LED Lights - How I Hate Thee

LED lights suck. The worst part is they SHOULDN'T suck. But somehow manufacturers have encheapened them to the point that it is literally painful. I've been lucky enough to find a couple of OK-ish ones over the years, quality varies a lot, but most of what is on store shelves today is unacceptable garbage.

Where to start?

First of all they are way too "bright". I'm not exactly sure how to explain this, but there is something vastly different about the light they produce that hurts my eyes, and makes them seem brighter even when they don't illuminate as much. For example LED floodlights seem brighter than actual sunlight. Blue LEDs are the most annoying, but white LEDs are painful, and "modern" green, yellow, and red LEDs are also painful even though old 1970s/80s/90s LEDs don't bother me at all. Oddly, I seem to be the only one who notices the difference.

Burn-out-your-retina blue LEDs found their way in to almost every electronic device a number of years back. But more recently, it is the obnoxious pulsating rainbow colored LEDs. Somehow consumertards love this repulsive garbage.

When buying LED lights for lamps, I have to be careful to look for "warm" temperature lights. Temperature and luma are not always labeled, and warm temperature lights can be harder to find. "Cool" temperature lights hurt my eyes more, and, this does not make sense, although they appear brighter, the light that illuminates the objects around them seems "empty". That is to say, things are illuminated but they are hard to see, for example it is harder to read a book in "cool" LED light.

"Cool" temperature LED lights are closer in color to sunlight. This can badly throw off natural sleep patterns. This is also true of blue LEDs used in electronic devices.

Some flicker at 60hz, or possibly other frequencies. Fluorescent lights had the same problem and could easily cause headaches or eye strain. LEDs can produce continuos light, but manufacturers omit power regulation to save some tiny amount of money. Meanwhile, most idiots don't consciously notice this problem.

LED lamp light bulbs do not always turn on or off instantly. LEDs themselves are very near instant (hence the flickering), but the cheap power converters found in some LED light bulbs may take a second or so to start providing power to the LEDs.

Apparently modern LED lights get dimmer over time. That should not be possible unless manufacturers push too much voltage through the LEDs. But apparently they do just that.

The LED lights that I have had burn out haven't died because of faulty LEDs. Instead the power supply electronics burn out or just magically become unsoldered. LED lights with bad solder connections randomly flash on and off as the bulb heats up.

Some LED lamp lights can put off a good amount of RF interference that can interfere with AM/FM radio. Probably also a result of the shitty power electronics.

Well, that is assuming all they really have in them is a power supply chip. "Smart lights" have a miniature CPU that is apparently powerful enough to run DOOM. So who knows what malicious stuff is in modern Chinese made LED light bulbs. They even could be "chipped" to ensure the bulb dies at specific times, making you buy more. Although I don't believe the crappy soldering would  last that long.

A while back I had the misfortune of having to stay someplace that had a bunch of holiday xmas trees up. Several trees were lit up with regular old lights and those did not bother me. But one had LED lights and every time I had to look in its general direction, I felt like I was going to have a seizure! (Then there was the annoying repetitive music going on about imaginary sky fairies, but that is another story).

There used to be laws regulating the color, brightness, and "temperature" of automotive headlights. At least in some states. There also used to be similar rules about this for public illumination (like parking lots/golf courses/etc). I don't know what happened to this, but these days idiots around here don't care about this at all.

Somehow LED headlights are brighter than a normal car's high beams. Someone drives up behind me and their LED headlights in the mirror are even brighter and more painful than the rising sun directly behind both of us.

By the way, why the hell do idiots leave their headlights on during the day now? It used to be the only time people turned their lights on on a sunny day was during a funeral procession.

On some cars now they even have some kind of light AROUND the headlight that always seems to be on. They are just as painful to look at, even when the headlight itself is off.

And when I think I have seen everything.... I have seen a few cars with LED headlights that FLICKER. While it could be they were not mounted properly, they looked to me like cheep Walmart LED light bulbs that flicker at 60 cycles per second. Given that cars run off of batteries, not AC current, someone had to intentionally foul up an electrical design really badly to make that happen. Great, blind me AND give me a headache at the same time.

Colored lightbulbs? There is zero reason for these to exist. Oh, but idiots can control them from their precious smart phone, letting them imagine that worthless brick has some purpose.

So why put bright blue LEDs in everything? I have a few theories.

First of all, obviously an electronic device that has blue or exrtra-bright LEDs will get more visual attention than an identical device without such  LEDs. Therefore marketing departments insist on blue LEDs, even if it makes people's eyes fall out.

Second of all, blue LEDs, and to a lesser extent even extra-bright white LEDs, are hypnotic. The specific blue shades trigger an instinctual relaxing pleasure response reaction in "normal" people, much in the same way that late evening sunlight might.

There may also be an association with blue hot burning flames, such as those produced by burning natural gas. A device with blue LEDs therefore looks more "powerful". (This may also be why sci-fi shows like to light up alien weapons or tech with bright blue lights. But how would the aliens ever sneak up on enemies in the dark with their big glowing, pulsating, humming, guns? They didn't think of that did they?)

On cell phones or computer screens, this is combined with hypnotic animation and scrolling. On other devices, they can be combined with abusive user intefaces. So, altogether blue/ultra-bright LEDs act as consumertard magnets and a general form of mind(less) control, much like a drug.

Annoyingly, much like cell phones, once bright blue LEDs were everywhere it became impossible to criticize them. People expect to be abused, crave abuse, and get angry when someone suggests they don't put up with such abuse.

One of these days I'm going to figure out how to blind "normal" people with LED lights, and put it in the form of a big middle finger.

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