relatively comfortable, and still-recognizable-to-fans costume.
  • Those bright reflective vests (also known as Day-Glo vests, after the company known for the reflective paint) that you often see construction and security workers and sometimes bike riders wear at night may be the last thing you'd expect a fashion-conscious person to wear, but they are very useful when walking or biking around at night, as they reduce the risk of vehicle drivers hitting you by mistake because they didn't see you until it was too late. In other words, a 15 USD investment can save you a trip to the hospital (and, depending on where you live, hundreds or thousands of dollars on medical expenses).
  • For a child, receiving clothes as a gift for Christmas, Hanukkah, their birthday, or any other special occasion. While not as exciting as receiving the latest toys (which most kids will eventually get bored of, break, or outgrow) or electronic gadgets (which will eventually become obsolete, and like toys, kids may eventually get bored of or break), clothing is far more practical and will get far more mileage in the long run; even if the child quickly outgrows their new clothes, the clothes can find a second or even third life with another child. As children mature, especially at the college age, they tend to appreciate clothing more, leaving their own money free to buy other necessities and wants, although there are some young children who do enjoy receiving clothes rather than toys and gadgets.
  • Hand-me-down clothes. While there may be a slight social stigma for children wearing their older sibling's old clothes, for families with at least two children of the same gender and relatively close in age, it is far cheaper to reuse old clothes in good shape which older children have outgrown than to buy entirely new clothes.
  • Basic shoes, boots, and sandals might not look as glamorous as heels or fine dress shoes, but they're usually far comfier and acceptable in all but the most high-class gatherings, and they do their job of protecting your feet from rough terrain remarkably well.
  • Overalls. They're made out of durable fabric, the suspender straps hold a loose pair up without requiring a belt and they sport a lot of pockets, making them a rather useful garment.
  • Denim jeans are one of the most versatile pieces of clothing available. While often associated with blue-collar workers since their invention in the late 19th century, denim jeans have been a staple in many first-world closets since the latter half the 20th century and even have found their way in white-collar workplaces as some employers have relaxed their dress codes as a way to recruit/retain a younger workforce.

Miscellaneous

    Science 
  • One prominent scientist was asked what the most important invention of the Scientific Revolution was, and he replied "the double-blind study". The simple concept of testing a hypothesis without prior knowledge of the outcome is arguably the basis on which all rigorous science depends.
  • Humans are often praised for their high intelligence compared to any other animals. However, this is only the second best superpower humans possess. Even more important and providing humans with an advantage over almost any other animals of the plain was the ability... to walk! On two legs! And keep walking for hours on end! Many animals are a lot faster than humans but also tire much faster. Humans can travel over very long distances with relatively short amounts of rest and their ability to carry water with them extended this even more. To capture a horse alive, the average human just had to follow the horse until it was too exhausted to take one more step. Of course, intelligence is no small help too: Even the small segment of animals with more efficient energy expenditure (mostly birds) are far outclassed as soon as a human gets on a bicycle. This is unbelievably energy-efficient, using more than 85% of the energy applied to the pedals. The amount of energy needed to go 10-15 MPH (15-25 Km/h), is the same sort of energy needed to walk.
    • One of the few other animals with a similar ability to travel over long distances is the trusty dog. The beginning of a wonderful partnership.
    • Kangaroos can travel at high speed over long distances by hopping, which recovers most of the energy used in each leap by use of natural spring-like structures in the animal's legs. This does cost them maneuverability, however.
    • Really, many things on the animal kingdom are this. For example, for many birds like swans and doves, just beating their wings is enough of a defense weapon, the former being able to break human bones with well placed strokes.
    • We should reemphasize also that the walking and intelligence are not unrelated; humans' permanent ("obligate" in biolo-speak) bipedalism, besides probably helping with the endurance aspect, also freed up the forelimbs, allowing us to start carrying things. Carrying things eventually led to making things to carry—tools. Tool use and intelligence became a mutually-reinforcing cycle: "We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on;" with each step the things the tools allow us to do makes intelligence an ever-more-important factor in fitness; and with each step the intelligence allowed us to improve on the tools we had.
      • Also more generally, bipedalism has always been a great evolutionary move for land animals that made it; humans simply benefited the most because they had hands with broad, flat nails (from our descent from tree-dwelling primates that therefore used their hands to grasp branches) rather than claws. However, the kangaroos and the dinosaurs (all of whom were descended from bipeds; the four-legged herbivores like the sauropods and ceratopsians returned to quadrupedal stances after they got too fat) are/were (well, still are: birds are everywhere, and they are dinosaurs) giant successes. Walking on two legs gives an animal improved manipulation ability even if they don't have human-style opposable thumbs; bipedalism allows for improved field of vision, as it raises the head; it allows for better defense/combat; and it has other advantages as well.
      • In the case of the dinosaur lineage that led to birds, bipedalism allowed their forelimbs to gradually evolve into functional airfoils, and they did so by assisting in climbing steep slopes rather than for gliding, according to one fairly well supported theory.
    • And finally, as the simplest and most reliable way to close a short distance, your own two feet can work in any weather, can't be stolen (easily), costs nothing, doesn't need (much) maintenance, can take short cuts many vehicles can't, never have to worry about running someone over, needs no garage to store, helps you get fit and still work reasonably well if you're drunk.
  • Another uniquely human trait is our ability to throw things with a reasonable balance of distance, accuracy, and power. It often gets overlooked because it's so basic an ability to us that we amuse ourselves by skipping rocks, shooting paper balls at garbage cans, or tossing balls at milk bottles in order to win large stuffed animals. And yet that simple ability is something that absolutely no other animal on the entire planet, including our closest relatives, can do, or ever did before our own ancestors. Just one of the many unique benefits of opposable thumbs and arms designed to swing freely. However, this can become Mundane Made Awesome when talking about a superfast baseball pitch.
    • A 10 year old child can throw a baseball at about 40-50 mph. An athletic adult can throw a baseball somewhere in between 70mph to over 100mph. An adult chimpanzee can only throw something at around 20mph. Considering that kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity, a 10 year old child puts 4-7 times as much energy into a throw as a chimpanzee and and adult puts 11-30 times as much energy into one.
    • Things which are easy for us — like balancing on two legs, or throwing a ball, — are only easy because, while a great deal of our brainpower is dedicated to these things, little or none of it conscious. To illustrate — when a Major League pitcher throws a ball (around 90 mph), releasing the ball 0.01 second too soon or too late would result in missing the strike zone. Since it takes about that long (10 milliseconds) for a nerve signal to travel from the brain to the fingers, the command to release the ball must be sent when the hand has not yet reached that window. In other words, "swing-and-release" is a preprogrammed sequence, performed without the benefit of seeing (or feeling) where the pitcher's own arm is.
      • On the flip side, one of the most difficult physical tasks in sports is hitting an MLB pitch. A batter has less than 0.5 seconds before a 90 mph pitch crosses home plate. A batter has to figure out exactly what pitch the pitcher threw, where he's aiming, how it's moving, and how fast it's going. All of that is visual and the batter must then decide whether or not to swing at it and, when then swinging, how to swing their bat. With an 0-2 count (i.e. no balls, two strikes ... which heavily favors the pitcher) MLB batters swing less than half the time.
  • The third great evolutionary asset of Homo sapiens is incredible endurance. Size vs weight, humans are the most indefatigable animals there are. There are few animals which can stay on the move with humans, the only ones being wolves and camels. Humans can easily outrun equines and bovines. Humans are classified as "persistence predators". While many animals are faster than humans and more manoeuvrable, humans can simply outrun them and catch them exhausted. That is also the reason why most Ancient and Medieval armies preferred carrying everything on their backs rather than employing pack animals, and why conscripts were more valuable as porters and work force: they would out-endure horses, mules and oxen on long campaigns. That is also the reason why cavalry-based armies, such as Mongols and other steppe nomads had to have a vast amount of spare mounts: their mounts simply became exhausted on long campaigns. The endurance of Homo sapiens is one of the reasons why there are few climates and terrains where humans cannot thrive.
  • On the topic of medicine: modest exercise, a good diet, rest, avoiding alcohol in excess, tobacco altogether, buckling your seat belt, reading the directions of every medication you take, sanitation and hygiene. This sounds as sexy as saw dust and yet if followed rigorously by a population would dramatically reduce the burden of disease. Even the half-assed implementation in the modern world has lengthened life expectancy by many years.
    • Regular exercise is an effective treatment for most physical illnesses and ailments (and even helps with a surprising number of mental and emotional disorders). If a medicine were invented with a fraction of that versatility, we'd be in awe of the breakthrough.
    • The single action that has contributed the most to mankind's life expectancy and health? The humble act of washing your hands frequently. This simple and boring chore enormously reduces the amount of bacteria and therefore, infections that can possibly attack you on your lifetime. Mix it with amazing advancements like vaccines and proper medicine and you can easily see why our lives have improved so much since the old times.
    • Vaccines and treatments for new viruses take time to develop. So aside from routinely washing your hands, the best way to ride out a new pandemic is self-quarantining, or staying at home and not engaging in in-person social activities or going to places where it is crowded. If you must go out (due to work or essential errands like groceries or medicine), then social distancing, or maintaining your distance from other human beings, is the next best option. Since you can't always tell if you're infected without very specific testing, which will usually be unavailable due to high demand, distancing yourself from other humans ensures that if you are infected, the virus will hopefully not spread to others and if everyone on Earth does it, the virus will die out sooner than later and everyone can get back to their usual lives. Can't stand being alone? Then long-distance forms of communication like text messaging, phone calls, and video chats can keep you in touch with your friends.
