Sometimes I feel like if I do so I’m basically serving as an ad, and I don’t really care for that, especially if later I find that the business was scummy in some ways (which is often the case, especially later as it changes leadership/ownership).
If you do, how do you deal with it?
Ads are convincing people to buy something they hadn’t considered.
If I’m making a recommendation, it’s because I’m sharing it with people who are either asking for a solution, or have the same problem I solved with the product. And not because I own a bunch of their data and inferred what “solutions” I could sell them.
There’s a big difference that the thought hadn’t ever crossed my mind.
Not if I’ve vetted the product and feel like they offer a decent value, in one form or another.
In real life absolutely not. Here on Lemmy yeah, I’m at the point where I avoid it.
I avoid it almost all the time. Because:
- I avoid uncalled advice, so there goes 90% of the time when people would suggest a brand.
- I’d rather support local brands over country-wide or international brands. However most people whom I speak with are on the internet, and live far away.
- Most of the time talking about the product (e.g. “shavers”) works well enough, I don’t need to talk about the brand (e.g. “ACME shavers”).
- I’m one of those DIY muppets. Specially when it comes to kitchen stuff. I’m not talking about the brand of tomato sauce, I’m making it! (Or butter. Or pepper sauce. Or spice mix.)
I get around that by not acting like an ad.
I only tell someone about a specific commercial product/service if they actually asked for my rec.
And I don’t try to persuade them to use it.
This is mostly a symptom of being online too much and seeing enough ads to think critically about them.
People have talked about the tools they use for about as long as we’ve had both tools and language. I think its fine to just talk about stuff and not need to worry about your impact on capitalist society while doing it.
This is mostly a symptom of being online too much and seeing enough ads to think critically about them.
Would this apply even in the case of an avid ad-blocking person? At least that’s my situation, so what I’m seeing is less the ad-ridden web and more what remains, which is still a lot of discussion of commercial stuff.
I guess I’m thinking along the lines of the “What the hell is water?” story in a way.
I get what you mean, but my statement wasn’t really about how someone can escape the matrix by seeing enough advertising to realize that its poisioning society and wanting to escape that.
Its more that people would still talk about their commercial products even if there werent ads for it. Thats just a human experience thing.
Advertising muddies the water a whole bunch here because someone has taken that moment of human connection where you talk about a tool that fixed a problem you had, or some food you tried that was really good into something to make money.
Basically your choices are:
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Talk about the things with people and ignore the commercial implications.
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Be riddled with anxiety over a conversation accidentally making a few extra dollars for CocaCola or Amazon.
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Somehow totally dismantle the capitalist system and remove the profit incentives from human conversations involving things you can purchase.
TLDR: you can’t totally avoid capitalism so focus on your own happiness rather than worrying about who might be making money from the things youd be doing anyway.
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I think some brands have earned a good reputation, and I don’t think you should feel bad for promoting them when asked if you genuinely believe they are aligned with a cause you support (fair wages, good customer service, high quality product, locally sourced, open and transparent operations could be a few examples). That reputation is theirs to squander from shitty management decisions in the future, that’s not on you to control.
I have felt the feeling you express in threads like this one. In that case I made sure to wait 12 hours before putting my answer, that way my brand namedrop wouldn’t be voted to the top as if it was a “Promoted” comment. Someone who is looking for that will find honest recommendations from me but I’m not trying to act like I’m being sponsored.
Your last sentence gets at part of what I was thinking in writing this question. I see where others are coming from when talking among friends or not awkwardly dropping in products/titles, but it’s that limbo space when either talking among acquaintances or online with strangers where it gets murkier to me.
I think some of this also comes from the posting culture you see if you browse microblogging platforms, even apart from influencer-types, which I think comes from the constraints of a lower character count to some degree.
But if a product is so damn great, do you want a person whom you care about to use an alternative product and have a worse experience?
When I see people using LastPass, I feel obligated to inform them about BitWarden, because it’s free, open sourced and audited.
You should trust that ads are going to be dishonest in one way or another. If you, personally, discuss your opinions and experiences of certain good and services with other people, you know that you may at least be honest, if you want to. And in doing so, you’re likely helping people make better choices with their money.
I needed some physiotherapy last year, and the first clinic I went to tried to handle me like I was a cog in an industrial complex: get done with him fast, don’t listen to his feedback, wait I forgot to ask what did his doctor diagnose but whatever we’ve only got 25 minutes. The therapists at the next clinic (one of them had to take medical leave, so I was assigned to a different one two weeks in) properly took their time to find every contracture, listened to me, offered longer sessions and was cheaper. Shittalking the first clinic and recommending the second one is only positive for everyone. Except for the asshole who runs the first one.
Talking about the things that are working well for you in your life is fairly natural. But the fact that you feel like you’re an ad suggests that maybe you’re doing it too often.
We cannot know everything about the businesses that we interact with, so I don’t think we need to feel guilty if we later learn that a business is shady. Actually, if you occasionally mention the businesses that you endorse, you might find that people will tell you about some of those shady business practices. And that can be stressful because it might sound like a personal attack, but it’s also an opportunity to take another look at your current situation and figure out what you want to do in the future.
I never feel conflicted when I drink a nice, refreshing Dr. Pepper©. 😉
Not in the very rare case where the positivity is warranted because the product is decent, appropriately priced, and not too shittified.
