teawrecks @ teawrecks @sopuli.xyz

Posts

4

Comments

1,688

Joined

2 yr. ago

AFAIK everyone in the US learns about this as part of their middle school curriculum.

Historically/anthropologically, conforming to the beliefs of the society you live in is the most logical thing a human can do for their survival.

These were the first two to come to mind for me as well. I hate what they've become, especially wow, but they were both clearly extremely influential.

Yeah, Kmart vibes is accurate.

There was a time when Target had a middle class demo they...targeted. But that demo is too small now. They're either going to need to shrink and market to the top 10%, competing with Whole Foods, or lower their standards and compete with Amazon. Oof, gotta love monopolies. Starting to think this boycott was Bezos' idea.

Every time I've gone into a target in the last 5 years, they legit looked like they were closing down. Idk why people are boycotting them in particular when Walmart and Amazon are way worse.

Is "NO MASKS" here an intentional double entendre?

In the modern parlance, i believe that counts as an [OEM] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_equipment_manufacturer) but the more accurate term that no one uses is probably a VAR

Luckily we don't need to guess or invent a history of the terms based on anecdotal experience, we have a real one.

As i understand it, the OEM business has razor thin margins as it is. This seems like an aggressively unsustainable business practice, to the point that it's making me wonder what their game is...

Yeah, I don't know of any. I don't spend any time on the larger social media sites, so if it went mega viral I would probably be the last to find out hah.

But...I feel like we're fast approaching (or past) the point where people will just start doing it out of necessity. It'll happen, but less in the form of a movement, and more in the form of a Great Depression 2.0 😕.

I get wanting to see people do *anything *. I can't disagree at all with that.

Something I hadn't shared is that, the way I found out about this "blackout" was when my partner came home and said "make sure to get any supplies you need tonight, we're doing an economic blackout tomorrow in protest", to which my first response was "if we're just buying everything today that we would buy tomorrow, what is the point?"

Meanwhile, today during the blackout, i assume everyone is getting on social platforms owned by these corporations to conspire about how they're not going to patronize their services today...

It just wreaks of slacktivism to me, which could be seen as either "better than nothing" or "a psyop deliberately orchestrated BY the corporations to make social groups feel like they're doing something, when they're really just spinning their wheels/tiring themselves out".

IMHO if we're going to take group action, it's vital that the desired outcome is clearly defined, and we don't stop until that is accomplished. The strategy of "let's shoot our shot, then go back to our lives, and cross our fingers that there's some latent impact" should be widely regarded as what not to do. That's why unions have strikes the way they do. You can picket all day, but in order to force change you have to draw a line and all agree to cross it (or not cross it, whatever the metaphor calls for, idk).

It seems like the issue here is, users want to be spoken to in colloquial language they understand, but any document a legal entity produces MUST be in unambiguous "legal" language.

So unless there's a way to write a separate "unofficial FAQ" with what they want to say, they are limited to what they legally have to say.

And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe now they need to create a formal document specifying in the best legalese exactly what they mean when they say they "will never sell your data", because if there's any ambiguity around it, then customers deserve for them to disambiguate. Unfortunately, it's probably not going read as quick and catchy as an ambiguous statement.

But sitting behind a keyboard and telling people to continue being small and helpless is not what we continue to need from the community.

Uncalled for, don't be like that, you know that's not what I said at all.

but these moments are our chance to get people involved

So you agree the expected outcome of this particular venture is to not have any tangible impact. Are you concerned at all about people seeing that it had no impact, and as a result feeling deterred from future involvement?

taking QZ, a website owned by a Private Equity Firm, with a grain of salt

I picked the first article in my search that wasn't paywalled, but they're all citing a study by Moody's Analytics, owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Take it for what it's worth.

"Rich people are now powering the economy" reads like rich people propaganda.

I agree wording the headline that way is misleading, because it's more accurate to say "rich people are creating the demand, poor people are doing all the work to fulfill the supply, but of course capitalism means the rich also get all those proceeds".

But the entire concept of Wealth Inequality directly implies that one small group will have all the money to spend, and another group will not. I don't see that as "pro rich people" I think most everyone would read it as "it's a problem that there are fewer customers in our economy". Even if you're the embarrassed-millionaire-type, you have to concede that fewer people out spending money translates to fewer opportunities for you to make your millions.

I just think this sounds like an idea that some privileged person came up with, assuming that everyone is out there being irresponsible with their money every day. But we're in a spot where not only are people not spending money, they're putting necessities on credit. I feel like that public debt-to-GDP ratio of the is the bigger threat to businesses. That's going to come crashing down on them, especially small businesses.

But a random bad day in Feb is also known to a retail business as a "Friday". People don't spend money during these months, even when the economy is good. Now if we did this any time between Thanksgiving and Christmas? THAT could send a message.

Changing your spending patterns for 7 years is completely different from one day of attempted boycotting. The reality is, people already aren't spending money. Just a few days ago it was reported that the top 10% of earners are currently responsible for half of all spending. "Spending" isn't leverage we have.

I would be more supportive of a movement to cut all subscriptions, and stop spending on anything beyond necessities until things are stable again. But anyone who's worked retail during these months knows that bad days are just business as usual.

"Actually, the shareho-- I...mean I have decided not to be a gay anymore."

You're describing a 1/10 sports game. We're talking about 10/10 sports games.

Not sure if you're including me in that group given that I never said that.

My assumption is that your goal is to make people aware of our jury system as it relates to the current political climate. If so, we have the same goal 👍.

I would rather play NBA jam on SNES than any 7/10 RPG.

IANAL, but it sounds like a "JNOV" could allow the judge to basically throw out a jury decision, regardless of what it is. It's just that they almost never use it because, as long as the jury hasn't been compromised or manipulated in some way, they respect the jury system.

IMO almost everyone (who knows about lemmy) knows about jury nullification. But the real risk people should know about is this JNOV ruling. I could envision a Trump appointed judge trying to use it nefariously in the near future.

What position would Bezos resign from, out of curiosity?