    • Some people routinely wear face masks when they're out and about. It's a potential inconvenience for, if, they, they have to present their whole face, or to eat or drink, and those who wear glasses may find them fogging up. But wearing masks can mitigate the chances that they spread diseases (that they may or may not be aware of) to strangers if they have to be out of the house, and can also keep dust and allergens (like pollen) out of one's nose and mouth, which can make outdoor activities much more bearable for those who are allergy-prone and makes dusting one's own house or workplace less of a nuisance. It can also provide some (but not total) anonymity in a pinch, if one is concerned about showing their face in public for some reason or another. A number of people who started wearing masks when the COVID-19 Pandemic kicked in still choose to even after COVID-19 became declared a non-emergency. Oh, and wearing a mask can avoid grossing out other people after eating a particularly pungent or teeth-staining meal.
  • Humans tend to think of predators as more cool and awe-inspiring than herbivores. However, the reason herbivores outnumber predators is that eating stuff that doesn't run away or fight back is much more efficient. Worst case scenario for a predator is burning more calories chasing their food than they get from eating it.
  • The deceased Norm Borlaug was quite possibly the exemplar of this trope in Real Life. He saved about 10 times more people from death than died in World War II. He spent decades interbreeding plants in a process even he admits damn near drove him insane with tedium. However, the result was the Green Revolution, which increased crop yields to such an extent as to save more than a billion people from dying of starvation.
  • Medieval alchemists spent a great deal of time looking for a "universal solvent", capable of, well, dissolving anything. It took a very long time before anyone realized that you'd have trouble finding a more versatile solvent than plain old water.
    • Water is one of the simplest molecules in existence: two hydrogen atoms bonded to one oxygen. This simple molecule leads to such amazing properties (like that aforementioned solvent thing) that it is absolutely essential for life as we know it.
  • The medical dressing. In use for thousands of years, incredibly straightforward to apply, easily capable of saving wounded people from various horrible deaths, cheap to make, quickly obtained from clothing or other nearby items, it's perhaps one of the most enduring elements of medical technology ever. Now it exists in thousands of different variants, from the humble Band-Aid to complex and fancy dressings intended for severe trauma victims, but it certainly seems like it's not going anywhere soon.
  • Carbon, hands down, is the most essential and widely used element in existence. Not only does it give rise to carbon-based life but it is also the most needed element for maintaining modern civilization.
    • Without carbon, there would be no filters for making water safe enough for drinking.
    • Without carbon, there would be no filters for the gas masks needed to protect against chemical and biological weapons.
    • Without carbon, there would be no filters for Air-Conditioning units to keep out dust and other microbial contaminants.
    • Without carbon, NOTHING would be clean. Which means no toothpaste, no computer chips, no flour...
    • Without carbon, nothing would BE. It is the only suitable element for creating organic life when using water as a solvent.
    • Without carbon there would be no heavier elements than boron.note 
  • Iron. Second of the most abundant metals in the world behind aluminium, very easy to process for its versatility, and the most versatile. Nowadays no civilized communities and nomads which don't have at least one or two tools made from iron.
    • When Assyrians finally found a way to process it, instead of more expensive but simpler to process bronzenote  to make mass quantities of weapons to arm their soldiers, they dominated the region and their enemies finally followed suit.
      • Of the seven metals of antiquity (gold, silver, copper, lead, tin, mercury, and iron) only iron couldn't be obtained from an ore when using a wood burning fire.
  • While not as visually stunning as pattern-welded blades, monosteel blades actually have quite a few benefits. On top of being cheaper and less work-intensive, a good monosteel blade can have equivalent or superior strength to a hand-made "Damascus" blade, and is much easier to sharpen due to being made of a single, homogenous piece of steel. It is for this reason that a lot of cultures discarded their own pattern-welded steel blades in favor of monosteel European blades.
  • Good old fashioned engineering and progressively improving on a design. Sure, inventing all new ways to solve humanity's problems or creating a revolutionary new method to do something is neat, but most of R&D will be working on efficiency, output, and cost of something that people have already figured out how to build. You just need to build it better.
  • When solving a mathematical equation, you can spend hours trying to find a theoretical answer with complicated integration techniques, or you can simply use the "guess, check, and revise". Numerical solutions are faster by orders of magnitude, just as accurate, and are possible even when a grand equation is unknown or impossible (such as a stress model or atmospheric).
  • With sexually dimorphic bird species, the female having plainer, less flamboyant plumage than the male fits well with this trope — sure, she's probably not gonna win any human beauty contests with those feathers, but she's also far less likely to be noticed by predators, which is especially helpful when she's the one taking care of the babies. With her muted, inconspicuous color-scheme, she can render herself practically invisible when sitting on her nest just by staying perfectly still and quiet. And additionally, male birds with large trains of plumage (like peacocks) have the problem of said trains weighing them down when they fly, something the female doesn't have to worry about as much.
  • Certain bodytypes in the animal kingdom are extremely useful despite not being viewed as that impressive. A good example would be the lizard bodytype, most lizards aren't viewed as spectacular animals but their shape is highly versatile with the capacity to run, climb and swim, the ability to survive in a wide range of ecosystems, they can feed from many different food sources and it can be easily modified to fill more specialized niches. In addition, their ectothermic metabolism means that they can't be as active as mammals but it also means they can get by on less food and go dormant when times get tough. It's telling that the humble lizard niche first appeared over 300 million years ago yet it has managed to persist despite that, in fact, modern lizards aren't even closely related to the first reptiles that appeared in the Carboniferous period, the bodyplan is so useful that different reptile groups evolved into it independently. It's a similar deal with modern rodents, shrews and opossums and the primitive mammals of the Mesozoic.
  • Mushrooms. They don't look particularly attractive and can be toxic if ingested, but they are important because they break down rotting material and return nutrients to the soil.
  • In astronomy, both amateur and professional, the Mark I eyeball and not only because of the obvious. Eyes can be carried anywhere, require little maintenance, and are mounted on an stable and excellent mount that can point them anywhere in the sky fast and with the advantage of the great field of view both give, far larger than the one of any telescope. Just consider how much astronomy was possible before the telescope was invented. In the same vein, 7*50 or 10*50 binoculars are cheap, highly portable, allow you to see a lot of objects, and can be used for many other purposes not related to astronomy.

    Sports 
  • Bruce Lee loved this trope up to the point where he developed his own fighting style based entirely around it called Jeet Kun Do (way of the intercepting fist). However, in practice, everything he did off-screen ended up appearing awesome, anyway.
    Bruce Lee: I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once. I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
    • Lee developed his ideas after observing the stop hit of fencing, which can best be described as follows: when your opponent winds up for something big, stick your sword in him. The rules are a bit more technical.
  • The basis of collegiate wrestling. Most common takedowns? High Crotches or Double Legs (Because you can't go wrong with basically spear tackling a guy and trying to throw him off to the side.) First taught and commonly used Escape? The stand-up. Pin? Half nelson. All of these moves are some of the first taught to new wrestlers and seasons.
  • In general, boxing might just be the all time champion for this trope in the realm of martial arts.
    • In terms of the fundamental principles, the basic stances and footworks matter significantly more than throwing quick and fast punches, which are only truly possible when you get the basics right.
    • All beginners for boxing start with...learning how to jump ropes, which will continue to be important no matter what your skill level is (professional boxing champions can show impressive jump rope performances), because it will help to improve footwork and even more importantly stamina.
    • Although boxing is known for knocking out opponents with flashy hook or uppercuts...but in reality, just like in the collegiate wrestling the most important move is the very first move one learns: a simple jab. It's the weakest, but also the fastest and exerts least energy, and is a building block for wearing opponent down and setting up punch combos.
    • Finally, one of the reasons what makes boxing such a great martial art is that there are a lot of places to learn at affordable price. Any reasonably sized town and city will have at least a couple of boxing gyms/clubs around the corner. After all, what good is how effective a martial art is if you can't actually learn it?
  • This is one of the reasons why Western martial arts have been downplayed or ignored in most media compared to Eastern martial arts. The latter is known for being exotic, with often thematic naming of forms and styles and some level of mysticism fused with the styles themselves—making them excellent for flashy media depictions. European martial arts, however, had more straightforward names of both schools and techniques, and as such don't seem quite as impressive-sounding for media depictions.
    • Some Eastern Martial Arts get the same treatment as well. About ten or fifteen years ago, people were more likely to have heard of Karate and Kung-Fu (which are often used as umbrella terms for a variety of Japanese and Chinese Martial Arts) than Judo or Muay Thai. However, with the popularity of Mixed Martial Arts growing over the years, the later two are becoming more well known. Ironically, their popularity in MMA has to do with the fact that they largely ditch the flashy posturing for practicality.
    • Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and its IDF-created variant Krav Maga are probably the best examples of this trope in the martial arts world, as they are extremely effective and extremely boring to the vast majority of spectators. Those who don't train in them don't really understand the complex positional battles or the attacks, counters, etc. being used; so while one combatant may be dangerously close to getting their arm broken or being choked unconscious, most of the audience sits there wondering when the action is going to start.
    • Speaking of martial arts, movie enthusiasts imagine that fights between masters (in any style of combat) involve complex, elaborate moves that can only be learned after years of practice. Actually, most fights between masters will involve short, sharp, efficient blows honed to perfection by years of practice, but learned during their first days.
    • One-step sparring. The most basic form of sparring a student will encounter, with a fixed right-of-way and a limited offensive arsenal (often a single punch from the right hand). Used to teach the student countering, distance, and defense, as a self defense technique, it can be more useful than the best Roundhouse Kick; the first step is always to get out of the way.
  • Treading water. Not a competitive sport at all, it's by far the most likely water skill to save your life, and is also extremely useful when trying to water rescue others. Completely boring to watch — you're just slowing waving your arms underwater, combined with either a slow scissors kick or half-effort frog kick — but it allows people to keep their head above water for literally DAYS as well as perform other actions such as lift things out of the water, easily grab objects, and assist others who might be in distress. If you do nothing else, learn to tread water well.
  • On swimming, backstroke is the easiest learn, breaststroke is the most energy efficient and crawl (freestyle) is the fastest. Each of those will get you there.
