No no, just that there are some shortcomings with certain approaches that might still impact a company’s ability to reasonably reach customers, light emphasis on “reasonably”.

But it’s just something that they’ll have to figure out how to work around, not something those of us who are sick and tired of the ad spam should have to just accept as necessary evils.

I’m otherwise with you all the way.

But in reality most advertising money is spent by companies like Coca Cola, that we all already know. And they know that too, which means they know for a fact that continuing to spend money on advertising pays off.

This is something I found myself recognizing not too long ago. Why would a company like Coca-Cola, already the dominant force in the soft drinks market, need to spend so much money on advertising? It’s not to attract new customers, but to drown out their competition. If you have big players like Coke continuing to spend millions on each ad buy, smaller competitors get priced out and their message is lost in the signal noise.

If you’re selling me a new brand of cheese give me a discount at the store and I’ll try it.

Sometimes it can’t be that cut and dry though. E.g. even at a discount, there is no way a good pack of aged cheddar will be as cheap as the orange-colored plastic called Kraft Singles. Someone who has only ever eaten Kraft Singles won’t know what they’re missing and will just keep buying the cheaper option they know.

The vendor would need to first make folks aware of the difference in quality to convince people to buy. But this is one thing I think stores like Costco get right, at least. There are always people offering free samples of their product. Let the product speak for itself, for free, with no obligation to buy if you don’t like it.

If you’re selling me an expensive technical piece of equipment send review stuff to various people and organisations that test them.

This is also not foolproof because I’ve heard of reviewers being cut off from free products to review if they don’t give a positive rating. There are a lot of “sponsored reviews” as well which are, in fairness, usually disclosed, but they’re something you have to sift through to find less-biased takes.

This is my preference, but even then today I have to look at every recommendation with scrutiny. Astroturfing is only getting worse and worse.

It’s hard to rely on people I personally know to have previously purchased some niche things I need, or trust that their selection criteria are exactly the same as mine, so I have to go online and look deeper. But then when I go online, I have to accept that a lot of what I find will be fake users posting fake experiences to promote the product they want to sell, so I just end up trying to find as broad a sample as I can and trust my gut.

I wasn’t factoring you in this “we” you mention, I specifically clarified I wasn’t. This “we” tribalism is a simulated and false perception, that’s the point I’m getting at.

Are you actually responding to me or are you just talking around me to make a point?

But you don’t achieve wisdom by cloistering yourself apart from the out-group to create a neo-intelligentsia that treats theory as scripture and prioritizes only the aesthetics of revolution while ignoring the plight of the uneducated masses as a lost cause. That is the idea I am critical of (not you per se, but the behavior I’ve seen from a lot of others around the fediverse who care more about tribalism based on nothing more than the instance someone calls home).

I’m just here for a forum, not a soapbox.

Ok, I am also here for some memes, too. Life sucks without laughter.

In your quoted text, Mao is fighting those members of the communist party that shirked their duties and looked at themselves as above the masses, a small but relevant issue within the CPC at the time.

That is the analogy I was looking to make, yes.

Then please recommend the .ml admins approve my application this time.

Until then, I could do with less patronizing about circumstances beyond my control.

Isn’t that the same accusation that people throw out about Lemmy.ml though? It’s a reductionist meme at this point. If you honestly think the entire instance is a Nazi bar, why not just filter it out entirely instead of engaging with Nazis?

Like I said, I signed up for Lemmy.ml first. The admins rejected my application for reasons they would not disclose. I don’t know if it’s that they just didn’t like my username/email or whatever, but I tried a couple times and got the same result each time.

I settled on Lemmy.world barring the first option, because I was tired of applying and waiting just to keep getting rejections, and a friend had told me this instance just accepts everyone. So I figured why not?

But why advocate cooperation and mutual support on the fediverse when we can just foster more infighting based on tribalism, I guess?

I thought Hell could be found in the other country with Turk in its name:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater

All fun and games until Lembot_0009 is replaced by Lembot_000A.

Not sure from the banning perspective, but when deleting an account, there’s a toggle for whether or not you want to delete your posts and comments along with it.

I truly suffer for my fart.

…especially after eating too much dairy.

There is some slight irony to the idea that hardline .ml users consider themselves champions of the proletariat, while so vehemently disagreeing with the “normie” instance where most of the people are.

.world is far from perfect though, I’ll agree. I’m mainly just here because Lemmy.ml (the first instance recommended to me) rejected my application, while .world (the second one recommended to me) allows everyone.

“The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant, and without this understanding, it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge.” - Mao Zedong

You mean there is truly no higher fart?

Nicole noticed me once, that’s the only time in my life I ever felt special.

I’ll admit I also had to do a double take at the thought someone would think Philadelphia wasn’t American, but you’re right in that a lot of products borrow foreign-sounding names because they sound trendy. Something that you are always exposed to can be easy to overlook where it actually comes from. No one should hold that against you.

Not to mention the number of companies that used to be headquartered in one country but moved or were bought out by a foreign one. 7-11 comes to mind as an iconically American convenience store, and they were American, but are now based in Japan and have a much stronger association as a Japanese brand.

I was interested in PieFed and plan to give it a try at some point, but still have only used Lemmy. The other formats just aren’t as interesting to me. I don’t care about specific people, so Mastodon isn’t my bag. I care more about the conversations with friendly internet strangers. I don’t even have profile pictures enabled on Lemmy, I’d prefer everyone to just dissolve into a sea of unrecognition.

Here I was going to join this thread to share the controversial opinion of “The hamburger menu is fine,” because I thought the general trend was shifting away from using them.

Admittedly the hamburger menu is often misused. It’s like the junk drawer for developers who don’t know how to logically streamline the navigation modes within their app, so they just throw everything in there. But when it’s used well, to me at least, it’s a better option than some of the alternatives. I prefer to have views that I almost never use just kept out of the way in a menu I can manifest at will instead of occupying permanent space on a navigation bar.

Does have me wondering what the ratio looks like when applied to isolated (maybe mildly inbred) communities.

As in, there’s a lot of genetic variety for humans as a whole, but maybe less so for communities that, uhh, don’t get out much.