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?

It’s a timeless classic for sure.

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.

I looked it up, it does look like a line from the original PS1 script. Cid says this line, in the context of Cloud being potentially short-sighted by letting people finish their personal business before entering the Northern Crater.

Cloud: No! What I meant was… What are we all fighting for? I want us all to understand that. Save the planet… for the future of the planet… Sure, that’s all fine. But really, is that really how it is? For me, this is a personal feud. I want to beat Sephiroth. And settle my past. Saving the planet just happens to be part of that. I’ve been thinking. I think we all are fighting for ourselves. For ourselves… and that someone… something… whatever it is, that’s important to us. That’s what we’re fighting for. That’s why we keep up this battle for the planet.

Barret: You’re right… It sounds cool sayin’ it’s to save the planet. But I was the one who blew up that Mako Reactor… Lookin’ back on it now, I can see that wasn’t the right way to do things. I made a lot of friends and innocent bystanders suffer… …At first, it was revenge against Shinra. For attackin’ my town. But now… Yeah. I’m fightin’ for Marlene. For Marlene… For Marlene’s future… Yeah… I guess I want to save the planet for Marlene’s sake…

Cloud: Go and see her. Make sure you’re right, and come back. All of you. Get off the ship and find out your reasons for yourselves. I want you to make sure. Then I want you to come back.

Cid: Maybe ain’t none of us’ll come back. Meteor’s gonna kill us anyway. Let’s just forget any useless struggling!

Cloud: I know why I’m fighting. I’m fighting to save the planet, and that’s that. But besides that, There’s something personal too… A very personal memory that I have. What about you all? I want all of you to find that something within yourselves. If you don’t find it, then that’s okay too. You can’t fight without a reason, right? So, I won’t hold it against you if you don’t come back.

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?

It’s not perfect, but the basic idea is that assuming malice as default in every scenario will cause one to spiral into paranoia.

It’s not saying “people are never malicious and always just stupid” but just asking someone to take a step back from the situation and ask which is likelier in context.

Hanlon’s Razor is an old adage that boils down to: when you think someone is intentionally trying to be evil and ruin something, take a step back and ask whether it’s likelier they’re trying to be intentionally malicious, or if they’re just stupid/incompetent.

For example, you go to a restaurant and tell the waiter that you can’t have dairy, so you order a pasta dish without cheese. They bring it out to you, but look, there’s cheese. You can assume either that the waiter or the staff in the kitchen absolutely hate you and intentionally gave you cheese just to spite you…or that they just screwed up and forgot. The latter is probably likelier.

I was half-joking about potentially updating this idea to include an additional stipulation about AI bots online, which are good at looking like stupid people but actually are often malicious. Bots are used to sway political opinions. You have cases where they are trying to pass themselves off as real people to drown out legitimate discourse with a simulation of it, and cases like Musk’s Grok AI where it’s programmed to ignore truth and instead answer questions in ways that further his agenda or inflate his ego.

So sometimes when you see political posts that just defy all logic, or are ignoring a hard truth that is staring them in the face, you’re inclined to ask “How can this person sincerely believe what they’re saying right now?” And often the answer will be that they don’t, because they’re not a person, they’re a bot just regurgitating propagandic talking points.

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.

Preferably fried and with a side of honey mustard.

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

The post is also from 2022, and the tech has changed a bit since then.