  • Major League Baseball manager Joe Torre once described Mariano Rivera's pitching as this note  during the New York Yankees dynasty years in the mid-to-late 90s. However, he done so in a positive light, making it clear that as a manager, you want your top pitchers, especially closers, to be boring and effective so you can rely on their performance each time out. Mariano Rivera going down in history as likely the greatest closer of all time, shows how effective he's been during his career.
  • In the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs are often described as this. After a disastrous 1996-97 season in which general manager Gregg Popovich decided to take over as coach, the team drafted Tim Duncan and became consistent in both personnel (along with Popovich and Duncan, players like David Robinson, Manu Ginóbili and Tony Parker never left) and results (19 consecutive playoff appearances). The players are humble and soft-spoken, and play an effective and not-eye catching style (in 2007-08, the Spurs' 56 win season that lead to the 2nd result in the West had the third-lowest scoring average, 95.4 points per game) that gave the Spurs 5 titles.
    • On that same note: Old-school fundamental basketball is this. Close-to-the-rim, team-oriented, pass-first based basketball is probably the most efficient way to play and score but is almost universally considered boring to watch. By contrast, "hero-ball" (when one guy tries making highlight plays/ takes all the shots), eating up the shot clock with fancy dribbles, hoisting up deep threes, and trying to posterize guys every play is often more exciting but makes for some horribly inefficient basketball most of the time.
  • The New England Patriots had this reputation during their championship years. They were generally a low-key, hard-working team with an efficient, but hardly explosive offense (unlike say the Indianapolis Colts) and a strong highly-effective defense that was nonetheless not nearly as bone-crushingly violent as the Ravens. Their coach Bill Belichick further enforced this trope with his dour, stoic personality. They won 3 championships in 4 seasons. They won many close games on the strength of their kicker, Adam Vinatieri, who kicked the game-clinching field goals in two of those three Super Bowls and the game tying and winning one in the game that got them to the other one. Kickers are not necessarily the players children buy fan gear of, to say the least.
  • The simple act of doing a short pass with the ball (or puck), it's not nearly as glamorous as letting your team all-star play "hero ball" and single-handedly outmaneuver the other team's defense. But it has the huge advantage of working a lot more consistently, especially during post-season games where the opposing team will be focusing on stronger defensive play than in the regular season.
    • Ironically, many exciting and fun-to-watch teams base their strategies on the simple short pass. The West-Coast offense that brought the 49ers success in the '80s and '90s is essentially a series of dink-and-dunk short-passes (as opposed to bruising runs or long bombs upfield) that combine small, easy gains into long, sustainable drives (and touchdowns). The Stephen Curry-led Warriors' offensive efficiency is the product of Steve Kerr note  instructing the team to endlessly pass the ball until they have an easy shot (which is usually a three-pointer, but it can also be a lay-up, a midrange shot, or even a dunk); boring by description, but very exciting when you have Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Kevin Durant rack up points with those easy looks. Barcelona's quick-fire Tiki-taka offense, while driven by the scintillating skill of Lionel Messi (and later Luis Suárez and Neymar) plus the genius of Xavi and Andrés Iniesta, boils down to having the forwards and midfielders perform a lot of short-passes as they play "monkey in the middle" with the opposing team.
    • Similarly Schalke 04 of the 1930s and 1940s, often regarded as their Glory Days, was based on the famous "Schalker Kreisel" which in its essence is passing the ball around Handball-style until an opening develops and attacking from there. It might sound boring on paper, but it was so effective that the Nazis were trying their damnedest to "prove" players with last names like "Szepan" and "Kuzorra" were actually "Aryan" to use them in their propaganda efforts.
    • Barcelona and Schalke's styles are just a few examples of "possession football", which preaches short-passing the ball around until the opposing team either makes a tactical error or gets tired from chasing the ball, which creates an opening for an easy attack leading to a spot-kick or a tap-in goal.
  • Playing defense. In most sports offense looks flashier, gets the fans excited and is mostly what the sport is about (e.g. soccer is about scoring goals). But there is a reason for the tired cliché "Offense wins hearts, Defense wins championships". There are a handful of real life subversions, but most of the times the best Offense meets the best Defense, it's not even close. Just two examples from the Super Bowl: In 2013 Peyton Manning was without a shred of a doubt the best Quarterback in the game. His offense put up ridiculous numbers and broke the records of Tom Brady and his Patriots from their perfect season (which found a similar end) as if they were nothing. Then they play the Super Bowl against the best defense in the league and hit it like a brick wall. 43-8 does not even begin to describe what a Curb-Stomp Battle it was. The Denver offense got outclassed in every conceivable way. Fast forward two years and the same team has changed a lot. Peyton Manning is visibly past his prime, and the offense does not produce anything above and beyond mediocre numbers. The defense however is the stuff of legend and when they face undisputed MVP Cam Newton and his prolific Carolina Panthers offense, which won several games, including a playoff game in one half, the result is as much a Foregone Conclusion as it was two years earlier. 24-10 for Denver and the Carolina offense never got a foot on the ground. Defense wins championships indeed.
    • Defense is usually an oft-overlooked component of legendary teams' successes, but it certainly turned those teams from very good to championship-level.
      • In the NBA, Michael Jordan's Bulls wouldn't have won six titles if it weren't for the presence of underrated defenders (Horace Grant and Dennis Rodman come to mind) and MJ's own defensive skills. Similarly, the Curry-led Warriors are not just driven by threes; their success comes in no small part to excellent defensive schemes and the suffocating defense provided by Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala. Other great teams also had their own silent defensive heroes: the Showtime-era Lakers had AC Green and Kurt Rambis, the Kobe-era Lakers had AC Green (again), Trevor Ariza, and Ron Artest, the Big-4 Celtics had Tony Allen and Kendrick Perkins, the Big-3 Heat had Udonis Haslem and Chris Andersen, and the LeBron-led Cavaliers have Tristan Thompson and Richard Jefferson.
      • NFL Examples: The Walsh/Siefert era 49ers were also successful due to strong Defenses; while Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and Steve Young drove the team to greatness, the likes of Ronnie Lott and Charles Haley were silent yet crucial components behind the Niners' Super Bowl runs. Tom Brady may get the credit for the Pats' glory, but said glory might have not happened if Belichick hadn't strengthened the Pats' defense. And, of course, who can forget the Pittsburgh's Steel Curtain defense?
      • Sir Alex Ferguson wouldn't have won boatloads of trophies for Manchester United if it weren't for Peter Schmeichel and Edwin van der Sar protecting the goal (with the help of Gary Neville, Jaap Stam, and Rio Ferdinand), while the likes of Ryan Giggs, Éric Cantona, David Beckham, and Ronaldo banged in goals.
      • As a counter-example, Galactico-Era Real Madrid wasn't as successful as some would've expected due to their over-emphasis on signing great attackers like Beckham and Ruud van Nistelrooy while neglecting their defense (an egregious example would be their sale of Claude Makélélé, who would become a catalyst for Chelsea's mid-2000s dominance).
  • Not many offensive linemen in the NFL are Household Names (with the exception of standouts like Anthony Muñoz and Walter Jones). However, experts believe that good offensive line play is more important than excellent passing and rushing ability when it comes to an NFL team's success in offense, in large part due to the fact that the latter tends to flow from the former. In fact, many (smart) teams prefer to spend their top picks on offensive linemen (with recent selections Ronnie Stanley and Jack Conklin proving this point) than on highly regarded "skill players" such as Quarterbacks and Receivers, as building good offensive lines allow teams to protect their quarterback (which allows them more time to pass and make plays) and block for their running backs (which leads to consistent gains on the ground).
  • In the European soccer championship 2016 Portugal played what many commentators called "anti-soccer"; an emphasis on defense, playing for draws (they only won one game in regulation — against the flashier Wales) and lucking their way into the round of sixteen by virtue of being third in a group of four containing such soccer superpowers as Iceland or Hungary — two teams that both finished ahead of Portugal in the group stage. Yet either due to underestimating them, luck or genuine advantages of their type of playing soccer (for which "boring" is a nice word) nobody could stop them all the way through the final. Not even France playing at home with one of the best offenses in recent memory.
  • For less-talented soccer teams, the much-maligned Long Ball strategy is this. Many soccer fans agree that the agricultural hoof over the top is less pretty and sophisticated than the Tiki-Taka possession offense of Pep Guardiola's FC Barcelona and Manchester City, the tactical counterattacks of Fergie's Manchester United, or the high-intensity gegenpress of Bundesliga teams and Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool. However, said hoofs are also simple, which means that any player can use them well regardless of skill level (In contrast, elegant multi-pass offenses fall flat in the hands of unskilled players or teams with no chemistry). Additionally, Long Balls can allow teams to beat opponents who press high up the pitch by taking advantage of the space behind the defense or the relative unpreparedness of a squad that had just lost the ball. Finally, the increasingly technical nature of football has resulted in the proliferation of smaller footballers who are better on the ground; those players can be beaten by teams which utilize multiple aerial passes and tall, physical target men. It is not for nothing that Robert Lewandowski, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, and Poland striker, who fits this mould like a glove, has managed to score fifty goals a season for several years.
    • Such brutal simplicity was exemplified by Egil Olsen's Norway teams of The '90s. Olsen overcame his team's inability to prepare for tournaments due to cold weather by utilizing a straightforward Long Ball called the "Flo Pass": A hoof from one fullback to an aerially proficient winger (in Norway's case, said winger was Jostein Flo, who lent his name to the strategy), who would then bat it down to either the Center Forward or the Midfield. While boring to watch, the Flo Pass brought Norway moderate success during that time period; such shining moments include upsetting Brazil in the World Cup and reaching the Number Two spot in FIFA rankings.
