With a looming iron-grip marketers and advertisers have over pretty much anything in their reach, why aren’t the masses collectively making harassment campaigns to them?
I think if we actively told every single marketer off in a prolonged effort, they’d get a hint as to how much of their commercialism we don’t need shoved down our throats.
They’re just trying to keep food on the table. Maybe go punch some Walmart greeters?
There is a old man ready to accept those spam calls.
It’s stressful and ineffective. Why do that to myself?
It works much better to block marketing where possible, poison data where you can, scrub personal data from the internet. While the beast is too big too slay, a little effort makes it a lot easier to deal with
OP my friend, you will simply adore this quick video.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that the only way to stop the excesses of capitalism is with a concerted effort to gum up the works, one business at a time, from most to least evil.
Everyone who has worked retail knows how to waste the company’s time, money, and effort.
Let’s say it’s a chain of megamarts:
Pick a busy day. Load up a cart with rotisserie chickens, raw meat, and ice cream, and abandon it in the garden center. Window shop and ask as many questions as possible of every employee you encounter. Ask dumb questions. Ask what the battery life on a pair of wired headphones is. Ask how many eggs are in a dozen. How do they know the chicken is boneless? Have they looked? Don’t buy anything you ask all the questions about. Buy only loss leaders. Pay with a combination of loose change, a check, and a card you know will decline at the end. “Oh wait I need just one more thing. I’ll just be a second!” then leave through the garden center. Go to the automotive center and talk to them about financing a large tire purchase. Back out at the last second. Get paint mixed and then wander off absentmindedly while they’re mixing it. Pretend to be interested in signing up for their store credit card. There are so many time wasting questions you can ask about a credit card. And so many ways to fill out a form incorrectly so it’s useless. Try to pay with any coupon but one that you know will work. Expired coupons. Coupons for other stores. Coupons from defunct stores. Coupons from Arby’s. Chuck E Cheese tokens. Gift certificates from that one comic book shop across town that’s run by a sweet old man that still uses gift certificates because he’s old fashioned that way. Traveler’s cheques. Ask if your membership card from their direct competitor entitles you to any discounts. If you speak a language other than English, that is now your only language. You understand English only when it is disadvantageous to the company for you to do so.
Time is money. Waste their money. And since this is being done to one business at a time, their competitors don’t have an entire movement of people acting like plausibly deniable problem customers dragging them down. You’re distorting the margin at which they can operate. If they raise prices while it takes forever to buy anything in the stores, well, none of their competitors have that problem.
Yet.
Leave glowing reviews of every low-level employee you encounter. Tip them. Make up a few employees and give them glowing reviews. Leave scathing reviews of anyone in management you encounter.
Harassing the underpaid workers is your solution?
One thing ive noticed is that the younger generation, which I assume you are, have a lot of desire to change capitalism but absolutely shit poor ideas how to do it.
Im not saying I have any great ideas either. But making the already suffering employees suffer more will not lead to changes. You know that.
He is an immature child who gaslights and reports comments to get his dick hard. He doesn’t care about resolving anything because he lacks real and actual solutions.
He is an immature child who gaslights and reports comments to get his dick hard.
You’re really mad that someone reported the threats you made?
What makes it a threat?
It’s not a threat when:
I don’t know you in person. I don’t know where you live. I’m not making any overreaching attempts to locate you. No where did I state or say that I was coming to find you.
Hm, you seem to have a loose definition of what constitutes a threat. Just like you do in reality and the world around you, child.
Anyone can follow the link and read what you wrote.
But does it lead to an actual location? That’s what I’m talking about, dumbfuck.
Just like anyone here can see you as being a stupid motherfucker with no brain. You’re not bringing in anything insightful or anything, you’re just being fucking trash. You belong on Reddit, because you act like any one of them assholes.
You can’t argue anything. You just spew abuse and threats.
Harassing the underpaid workers is your solution?
They’re already harassed and their conditions are already deteriorating. The only way that will ever improve is if there is no profit in mistreating them, since there is no party interested in improving things for workers in this country.
One thing ive noticed is that the younger generation, which I assume you are
One thing I’ve noticed is that boomers think that if you disagree with them, it means you must be younger than them and therefore wrong.
have a lot of desire to change capitalism but absolutely shit poor ideas how to do it.
As opposed to no desire to change capitalism and infinite excuses to prevent such change.
Im not saying I have any great ideas either.
Or any desire to formulate any.
But making the already suffering employees suffer more will not lead to changes. You know that.
They will have to suffer more regardless. Capitalism demands more work for the same wages over time. And inflation guarantees that wages’ ability to pay for a living decrease over time.