    • Another example was Leicester City during their Cinderella run to the 2016 Premier League Title. The Foxes didn't really have technically talented players (though winger Riyad Mahrez was one), nor did they have many big-name stars. What they did have were a strong Central Midfield (anchored by N'Golo Kanté), a solid defense with conservative fullbacks (as opposed to the more attack-minded fullbacks of modern football) and a speedy goal-scorer named Jamie Vardy. They didn't need to play pretty; all they needed to do was defend well, then hoof it to either Mahrez or Vardy, who would either score it or pass it to someone who would. This simple, bare-bones, old-fashioned (the Foxes even lined up in an out-of-style 4-4-2 formation!), English-style play allowed Leicester to overcome more talented, more expensive, and more famous teams in order to win the most unlikely Premier League title of all time. Ranieri abandoned that strategy the following season (also of note, Kanté had left for Chelsea), Leicester City started to struggle, and Ranieri himself was sacked.
    • Before Norway and Leicester, Graham Taylor's Watford went from the Fourth Division to the Top Flight just by playing good-ol' physical English hoofball. The same strategy allowed Wimbledon's "Crazy Gang" to upset Liverpool, who were known for their stylish attacking play, during the 1988 FA Cup final.
  • Liverpool FC, known as Europe's Entertainers for their Awesome, yet Impractical all-out attacking style in the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons, which was spectacular but unsustainable and left them defensively vulnerable, changed to this in 2018/19: 20 matches in, they are the only team in the Premier League, and one of only three in the Big 5 leagues of Europe, to remain unbeaten, having conceded only 8 goals, approximately a third of what they'd conceded the previous year. This is thanks to the expensive acquisitions of one of the best goalkeepers and one of the best defenders on the planet, as well as a hard-working midfield that stifles opposition attacking play before it can get started. And since they retain one of the best front threes in Europe, this means that they're quite likely to score anyway, and can still turn on the style when they feel like it. While a bit less exciting, this ruthless consistency has led to them winning 9 games in a row, and put them a minimum of 7 points clear at the New Year.
  • Everyone adores the star players who are exceptionally good in quite a few aspects of a sport, but successful teams also rely on not-so-flashy role players who are pretty decent at multiple skills, versatile at playing multiple roles, yet disciplined enough to put the team's needs over their personal glory. Some examples include footballers John O'Shea, Daley Blind, and James Milner, and basketball players Andre Iguodala, Lamar Odom, and Richard Jefferson. Milner in particular has gained a memetic reputation for being Boring But Practical incarnate — he's not very exciting on or off the pitch, but his work rate, dedication, and ability to play just about anywhere has kept him at the top of English football for 20 years. Notably, he was a key part of the aforementioned 2018/19 Liverpool team, helping them to win the Champions League and, the following season, the Premier League for the first time.
  • When it comes to football midfielders, fans adore the high-scoring offensive mids (e.g. Andrés Iniesta, Frank Lampard, Juan Roman Riquelme), box-to-box dynamos (e.g. Steven Gerrard, Paul Pogba, Arturo Vidal), and the hard-tackling defensive mids (e.g. Claude Makélélé, Roy Keane, Javier Mascherano, N'Golo Kanté). However, deep-lying passers (registas) such as Paul Scholes (especially during his later years), Andrea Pirlo, Xabi Alonso, Luka Modrić, and Michael Carrick are also crucial components to a team's success due to their ability to control the game's pace and mastermind their team's plays.
    • Check some videos on Sergio Busquets' role in Barcelona and you'll see.
  • Defense-oriented defensemen in (ice) hockey, who focus their attention more on stopping opposing skaters than scoring goals, are not as famous as their high-scoring counterparts, but analysts deem them to be more useful due to their effectiveness at nullifying opponents' top threats. This can be seen with the current San Jose Sharks; while the high-scoring Brent Burns is a favorite for the Norris Trophy, the statistical analysis states that his more defensive teammate Marc-Édouard Vlasic has a bigger impact on the team's success.
  • "Game Manager" quarterbacks are often mocked due to their relatively poor arm strength in comparison to gunslingers like Brett Favre and Dan Marino. However, their ability to minimize mistakes often means that they end up performing better than their stronger-armed counterparts. Likewise, their intelligence and reading of a game gives them something to fall back on when age robs them of whatever little athleticism they have left. A few key examples include Joe Montana, whose relatively average arm strengths were/are compensated by their excellent ability to read their game, pass accurately, and move behind the line of scrimmage with ease.
  • Command pitchers and pitching to contact in baseball. Unlike pitchers who blaze fastballs by the batters and leave them looking silly with breaking pitches to strike them out, they put the ball exactly where they want it. 90 mph just on the outside corner of home plate is nearly impossible to hit, and even harder to hit well. Batters will time up a fast pitcher or start to read one with good junk pitches (curveballs, sliders, changeups, etc.), and once they do they can crush the ball, but one that far outside is hard to hit all day long. It has the added bonus of not causing as much stress on the arm as throwing 100 mph or on the wrist as throwing junk pitches all day.
  • Contact hitters in baseball don't have the power of sluggers and rarely hit for home runs. Instead, they focus mainly on getting on base and keeping the offense moving so that runners can get to home and score.
  • Helmets. They can be bulky (depending on the sport), aren't especially comfortable to wear, and can be expensive. All that said, they protect the most important part of your body, so wearing one can absolutely save a life.
  • In football, one of the most effective resources a defender has is the simple clearance shot. Any defender that can steal the ball from a coordinated enemy attack will usually simple shoot it to anywhere. This is boring, but brings excellent results:
    • If the ball gets to a member of your team, you just caught your rival in bad footing and can start a counterattack.
    • If the ball gets to an enemy player, you just forced them to reorganize their attack, giving your teammates precious time to regroup.
    • If the ball goes out of the field, your team can take defensive positions and therefore nullify any advantages the attack gave to your enemy.
    • This is an example of what usually happens when you don't clear the ball when given the chance and instead try to show off (unless you're in Barcelona FC).
  • Soccer problem: The "wall" doesn't want to keep the proper distance to a free kick. Endless discussion, yellow cards, yadda yadda... invent a complicated laser ranging system? Or a camera-based one? Nope.
  • Golf:
    • Taking a penalty drop or playing a good provisional shot in golf. It might not impress your friends or get on the highlights reel of a professional tournament, but it’s far safer to take the 1 or two stroke penalty for a guaranteed safe lie instead of risking countless shots to escape an exceptionally bad one.
    • Putting. It’s never going to be as video worthy as impressive approach shots or long and well-placed drives. A player will still have to get it into the hole to ensure the best scores to win. Hence the famous saying: “Drive for show, putt for dough”.
  • Professional Wrestling uses a lot of flashy, impressive looking moves that are useless in a real fight. However, on the other side of the coin, less impressive holds, which are seen as basic and not particularly dangerous in wrestling, are actually very effective in Real Life. For example, virtually no modern pro wrestler will tap out to an armbar, however, an actual armbar is not only very painful, it can legitimately break your arm.
    • Similarly, sleeper holds or headlocks are known in the business as 'rest holds', mostly used as lulls in the action and to give the wrestlers a break. To wrestling audiences, watching a wrestler hug another one in the head for a few minutes looks boring. But if properly applied in real life, a sleeper or rear-naked choke could restrict blood flow to the brain and legitimately render your opponent unconscious in seconds, or turn them into a vegetable if held for too long. For added scariness, if properly sunk in, it is very difficult to escape before passing out.
    • A darker example, wrestling throws like a gorilla press or powerbomb might not look too effective, since wrestlers will often just get back up and keep fighting. The reason they can do that is that professional wrestlers are trained to give and receive those moves safelynote . In reality, picking someone up and slamming them hard into the ground can seriously injure or even kill someone.
  • As far as skateboard tricks go, the Ollie is among the least flashy (essentially being the Skateboard version of a basic jump). That said, it's essential for basic transport on a Skateboard (why step up small ledges when you can jump on them), and it's the gateway to the vast majority of the more complex stuff.
  • In Skiing, there is the kick-turn. It is essentially the skiing equivalent of turning around in place, and certainly not a flashy way to get down a mountain. However, it is also the only way to turn around with complete control afterwards on a steep slope, making it very useful for getting out of sticky situations and is sometimes the only way to navigate down a slope safely (relatively speaking) or avoid a cliff.
  • Sabermetrics (baseball statistical analysis) measures batters by their ability to score runs and get on base, while pitching statistics measure pitchers by their ability to stop the other team from doing so. Despite the effectiveness of sabermetric techniques, as depicted in Moneyball, they've attracted criticism for leading to limited post-season success and making for a spectator experience that's, well... boring. Still, scoring runs is the object of the game for each individual team (...while still selling enough tickets that revenue doesn't flatten.)
  • In American Football if you can find a play that consistently gives you three and a half yardsnote  you need to do nothing else all game long. Gain of three and a half yards, gain of three and a half yards, gain of three and a half yards — first down; and so on ad infinitum. The key to avoiding being bored to death and defeated by your opponent like that is shutting down those plays — not necessarily entirely, but in such a way that they do not deliver a consistent yardage above three and a bit. This is one of the reasons why coaches like to call the same play again if it gives them the desired yardage — why fix what ain't broken?

    Culinary 
  • Agriculture. It's nowhere near as exciting as hunting or gathering food and oft considered menial work. But it's a FAR more efficient source of calories such modern civilization exists because a fraction of the time, effort, and population is needed to provide enough food to feed the world. Also applies to many crops and livestock, which are common because they're easy to raise and grow compared to fancier foodstuffs.
  • Staple foods are this by definition and design. Rice, potatoes, beans, meal from grain, etc, are easy to grow, easy to store, easy to cook, and can be made into a meal by itself or with a wide assortment of ingredients thanks to plain taste. Near the sea, fish, kelp, and others can play the same role. In many cases the staple foods can be dried or kept dry, making them store longer and weigh much less — Just Add Water and heat to make a meal.
  • Salt. Of any seasoning one could add to any meal, salt is a basic that doesn't seem overly interesting, but ask any cook and they can tell you that LACK of salt is a major pitfall, actually. In fact, salt is simply amazing for being able to enhance other flavors. While you could go with some of the more "interesting" seasonings and spices like cumin, paprika, Cajun, or whatever, sometimes a little bit of simple salt goes a long way.
  • Healthy food. While eating a variety of foods and spices will probably be the best way to get all your nutrients, plain food can keep you reasonably healthy (providing you don't leave out any important food group.)
    • Soups and stews as well. The ultimate in simple recipes (put available food in pot with water and cook) can use nearly any ingredients, cooks decently quickly, feeds many, requires only the most basic equipment to prepare, is very healthy and filling (depending on the ingredients), and nearly anyone can make it. But unless you use a recipe, don't expect to be blown away by the flavor. That said, some excellent recipes for soups and stews can be found; Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi" was based on a real person whose soups really were that good.
  • The humble roux (pronounced "roo"). It's basically just flour fried with an equal weight of some kind of fat and used as a thickener, but depending on the type of fat used and how long it's cooked to darken it, you can create a huge variety of amazing soups, stews, sauces and gravies with it. Flour and butter? Slowly whisk in milk and add your preferred shredded cheese for a terrific homemade Mac & Cheese or Au Gratin dish. Use bacon fat instead and you can make an excellent white gravy for biscuits or mashed potatoes. Want to make a nice creamy curry, like Butter Chicken or Tikka Masala? Start with a roux. Don't just brown ground meat and add seasoning when making tacos; mix the spices with a roux, whisk in a little beef or chicken stock to make a sauce, then put your raw ground beef directly into that, stir while it cooks down into a thick paste, and skim off the fat. There; you now have perfect restaurant-style taco meat with a fine, uniform texture that doesn't all crumble and fall out of the shell. The roux's extremely basic composition and broad range of uses might well push it into Simple, yet Awesome territory, and this simple base ingredient makes a massive difference between creating a rich, sumptuous sauce and a thin, unsatisfying broth.
  • Noodles. Just like rice, they go well with a whole host of sauces or seasonings. Anyone for some spaghetti?
  • Carbohydrates, main component of staple food (for that matter, staple food itself). The nutrients are less exciting than, say animal protein or fat, but these are processed for energies.
    • Potatoes, as well. They don't look like much, but they did save Europe from continuous famine for quite some time. They are much more energy dense than traditional staples foods (you get 17.8 million Calories per acre for potatoes, compared to 6.4 million Calories per acre for wheat), thus allowing the same plot of land to feed three-times more people. And well prepared potatoes are tasty.
      • Potatoes also grow in a lot of places where cereals won't. This allowed massive population expansion in countries like Ireland where a lot of land isn't suitable for cereals but potatoes like it just fine. (Until you hit the problems of monoculture agriculture in a pre-chemical environment...)
      • Fun fact: You can get almost all the nutrients you need from a diet of just potatoes and milk, in the right quantities. It would be a very bland and monotonous diet, but you wouldn't die or get any serious deficiencies except for molybdenum, which you only need tiny amounts of anyway; the deficiencies can be remedied by supplementing with occasional eggs, bread, or certain vegetables like green beans. This is basically what the Irish were doing in the 19th century (with the milk taking the form of cheese and to a lesser extent butter, generally speaking). Dairy produce, eggs and potatoes can combine to make potatoes au Gratin, a potentially awesome casserole dish.
      • Potatoes can grow in extremely poor soil and cold climate. Yes, potatoes can grow in Lapland, beyond the Arctic Circle. The puikula breed is considered a delicacy in Finland. It can be safely said the introduction of potato turned Finland (which is located between 60 and 70 deg North) finally into a fully habitable country.
    • Rice. Not counting flavored, spiced, salted, egg, or with a curry/sauce. Just plain rice. For its size it is incredibly rich in nutrition and energy. Even if you don't have a specialized rice cooker, cooking rice is still a simple matter of adding rice and water to a pot and boiling it for several minutes.
      • They happen to be an excellent flavor buffer for a lot of saucy foods. That or they just go good with saucy foods (or with sauce in general).
      • How practical is it, you ask? Literally half of the entire world's population gets two-thirds of their daily calories from rice. It is the #1 most consumed food on Earth and has been for centuries, possibly even millenia (depending on when humans first started shifting from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies).
      • Add in some beans and you have the world's most inexpensive complete protein. Complete proteins are absolutely vital in a person's diet, since everything in a person is made out of one protein or another. Most of Central America relies on rice and beans (under various names, which one you chose is Serious Business) as their staple food. Add a bit of spices and side dishes (e.g. an egg) and you have a meal that is both filling and surprisingly tasty if nothing fancy.
    • Also note there are also parts of the world (southern India is one, and to some extent East Asia) where rice is eaten with the hands. For example if you find picking up sushi with chopsticks is tricky, it's easier and perfectly fine to pick it up with the fingers, and many Japanese people do this.
    • Cassava. They have almost as high a yield per hectare as potatoes and they can be optimally grown in tropical areasnote , need less water (making them one of the most drought resistance crops around), and feed half a billion people. Proper cooking must be done, however, to remove the toxin.
    • Yam, anyone? They are all year round crops, rich in starch, can grow in poor farms, and can be prepared in many ways.
  • Tap water. Doesn't look very fancy and tastes pretty bland. But it's far less expensive than bottled water or juice (if not outright free at many eating establishments), far healthier than alcohol or soft drinks, and is far better at keeping you hydrated. And is readily available at home whenever you want it.
    • And if you live somewhere where there is no reliable source of clean water, the old fashioned beer takes that place. Since it gets boiled during production, it's usually much cleaner than any unfiltered water. Calories and carbs in tasty, drinkable, preserved form. Staff of life, potable water, and recreation all in one. Tea and coffee also serve(d) the same purpose, although they have neither calories nor carbs in quantity unless you add sugar. In fact, if you're drinking good enough coffee, you don't even need condiments to make it taste good.
    • The two most expedient way to clean water for drinking? Boil it for a few minutes, use it to cook, brew hot drinks, and clean things. Can't boil it? Pour some booze in it, preferable high proof spirits, and stir. 25ml of something like vodka can make an entire quart of water safe, because the ethanol kills bacteria and protozoa, which are the primary waterborne nasties that make people sick.
    • Water in general is this. Most people don't think much of it, but it can generate renewable electricity, is a powerful industrial solvent, can save lives in a pinch, clean tools and wounds, be a measuring device, etc. Combined with a bit of that human ingenuity there is very little that water can't do. If you want to get decidedly impractical, water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen. If you can separate it, you have the stuff stars run on. Which is more readily available and safer than radioactive elements like Uranium.
      • And on the subject of hygeine, flossing. If you floss after a meal, which is something quite easy to do considering you probably have bits of food in your teeth anyways, it removes more gunk between your teeth than brushing, and also helps with bad breath (a la bacteria on your tongue and rotting food in your teeth.) It'll also stave off problems like gingivitis. There's a reason dentists recommend it. Speaking of dentists, they do actually tell you to floss more even if you do floss regularly if they cause your gums to bleed, probably because it's a safe explanation, and it is very unlikely to lead people to sue.
      • The single most effective method of fighting bad breath is to gently clean the tongue twice a day.
  • The humble sandwich. It makes any foods taste good together in a simple, no-silverware package that can often be an entire meal that fits in your pocket. It can be made for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, hot or cold, and is almost always one of the healthiest things you can eat. And it can be filled and dressed with almost anything you can think of.
    • Even before the modern sandwich was invented, in parts of the world where wheat or other grains was the staple crop, bread was both a key source of calories and also made eating without utensils easy. Think how many foods around the world are some kind of flatbread wrapped around something else. In some places like Ethiopia, meals are still widely eaten with no utensils but bread to scoop up other foods.
  • Salads are inherently low-calorie (thanks to lettuce being mostly water), and are extremely customizable; dressings, fruits, veggies, meats, and the like (all in moderated quantities, of course) can help add taste to a healthy bowl of lettuce.
  • Everyone in the whole world knows the absolute importance of food in everyday life. But what is just as important as food is the taste and smell of it. People are very likely to consume and enjoy foods that smell good and taste good than they are to consume foods that have no flavor at all or have offensive odors and tastes. Because of this, the manufacturing and distribution of flavors and spices is an international industry that brings in billions of dollars.
    • Expanding on that: salt. It was worth its weight in gold for a long time due to its ability to flavor and preserve food before refrigeration and other methods of chemical preservation, purposes it is still widely used for today.
  • Canned foods, frozen foods, shelf-stable foods and MREs. Sure, they don't taste too well and are not as healthy as their freshly-made equivalents, but can withstand years of storage and do not need any preparations before eating.
    • Instant foods also qualify. Sure, they are not the tastiest things around and are not considered good for your health, but they are cheap and easy to prepare.
    • Instead of developing special space rations, the Soviet space program simply went up there like any campers would — with tins of canned food.
  • Coffee and tea may not be very sweet on their own, but they are popular sources of caffeine that pack less than 5 calories per cup, allowing even those on a low-calorie diet to enjoy them, and can be prepared to be hot or cold. High quality coffee beans do yield sweet, fruity flavors without milk or sugar. For those who are caffeine-intolerant, decaf coffee exists and herbal tea is inherently caffeine-free.
    • In Britain before the days of water treatment, many people died of waterborne diseases and parasites. When tea and coffee started to get imported, general health improved as people were boiling their water before they drank it. That's right, the cup of brew was a genuine lifesaver.
  • Small game and fish. Not only can animals often considered as pests or vermin be used as food, but angling is also a popular pastime, combining obtaining food with relaxation and excitement. Certainly big fish such as salmon, tunny or marlin sound both exciting and tasty, but humble roaches, perches and pike are easier to catch, easier to prepare for a meal and just as tasty if prepared well. Fish fats protein is extremely valuable as nutrients.
  • Apples. They're tasty, they provide carbohydrates and energy, and they are very rich on vitamins and micronutrients. They can be stored and they endure harsh winter extremely well, and if spoiled, they still can be fermented into cider, vodka and calvados. Apples have provided vitamins and nutrients for Northern peoples for centuries. The importance of apples for survival in harsh climates is emphasized in the fact that distributing apples for soldiers was the King's privilege, and in many languages the globus crucifer (orb regalia) is called "State Apple".