I know I disagree with you so you immediately assume I’m a child incapable of giving anything any thought. I work in a customer-facing position. I have my own set of ways to gum up the works for my sector of the economy. Yes, some of the things I listed are aggravating to workers. The ones I have for my job are based on personal experience and I know I would hate them too. But every last one of them was selected to maximize time and resources wasted first and foremost, with the goal of causing actual diminution of the fortunes of the company. If it’s just a dick move to the employees, if it causes them suffering without also harming the company’s bottom line in some way, I didn’t include it. Except maybe the dumb questions thing. That’s probably a bridge too far.
One thing I’ve noticed is that boomers think that if you disagree with them, it means you must be younger than them and therefore wrong.
If you’re older than a boomer, your arguments tend to consist of. “Speak up! Why can’t you speak up? No, I don’t need a hearing aid. I need you to speak up!”
Oh my. This is so well planned. Props to you.
Rather just figure out where the board and C-staff lives and take a shit on their porch
Every day
You can do both.
Please don’t contribute to the abuse, torture, and murder of vulnerable individuals just to make a totally unrelated point. Chickens and cattle are not lumber and steel, they are individuals who would have been loved by their mothers if they had been given the opportunity. The animals we create are all morally entitled to the exact same unconditional love and protection as our own children.
Pray tell I never run into someone like you if you ever come to the store I work at to do any or all of those things. I will make your death slow and painful. I will restrain you to a shopping cart and I will pay a trip to the hardware section so I can test the effects that each tool will have on your body. Then, we’ll pay a visit to the chemicals section and I’ll happily have you sample each chemical I’ve always wondered in how it’d taste but you’d be my test subject for that. Then we’ll pay a visit to the automotive section for more experimenting, where you’ll probably face more painful tortures, before I unceremoniously dump you into a baler and happily turn the key to crush you.
And when people ask me as I am arrested for the obvious murder, I’ll point them exactly to this post of yours. While saying “this is the dumbfuck who thought they knew how to start a revolution”.
Tell me how your boss really wants you to feel.
There is nothing influencing my opinion and thought process about how I feel about you this instant.
Your method, would upset and destroy lifelines whose jobs are tied to the stores that your big-deal idealistic and immature “plan” would invoke on. It is poorly thought out, outright stupid and details how out of touch you are with reality. Go ahead, I lobbed you an easy smart-ass retort where you can tell me “but whuh abut ur violent fantasy and u tuld me im out of touch?”. Gave it to you.
You’re a fucking idiot, through and through. Spoken like a true dumbass Redditor who pretends they’re not a Redditor. Tell me, is Lemmy really Lemmy anymore or just simply another Reddit faucet containing social rejects like you?
There is nothing influencing my opinion and thought process about how I feel about you this instant.
Except undying loyalty to your employer. Thing is, if there’s a bunch of people wasting everyone’s time, the legitimate customers are going to go elsewhere. Other places are going to need to hire to cover the increased traffic, and will be looking for people with experience.
Your method, would upset and destroy lifelines whose jobs are tied to the stores that your big-deal idealistic and immature “plan” would invoke on.
That’s already happening. The difference with my plan is that the poor aren’t the only ones suffering for once. Hell, let’s say you’re wasting the time of a phone scammer or a title loan usurer. Are those also holy sacrosanct job creators?
Go ahead, I lobbed you an easy smart-ass retort where you can tell me “but whuh abut ur violent fantasy and u tuld me im out of touch?”. Gave it to you.
You’re literally begging me to dignify that with a response you wanted. No. But thanks for admitting it was bait and that you’re trolling.
This reads like a George Carlin bit
it sounds fun but
And since this is being done to one business at a time,
how can people coordinate that?
Pick a chain. One that’s everywhere. Then pick a day to start and a condition for ceasing. Then get the word out.
The thing is to be indistinguishable from a run of the mill garbage customer, so if they crack down on people for acting like that, they’ll piss off the boomers who genuinely act like that as a matter of course.
I assume you mean unsolicited phone calls with this? I haven’t gotten any of those in about a decade, if not more. And those were isolated cases as well. We have laws against that sort of thing. It’s not been a problem for a very very long time (early 2000s or so).
Create special waiting queue on your home telephone system with the most horrible waiting music loop. Maybe some Texas country music yodel. Marketer calls, feign interest, “oh, there is someone at the door!”, put them in the waiting queue, and leave them there until they give up. Repeat until lesson learned by marketer.
Do the horrific hold music then throw them at Lenny
That’s music I would not touch with a ten foot pole.
Luckily, we don’t get random telemarketers calls here. The last ones who tried were a few years ago, and I reported them to the authorities, who shut them down.
All in all we’re just another brick in the wall.