  • The methods of preserving fish by salting and drying under the sun. Doing that may cause it to lose many nutrients, but they are the most low cost and easiest food preserving methods and have been done for millenia.
  • People in Puerto Rico typically eat Export Sodas (a type of wheat cracker in reality) when they are terribly sick. Export Sodas are easily digestible, making them a go-to food when you have digestive problems. At least you are allowed to butter them...
  • Cheese slicer. Developed from a humble carpenter's plane, it enables you to enjoy cheese as thin, tasty slices which are just suitable for bread or rolled into a neat roll. Moreover, the cheese slicer can be used to slice cucumber, potatoes, vegetables, butter — just any sliceable foodstuffs. It is a true multi-purpose tool of kitchen.
  • The simple knife, fork, and spoon of Western Dining, as well as the even simpler chopsticks of Eastern Dining. Knives are used for cutting food, as previously mentioned, forks can be used to pick up solid food, and spoons can be used to pick up liquid food. Chopsticks can likewise pick up solid food. In either case, these simple items can keep one's fingers clean as they eat, even if they can't tell the salad fork from the dinner fork. Of course, in the case of finger food, one can just use their fingers — finger-licking good!
  • Batch cooking and freezing. Quite a lot of meals can be cooked in pans, cooled, portioned into individual servings, put in the freezer and reheating at mealtimes. Sounds like a chore (especially on a weekend), but since the average oven or hob can probably cook more than one thing at the same time it can be done as quickly as cooking one meal. Larger (and usually cheaper by weight) packets of meat or veg can all be cooked at once regardless of how many people they will serve, reducing waste. Meat cooked directly from the supermarket does not have to be frozen and then thawed before cooking. Home preparation can make food healthier than pre-prepared products (especially with the amounts of salt and sugar). And, most obviously, dinner then does not need cooking after work. While the taste might not be as good as cooking fresh food with each meal and eating the same thing for days can get monotonous, it's much more economical and much healthier than commercially-prepared frozen dinners and you won't run the risk of ingredients going bad before you can use them.
  • When it comes to fast food burgers, if you ever have the craving for one, what many food specialists consider to be the best option to get is just the plain old, simple hamburger. Sure, it may not be as loaded or fancy as the bigger, more premium burgers are, and it is still not something to have all the time, but it is still a good (and often cheap) way to satisfy those burger cravings and get the positive aspects of a burger (such as the protein from the meat) without intaking the often huge amount of added calories, fats, sodium and cholesterol the bigger burgers tend to have.
  • Quick service restaurants as opposed to restaurants that have tableside service don't have the bells and whistles you get with the later, but the wait time for your meal is almost always shorter depending on how busy it is. With the advent of mobile ordering, you can do something else in the meantime while your order is prepared, and there's a wide variety of cuisines available in the quick service format.

    Music & Musical Artists 
  • This is one interpretation of the drumming style of Ringo Starr. Some Beatles fans find his drumming tedious, uninteresting, and bland. Others feel that this is his greatest strength — when the other three band members were pulling in different styles and directions, he was always able to adapt to a reasonable level, no matter what style they were playing in. John Lennon in particular would only work with Ringo for a long time after the break-up of the band because he was able to give Lennon exactly what he asked for.
    • Another thing about Ringo's drumming style is that he generally avoids making it flashy or stick out like other drummers do. Rather, he prefers to have his drumming compliment and support the music. In fact (and somewhat ironically), some music analysts argue that on many Beatles tracks they can have their drums completely isolated and still be recognizable, something that other, flashier drummers struggle to do.
  • Max Weinberg uses only four drums (snare drum, mounted tom, bass drum, and floor tom) in his setup, saying that anything more is redundant. He relies on technical ability honed by decades of experience, as well as sheer speed, to perform incredibly complex percussion parts.
  • The Platters were an interesting case. While the other group members used their earliest revenues to enjoy a night on the town, Herbert Reed (their last remaining original member) used his to buy... a house.
  • The infamous "No brown M&Ms" clause in Van Halen's contract rider. It may seem like a superfluous request by obnoxious rock stars; however, it served an important purpose. Because it was such a minor detail, if the band found brown M&Ms in the candy dish, it likely meant the promoter failed to read the contract in full. Van Halen's show had stringent safety requirements due to the lighting and pyrotechnics used, and many older venues couldn't safely accommodate the show if the contract wasn't followed exactly.
  • Many bassists fall into this. While there are bassists in specific genres that take center stage with their playing such as Lemmy or Les Claypool, the instrument generally exists to take a back seat and avoids playing fanciful solos or fills like the guitar, drums or saxophone. Despite this, it is still an indispensable instrument in most groups, and possibly the most important instrument in the group due to helping conjoin the rhythmic and melodic portions of musical composition.
    • Hell, the Bass Guitar itself could also count as one. Before its creation, musicians would need to rely on large Double Basses to provide low-pitched notes. The Double Bass was about 6 feet (roughly 2 meters) tall, cumbersome, difficult to transport, and required a lot of precision & experience to play. Not to mention they were expensive and did not have any form of amplification, so frequently it would be buried below the sound of the singer, guitar, piano, drums, brass, & the crowd during gigs. note  When the Bass Guitar arrived on the scene, it quickly became a standard instrument since was only slightly bigger than the average guitar with a longer neck (making it easy to transport), costs roughly the same, could be plugged into an amplifier to be heard properly, and any guitarist could pick one up and play. Music could sound fuller than ever before.
  • The iconic Fender Stratocaster electric guitar (It may not necessarily be “boring”, but it certainly is practical). Because of how ubiquitous the model is as an electric guitar, many tend to write it off as “basic” and “standard”, especially when compared to a Gibson Flying V or Explorer, or a BC Rich. But the reason the Strat is so popular and commonly used is that it is lighter and more comfortable to play whether sitting or standing, lacking any sharp edges and is contoured on its back. It also has a double-cutaway design (rather than a single cutaway seen on the Gibson Les Paul or even the Fender Telecaster), making it lighter and easier to play higher notes on the fret. Not to mention that it uses a bolt-on neck, which can be easily replaced by anyone when worn out, rather than having it glued-on like other models. The Stratocaster is incredibly versatile; it can be played in practically any music genre and still sound right-at-home, whereas other electric guitars often struggle to sound good when not played in their intended genres (Eg. Superstrats in any non-metal genre). And finally, the Stratocaster is also less pricey than other guitars; Fender has models that can sell for less than $1000 that are still very high quality.
    • The Strat is also very easy to customize compared to other electric guitars. If a player wants to, they can replace its electronics and pickups to suit their play-style and preferred sound. They do so by simply removing the pickguard on the front to access those parts, rather than practically taking the instrument apart like other guitar models.
  • Many people think many of us musicians use fancy, complex chords in our music, but in reality, most music uses the first two chords you ever learn, the humble major and minor triad. Just three notes each, but there's so much you can do with triads. And the best thing? Triads always sound good, no matter the style of music.
  • The major C and minor A scales. Easy to read, no fancy sharp or flat notes, and sounds reasonably good.

    Unsorted 
  • Any advertisement that foregoes jokes, stories, novelties; etc. in favor of just telling the viewer basic details about the product/service and why they should purchase it (over their competitors). It's not as likely to be as beloved or even memorable to viewers, but it's also much less likely to backfire: a commercial too reliant on clever writing or production values runs the risk of overshadowing its product/service, not carrying out the intended message, annoying viewers, or attracting the wrong kind of attention. A straightforward commercial consistently gets the point across to its Target Audience, and just as consistently turns out desired expectations.
  • Professional subtitles, especially for Anime. Fans decry them as lazy, especially compared to the fancy "karaoke subs" used by many Fan Subbers. But as industry professionals point out, they're not supposed to be fancy — they're supposed to be legible, and the "boring" yellow/white-on-black, sans serif subtitles are by and large the easiest to read.
    • The same logic extends to the translations themselves. Professional anime subtitles also get a lot of flak from fansubbers for actually translating Japanese into English and leaving out things like Japanese Honorifics (although sub companies generally do include them when relevant to the plot) and rendering names in the "Firstname Lastname" Western style. Professional sub companies want to make anime videos accessible to as wide an audience as possible that includes people who aren't necessarily familiar with the Japanese language or Japanese culture rather than pandering to Occidental Otaku.
    • And finally, Dubbed Anime is frequently this (more so in recent years). Some anime fans hate watching their shows in English rather than Japanese, even though they typically don’t speak the latter. However, watching anime dubbed is generally far more accessible to viewers, whether casual or longtime fans. Dub viewers do not have to have their eyes glued to the bottom of the screen to read what the characters are saying, allowing them to listen to the dialogue and focus on their actions. This is beneficial to viewers who struggle with reading and/or cannot read fast (particularly in dialogue-heavy series), or simply do not want 100% of their attention laser-focused on the show. Not to mention that most anime already rely on characters doing very simple mouth movements, so with the right script it’s not difficult to make it appear that the characters are speaking the audience’s language. There’s a reason why nearly every anime on Netflix is dubbed as well as subbed.
  • Most people with long hair swear by the two basics: Braids and/or buns, which keep hair contained, tangle-free, and out of the way. Since they usually wear their hair like that every day, it's boring for the people who don't have long hair and expected to see long, flowing locks.
  • Freddie Francis, Academy Award-winning cinematographer (winning his first in 1960 for Sons And Lovers and his next in 1989 for Glory) and having a long career, from starting as a cinematographer in the '50s and '60s, to directing for Hammer and returning in the '80s (he shot two movies for David Lynch, both The Elephant Man and his last movie The Straight Story when he was 81) famously said:
    "There are three types of photography: good photography, bad photography, and the right photography. The right photography is what tells the story best."