Because I try my best to treat other people the way I wish to be treated myself. I have no desire to harass anyone, and if I did, I’d feel awful about it. There are enough jerks in the world already, and I don’t want to add to that. Nobody has ever stopped acting shitty because people responded by acting shitty toward them. What you’re advocating isn’t virtuous, no matter what story you tell yourself about it. You’re just trying to justify your own bad behavior so you don’t have to feel guilty when you go to bed at night.
Marketers and Advertisers don’t respect you, though. Why respect anybody who just doesn’t respect you? People are just going to act shitty or have potential to be shitty anyways even if you respected them, that’s just how some of it goes.
I don’t respect anybody who feel they’re entitled to my time and sometimes, money.
Mfs be coming to my front door with no regard for my “no solicitation or proselytizing” sign. Fuck all their grandmothers!
My unwillingness to mistreat a stranger doesn’t mean I respect them.
It is more about treating people with the respect that you wish to be treated with.
Nobody has ever stopped acting shitty because people responded by acting shitty toward them.
Absolutely not true, and also contrary to the entire premise of the justice system.
But while you go too far in some of your arguments, your point is sound.
Spot on.
Bill Hicks has a good template for this.
Time to post the classics Bill Hicks and George Carlin.
Everything flows down from the C-Suite. They tell Marketing to increase sales. Marketing tells Advertising to make “creative” ads (but then only approves “safe” boring ads). Then Marketing runs those uninteresting ads based on the number of times a spreadsheet says will get the most sales. They are disassociated from the customer experience, and will likely not be moved by public outcry. They only care when it doesn’t work, and it does or they wouldn’t do it. Sorry.
While I mostly agree, for many kinds of ads there isn’t a great way to correlate particular ads with efficacy, so there absolutely are as campaigns that the c suite is convinced are working that are just practically not at all.
I’d imagine there are ways to control for that, to some extent. Ie you run an ad in market A but not in market B to see if it works. Wouldn’t with for all contexts though.
- I’m not that type of person. I don’t have it in me to rip someone apart that I don’t know personally.
- They aren’t personally responsible. They’re on the bottom just like us.
- The people who make the money will just continuously recycle employees because they know they can.
I’m sorry but this answer right here is why they win.
Sure, you may not know them personally, but they’re getting to know you more than you’re knowing yourself. Enough to specifically push and market products specifically and particularly at you.
Yes they usually are personally responsible and they aren’t always on the bottom. They make $56 ~ $161k a year, entry to senior. They’re just above the grind.
That’s nothing new because that’s applicable to any job, not just marketing.
But that’s just it. I just ignore it and move on. I will feel worse emotionally and morally if I yell at someone than if I passively move on with my life. I don’t care of they win according to their rules. I’m winning according to mine.
I think you’re doing it exactly right. The three things I try to remember: 1) Do what you can, 2) When you can, 3) For as long as you can.
Some stuff is out of my wheelhouse, it’s not something I can not or will not do. Sometimes I have other obligations I need to keep in order to honor commitments I’ve made or help those in my circle that need it. And sometimes, I need to rest so I can be my best for those other stages. All of that is OK. Do what you can, when you can, as long as you can. Exceeding those boundaries is a recipe for trouble. Others will help plug holes once they see something is already happening and your community support system will self-reinforce and grow over time.
Who exactly are we talking about here? Are you saying I should be harassing the people in the marketing department at my company? Or are you saying we should have visibility campaigns about the companies involved in the Internet ad networks? Or someone else?
Fuck comms/marketing. They harrass me and misrepresent my work all the time, they swap out carefully selected words and distort meaning for spurious reasons. They bend over backwards for ignorant journo scum and feed their misinformation just trying to “spin” it. They sound like ai, i wish they were ai. I wish all fucking comms cretins would quit and get a real job, like a fucking cleaner or binman or something actually helpful.
Being right isn’t as important as doing right. I have better things to do with my time, unlike marketers.
Back before I blocked every type of ad, I would click through ads every time they pissed me off. I would click, let the page load, and click two more links within their page before closing it. Ad views cost them a small fraction of a cent. That click through cost them an order of magnitude more money. That is how AdSense works. All you have to do is get everyone to do the same and the entire system fails within a few weeks. No one cares if you whine to some low level employees. If you want to protest, molest their bank account like they do your time. They are actually extremely vulnerable if you simply understand how the system works.
It’s actually a bit more complicated.
AdSense indeed used to work through ratios of views and clicks, but Google (and all other ad networks) have been tinkering with it to benefit them even more.
Today, it’s about conversion, and conversion as a KPI is not well defined. Clicking into an as might simply not be enough to make it cost more.
Yeah. I’d assume they do it at least as a ratio, not an absolute. They can’t be that stupid . . . can they?
Did you know there is a browser extension that does this for you while also blocking ads from view?
I heard there is a browser extension which does this