  • Even here on this very website! There are two factions: SPOONs note  and FoRKS note . The former want trope names to be as simple and understandable as possible, making them this trope. The latter, by contrast, want trope names to be as funny or witty as possible, even if they don't make obvious sense, making it more Awesome, but Impractical. There's also PLATTERs and KNIVES who think the whole argument is stupid.
  • The doll. One of the oldest and most universal toys ever conceived, it doesn't seem nearly as spectacular an innovation as discovering fire or crafting the stone ax, yet it revolutionized child care by giving young children something to safely try out social interactions with. Compare that to other social primates, in which subadult females can only practice infant care by stealing actual infants away from their mothers — a risky situation for baby and young female, alike — and youngsters of both sexes are smacked around by their elders if they commit a faux pas. But dolls don't die if mishandled and don't hit back if your play gets too rough. Plus, learning to regard dolls as substitute-playmates gave the human imagination a jump-start.
  • In the some spots of very remote Sahara Desert, camels are these. While those pre-2000 Toyota pickups are easier to maintain, faster, cheap, and robust, those still need constant fuel to operate and particular skill to fix. The prospect of having a pickup break down and nobody able to repair it worries some travelers. There's also the prospect of having one or more of the wheels slip on the sand and nobody nearby who can tow the pickup. The first problem can be tackled by bringing loads of fuel and spare tires, but it also decreases the free load weight. Meanwhile, while slow and not being able to carry as much (individually), camels don't need to eat and drink every day and the fact that they've been used for millennia is proof of their practicality.
  • Barbed wire. It's cheaper and takes less effort to set up than conventional fencing, allowing you to fence off large tracts of land quickly. Unlike a hedgerow, it's also fairly low-maintenance. You can also run an electric current through it for extra insurance. Guns might get all the credit for "winning" the Wild West, but it was barbed wire that tamed it.
  • Wheels. One of the most important inventions ever and also the oldest. These devices can decrease the force needed to move vehicles while looking very ordinary.
  • Carts are used to move cargo in large quantities more easily, making them useful in a similar way to use.
  • The concept of Beige Prose. It might not always be particularly exciting, innovative, or challenging to read, but it enables anyone with a basic level of literacy to read and understand what is being written, and enables the writer (again, assuming they have basic competency) to clearly and effectively communicate what they are trying to say. Purple Prose, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to show off all those complex and beautiful words in your vocabulary, but it potentially obscures the meaning of what's being written for anyone whose vocabulary isn't as extensive as yours, increases the risks of mistakes if your command over the language isn't as strong as you think it is, can be distracting or off-putting to read, and may make you seem like a pretentious show-off. If done well, Beige Prose can actually enhance enjoyment as the words and language won't distract from the plot and characters. Of course, if done badly, it can be incredibly bland and ruin dialogue and characterization.
  • An incredibly common trope in Fan Fiction is writers thinking they need to find tons of synonyms for "say", common nouns like "eyes", genitalia or the names of characters. While some published works by professional writers do this too, it is generally seen as tacky and distracting to write "orbs" where "eyes" would do and extremely weird to write ever more ridiculous circumlocutions instead of the names of the damn characters.
  • Locks on doors. Most simple locks require just a key that is unique to that lock, which can easily be carried on a keychain or similar item if you travel a lot. Locks can keep anyone out and the only way to bypass them is either finding another way inside or brute forcing the lock itself, which is usually too much trouble for most amateur criminals. While some buildings or devices have more advanced locks such as retinal scanning, fingerprint scans, or key cards, the more simple and traditional lock and key is more than enough for most people.
    • Bar and latch. They are simpler than locks yet work to keep unwanted outside.
  • In crime there are two things that significantly reduce the chance of being caught and arrested... A mask and a pair of gloves.
  • When it comes to Bank Robberies, "note jobs" are the simplest, least flashy, yet most effective way to do it. Unlike in the movies, bank robberies rarely involve ski masks, flashing guns around, or opening the vault. Shootouts very rarely ever occur after a bank robbery. Your average bank robber will simply walk into a bank (with next to nothing covering their identity, other than perhaps a pair of glasses and a hat), hand the teller a note demanding money, and walk out as casually as they went in with the cash in hand. The reason for this is that tellers are under strict instructions to give in to the robber's demands to avoid getting anyone hurt, which is also practical for the bank since putting their customers in danger is a hundred times worse than losing at most a couple of thousand dollars. The act is so quick and subtle that others in the bank may not even realize a crime is taking place. If the amount the robber demands is small enough, and they don't push their luck by robbing more banks, the crook may even be able to get away with it scot-free (though this is far from guaranteed, and bank robbers are prosecuted especially harshly when they do get caught, so don't take this as an endorsement of robbing banks).
  • In matters of sex:
    • The Missionary Position is the most boring-looking heterosexual sex position, but that's the one that study after study shows most heterosexual couples actually engage in the most.
    • Far less used but no less practical is Doggy Position. Many people are ashamed of their face while having sex so they need to use a position in which the couple don't need to see each other.
    • Condoms may make sexual activity less intimate due to less bodily contact among other things, but they protect from nasty STDs and unwanted pregnancies in a way that's cheaper and less of a hassle than going to an abortion clinic or having to deal with the health hassles and costs of living with said infections. In many places, condoms are given away by various institutions (NGOs, international development aid, the government, advertising, whathaveyou) for free. Other forms of contraception exist, but condoms are by far one of the most common and simplest means of protecting yourself and your partner, and the only one that protects against STDs.
    • For those who are worried about the risks of sexual penetration even with condoms and other anti-disease and birth control devices, or simply just don't dig intercourse, simple cuddles and kisses are effective and sensual forms of physical intimacy, and there are a fair number of people for whom cuddling and kissing without really going further are sexual turn-ons. It also puts less pressure on each participant to please their partner, if they don't go into bed together with the expectation of orgasms.
      • Hell, for those who don't want even a platonic romantic relationship, the simple friendship has all the communication and support needed. While not as intimate and exciting as the former, true friendships in general are very stable and more likely to excel in open communication.
    • Smaller penises may not look as appealing as the long schlongs you often see in pornography (especially of the drawn or rendered variety, which tend to inflate the definition of a big one), but they're less likely to hurt one's partner in acts of penetration or create embarrassing bulges in clothing at the most inconvenient of moments.
  • Hinges on doors. They are used to make the doors easy to open, close, and lock. The alternative is removing the door panels from entrances, or to slide them off on rails that tend to get stuck easily, or slide them up, where they may unintentionally function as makeshift guillotines.
  • One of the most useful pieces of dating advice: Be Yourself. Sure, it's a cliche you'll see in just about every form of media ever, but if you're actually looking for a serious romantic relationship instead of just a one-night stand or something similar, then it's best to be honest about the kind of person you are and the life you want to live.
  • In an emergency evacuation, you'll often be told to leave behind any belongings that may a hindrance to you getting out safely (whether due to the difficulty of finding, retrieving, or carrying said belongings) and just get yourself out of whatever needs to be evacuated. Yeah, losing that thousand-dollar laptop with your research paper on it, that doll you've had since you were a child, or that expensive purse that you bought in another country that's not available where you live may suck, but if you're dead, you won't be able to have them anyway. It's even worse if you have to evacuate someplace cramped, like a plane or a bus, because not only are you endangering yourself, you're also holding up and endangering other people who need to exit and a lot of material are flammable (batteries are prone to explode, for example), plus imagine if everyone tried to get out with their luggage/bags/whatever instead of leaving it all behind and prioritizing their own well-being.
  • Motels may not be as flashy as hotels, much less four-star hotels, but their lower cost means they sure beat sleeping in the car on long trips without access to toilets or showers. In addition, motels (and even cheaper hotels) have less tendency than fancy hotels to try and nickel and dime you for things like WI-FI or breakfast, knowing things like that can mean the difference for low-cost travelers. Go to a fancy 4- or 5-star hotel and they'll likely charge for the wifi, which will probably be not much higher quality than the free wifi at budget-class motels/inns/lodges, which tend to be more popular with people travelling for work.
  • Despite the endless possible varieties of limbs and body shapes, the vast majority of organisms share most of their traits with closely related species. Mammals in particular are remarkably similar in their basic body plan. The standard includes two eyes, one nose with two nostrils, one mouth with two jaws, two ears, four limbs, one heart, and a nervous system connected by a spine and controlled by one brain. Humans tend to fear or dislike animals more the further from that pattern they are, such as animals that have no legs or way too many legs.
  • Livestock.
    • Cows. Bovines are surprisingly useful to humans — they provide food, leather, and milk. They eat the by-products of our own food or eat plants that we can't eat. They produce fertilizer. They are strong enough to pull ploughs, carts, and even siege weaponry. Their stamina makes them handy for mills and treadwheels. Cattle even come in breeds adapted for different climates ranging from very hot (Zebu) to very cold (Yaks) and from sweltering jungle (Banteng) to dry mountains (Cassina).
    • Pigs. As Extreme Omnivores, they can eat anything from fruits and seeds to animal carcasses and table scraps. Their thick skin and fat provides natural protection from attacks by predators. Because of their hardiness and versatility, pigs are among the first animals to be introduced in settlements, and pork remains one of the least expensive meats at the butcher's counter because of the ease with which they can be raised and reared on almost any diet, in almost any environment.
    • Chickens. They need less food and space than most livestock, while also having the benefit of being more environmentally friendly. Bodybuilders especially value chicken meat for its high protein-to-fat ratio. Furthermore, chicken meat is acceptable among all major religions, meaning practically any non-vegetarians can rely on chickens for food. They also produce eggs for food and their feathers serve as stuffing and insulation.
    • Sheep. They can live on the same stuff as horses and cows but don't need nearly as much space, time, or money to raise. They provide warm wool for clothes and bedding, but also nutritious milk and meat, plus dozens of possible byproducts. Like cows, there are different breeds for the most extreme climates, and like chickens, all major religions can eat their meat.
    • As a rule, all domesticated animals fall under this trope, because they have to be useful and easy enough to domesticate in the first place.
    • Speaking of domesticated animals, one particular creature has every other tamed beast beat when it comes to this trope: the common cat. First kept for pest control once humanity started farming and storing grain, and then for companionship too, they excelled at both so well that only the dog rivals their popularity. Cats aren't flashy or hugely exciting or unusual like other more exotic pets and combination utility and companion animals but what they do, they do perfectly. A cat doesn't have to be trained or exercised like a dog, the owner just puts it somewhere and lets it do its thing. They're cheap and easy to keep, only needing food, somewhere to sleep, and a litter box. Cats kept solely for pest control don't even need to be provided for, since they will find their own food while doing their job. They're sturdy and suffer fewer health problems than other more fragile creatures like horses and pedigree dogs. They reproduce quickly so lost members of their colony are replaced swiftly if they die. They're cute and cuddly and provide a mood boost for most people, but — unlike dogs — cats are small enough that fatal attacks on humans are nearly unheard of. Plus, cats actually tend to enjoy being petted and given affection by humans, while other fuzzy pets (e.g. rabbits and hamsters) dislike it and may become stressed and bite if handled. Even the two main drawbacks of indoor cats can be easily managed. Tomcats urine spraying stops once they're neutered, and cats of both sexes won't claw furniture if they are given a cheap scratching post instead. Cats really do have it all.
  • The simple box.
    • Usually made out of cardboard, a box's only purpose is to store and transport items, but it's so widely used around the world that it's impossible to imagine life without the box.
    • House cats love cardboard boxes, and enjoy using them as a toy or for sleeping in. A common meme amongst cat owners is to invest hundreds of dollars into elaborate cat houses...only for the cat to stick to the cardboard box that their latest shipment of pet food came in.
  • The Riffle shuffle is by far the most commonly practiced card shuffle. It can be done without a solid surface, requires minimal dexterity to achieve, and 4-7 riffles has be mathematically demonstrated to produce truly random results. The overhand shuffle has less visual flair, but is good enough for casual play. "Washing" the cards — aka the Corgi shuffle — is a common alternative for children or those unable to perform other shuffles, but its practicality is mitigated by requiring a large surface and being considerably slower than other shuffles, even multiple shuffles.note 
  • The ladder. A simple device that can help a person reach a higher location. They're so seemingly insignificant that most people don't realize that they need one until they need to get somewhere that they're unable to reach on their own.
  • Another "don't know how useful it is until you need one" device is a plain old wheelbarrow. Boring and spends most of its time in the garage or shed, but if you need to move something heavy like a lot of dirt, chopped wood, or bricks, it makes life much, much easier.
  • Doors are among the most basic things any building will have and can alternate between being a simple barrier to entry (usually the front door or the like and accompanied by a lock) and being an opening to travel through. Closed doors also have many practical uses such as keeping hot air inside or outside a room, keeping dangerous people and animals out, and even slowing the spread of a fire.
  • Preventive maintenance. "If it ain't broke, why fix it?" Well, sometimes stuff stays in working order because it's maintained and kept in shape before anything bad happens that leads to more expensive repairs. Fixing or replacing things as their parts near their rated end-of-life can avoid much more expensive repairs...that will likely come after disastrous malfunctions.
  • When buying stocks, Index Funds and ETFs are this in a nutshell. They don't have the massive volatility of other stocks, so you won't be able to, say, invest in the next Amazon or Google before they get big, and it can take decades to make reasonable money from it. That said, it's relatively safe, and consistency means you'll eventually invest enough to pay for all your bills through just your dividend earnings, allowing you to either retire early, or use your day job's income for savings, home buying, and so on. Helping it is the natural snowball effect the longer you invest consistently until you have enough dividends to invest by just using your dividends, let alone seed money.
    • The act of buying and holding is this for standard holdings. They say time in the market is better than timing the market, and, not only do you guarantee gains from the successful companies, holding a stock for at least a year allows you to pay less in taxes if you sell.
    • Retirement funds like Individual Retirement Accounts and the similar 401(k) Accounts. They're not usually considered all that exciting and don't get the huge press of activities like the Awesome, but Impractical day trading, but they're very helpful vehicles for making your money work for you and all you need to do is get in the habit of sticking to your retirement goals. 401(k) plans can simplify this by automatically deducting your desired amount from your paycheck so you save for retirement with each payday.
  • Sometimes All Girls Want Bad Boys or guys want to say My Girl Is a Slut, but, to be honest, a standard relationship between two nice people who genuinely love each other, while it might not be adventurous, exciting, or, especially in the case of a Chastity Couple, fun in the bed, is the standard for the kind of relationship that will last happily.
    • The main reasons for relationships and marriage in every society on earth, for most of human history until the modern era, were practical, namely having children and for a division of labour in the home. Romantic ideas like finding a soulmate who is a perfect match and then marrying them solely out of love weren't a big thing.
  • "White noise" apps and audio. Sure, listening to ocean sounds, rain sounds, or even just what's effectively tuned static may not be as engrossing as music, but that's the point. For people focusing on work or studies, trying to relax, or trying to sleep, white noise helps provide a soothing background sound that one can listen to all day without suffering listener fatigue, getting distracted by the music itself, or going mad from hearing the same thing over and over. Furthermore, depending on what kind of sound, it can even drown out unwanted background sounds (say, the neighbors next door having a loud party, or coworkers babbling on and on amongst themselves in an open-plan office).
  • Feeling tired and worked up? Try meditation, where you just close your eyes, breathe in and out deeply and slowly, and keep at it. It looks silly, but this can pay dividends, as you are calmer, less anxious, and are more confident. Trust us, you will need it after reading something on TV Tropes and learning something you wish you didn't learn.
  • In a similar vein to white noise and nature sounds, lo-fi hip hop music is quite popular amongst students and workers. You won't see any big sell-out concerts for them anytime soon nor do they have a really vocal fandom, but that isn't the point. They're meant to be soothing, steady-rhythm tracks that give your ears a pleasant backdrop while you conduct your activities. Not for nothing are there 24/7 streams dedicated to non-stop lofi music that are frequently on the front page of YouTube.
  • When folk magicians in Britain were called upon to break a suspected witch's curse (one of their most common sources of employment), some went the route of allegedly magical charms and rituals. Others, on the other hand, physically attacked the suspected witch or threatened to sue them in court.
  • The Jellyfish is arguably one of the most successful lifeforms on the planet. They're so simple they're approximately 95% water (the average human is 55-60% water) and don't even have a brain to think with. Despite that, fossil evidence indicates they've been around since the Cambrian explosion, which predates the dinosaurs, and they're still going strong to this day. Don't fix what ain't broke, right? Almost all jellyfish don't actively seek out prey, they just let it get caught in their tentacles as they aimlessly drift through the waters, meaning they don't need to spend energy hunting. Unlike several other species which tend to go extinct due to human actions, jellyfish seem to be thriving due to us. A correlation to global warming and increased jellyfish population has been acknowledged. At the end of the day, the jellyfish is just a pile of stinging tentacles attached to a non thinking body. Yet its design has not changed since it evolved out of the primordial ooze.
  • Small streamers (e.g. on Twitch and YouTube) consider lurkers to be this — the ones who can be seen in the viewer list but almost never interact with the streamer or in chat. Even if those lurkers aren't engaging in Audience Participation activities or other lively chatting, the fact that they take the time to follow the streamer's published schedule and routinely watch their streams, even if it's just as background noise for other tasks, shows that they value the streamer's presence in their daily lives. Even just having three or four unobtrusive regular viewers can positively motivate streamers to continue their activities, considering that to be a much better alternative to no viewers at all. Lurkers also tend to be less prone to backseat gaming and other undesirable viewer interactions — they're often too busy with their other activities to care that their streamer is not playing a game the "correct" way, and tend to be just thankful they have some form of company. Finally, lurkers help contribute to the streamer's metrics (so long as they don't mute the stream audio through the player controls, but muting the tab the stream is playing in gets around this), which can be essential for sponsorship programs that require a certain number of viewers or more.
  • Traditional Heavy Metal today may not be super awe-inspiring and heavy like Thrash Metal, Power Metal, Doom Metal, Groove Metal, Death Metal, Black Metal, Nu Metal and so on (especially Avant-Garde Metal), but the genre has still packed a great amount of Metal Scream, Epic Riff and overall musical power. After all, Heavy Metal wouldn't exist if it weren't for trad metal.
  • Public libraries. They might not carry the latest hit books, but they are a longstanding valuable resource to many since they have a large catalogue of books that you can simply read on-site, and if you want to take a book home with you, you just need to sign up for a library card, which typically costs only a few dollars, and then check the book out; as long as you return it in a timely manner without damaging it, there's no additional charge to borrow that book (and if you still want or need the book, you can renew it provided that the book isn't on hold for someone else). Many libraries also carry movies, music CDs, and if they're funded well enough, even video games too; again, not as lavish of a selection as rental shops back in their prime, but simply having a library card gets you access to these at no extra cost. Libraries are also great for studying and doing work since they often feature many tables you can sit down at and free wi-fi access, much like a coffee shop but without the expectation or obligation to spend money. They often also feature computers that you can use; while they may prevent you from installing new software or accessing certain sites (such as porn sites, obviously), if you just need to check your email or work on an essay, for example, they can get the job done if for whatever reason you don't have a PC at home or it's out of service. And in this day and age of evolving personal technology, many libraries partner with e-book services and streaming services for TV shows and films, again needing only a valid library card for you to use.
  • Accounting. As a number-crunching discipline, it's not for everyone. But everyone needs an accountant, from businesses to track their expenditures and profit, science labs to allocate their grant money and other resources, to individuals for their own personal finances. Even criminals need accountants (actually, especially criminals), even those who are totally off the grid, like irates. If vampires existed, even they would need accountants, because they have to either pay their due or hide their wealth from the Intimidating Revenue Service.


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