For me it is when companies/services market themselves as donating to XYZ cause if I buy their product. If they want to donate, they should have already done that with the money they have. Asking me to give them profit so that they can donate is so obviously pretentious.
Hiding finished/already existing game content behind DLC. Day one patches. Pay 2 Win in General. I just want to play good, finished games :c.
Day one patches exist because the devs continued to work on the game after the physical editions went gold, so the data on disc versions will be behind. They’ll stick around even if the industry goes entirely digital due to online stores offering encrypted preloads that won’t have the patches either.
Day one DLC usually (fuck Capcom) exists for a similar reason - the art and asset pipelines finished their work months before launch, so rather than lay them off or pay them to do nothing, the studios have them work on DLC for the last few months before release.
No arguments about P2W. That and the death of persistent lobbies in favor of matchmaking destroyed my enjoyment of multiplayer games.
To me it’s sending me e-mails I have not explicitly signed up for. I have had once or twice, when I had filled out a form to order something and without pressing submit, they had already registered my e-mail address and signed me up for all kinds of spam, starting with ‘weren’t you about to order something’.
Especially when they sign me up for a bunch of different emails lists I need to unsubscribe from each one individually and eventually just spam everything from them. Then they sell my email.
Use a different email alias for each site. Duckduckgo with their duck.com, or Apple’s Hide My Email makes that easy; let your password manager keep track of the alias. If they start to spam me, I know not to use that site again, and I can delete the alias so that the spam goes into a black hole.
I use my pets names. They frequently get special invitations for credit cards.
GDPR. Honestly, one of the greatest laws ever passed by anyone, anywhere. No hyperbole, it’s so simple and pro-dignity. It also offers a simple litmus test: if you oppose GDPR, I oppose you.
Yep this was Canal Digital in the Netherlands. I sent them an e-mail that they should really stop doing this or I would mention it to the AP (Dutch privacy guard dog).
I mentioned it to the AP regardless.
The ones that say re: your order
I’ve started signing them all up for each other’s mailing lists.
You sound like someone who would enjoy that adblocker that clicks on every ad in the background.
Edit: called adnauseam.io
Aheeem excuse me buddy, where the hell do you think you’re going? You left some ITEMS in your CART. You get back here right now and complete your purchase. Don’t make me tell you twice!
This is Grubhub and all those other apps when I get a craving at home and don’t want to drive or can’t drive because I’m not sober. I browse through and see some stuff that looks decent and get all the way to the end to find out that my $10 worth of food is now going to be $25 plus tip to be delivered to me. So I just close the app and then get one of those stupid notifications “hey you still have stuff in your cart! Come back and finish your order”.
No, fuck you.
But sometimes there’s a good coupon in that email. The weed companies are good at that!
Cold calling. And other proactive forms of sales when they seek you out and actively keep trying to convince you that you need their product.
Bonus points if the sales person is unable to actually explain the product and keeps talking about “we don’t sell products we sell solutions”
All of them…
Most of them
There’s this ad I keep seeing that I really despise. It’s for teeth-whitening toothpaste. The actress is wearing a white coat then holds up a tissue to her teeth, lamenting that her sparkling white teeth are ‘still yellow’
They cut away to teach you how toothpaste works, because surely you’ve never heard of this newfangled thing, and when they cut back she’s no longer wearing her white coat and says how much whiter her teeth are.
It’s transparently obvious that the wardrobe and tissue are just to give you something whiter to look at. But like… your teeth aren’t supposed to be freakishly white. It’s just something that Big Toothpaste wants you to feel bad about the way your body is. Also, using whitening toothpaste when you don’t need it can damage your enamel and cause you long term problems.
Unite against big toothpaste! I agree with those.
Yes I hate teeth whitening in general. I really dislike that unnatural shade of white. What gets me of their advertising methods is that they usually prey on people’s insecurities based on the myth that the whiter your teeth the healthier they must be.
This isn’t complete bunk. The new indicator of wealth is healthy teeth. Poor kids don’t get to go to the dentist regularly, so have more problems later on; rich kids get regular cleanings to prevent buildup, and have much healthier teeth.
The trick was making us equate white-white teeth with healthy teeth, even though there’s a shade of ‘white’ that is just healthy, clean enamel with no plaque buildup but isn’t true white.
I only retained this when I heard it as I was a poor kid and, wow, am I glad I have a good job as our dental care is still mercenary as fuck.
PSA whitening toothpastes are just normal toothpastes with added abrasives. So they temporary whiten your teeth because you’ve removed the outer most enamel which gives your teeth its hardness. At the mere cost of tooth sensitivity and future staining, the deeper dentine layer is much softer and porous which is easily damaged by acidic foods but also more easily stained due to the porosity. So congratulations your teeth are now more stained.
This one needs to be illegal.
Apps that you need push notifications turned on for, but also serve ads.
For example, where I live the company that does riding sharing also does all kinds of deliveries. I get notifications about all kinds of restaurant deals.
The version of Amazon we have sends all kinds of unwanted messages from sellers if you add an item from their shop to your cart. It can be turned off, but it needs to be done one by one manually.
Even the mobile wallet apps that we use here send all kinds of ads.
Like, I need notifications about payments and that is it. Stop giving me full screen popup ads each time I open the app to make a payment. It just slows me down and frustrates me.
Some android phones have the ability to long press on a notification, click on settings, and alter what kinds of notifications you receive. I’ve had a few instances like you describe, but where I’ve been able to turn off “special deals” or whatever. I think implementation of this is done by the app developer though, because I’m sure I’ve had some apps that had no useful settings. Example screenshot of Gmail settings:
That’s a cool feature. I doubt the app would offer this as they probably do not want to allow the notifications to be turned off.
This is good advice but also heavily dependent on the app developer. I’ve had the misfortune of using banking apps that only have a general notification option and they lump together important banking notifications with adverts. PITA scumbag bank
“Would you like to round up your purchase, we promise that we’ll give it to somebody who needs it.”
Large, well known companies that just advertise that they still exist. Like, yeah, I know McDonaldsBurgerTacoBellWendySonic’s exist. I pass them on every street corner. Show me an advertisement for something I don’t know exists.
Resetting/moving the products on the store’s shelves en masse, not because there’s holes from discontinued products but because “people will stop paying attention to the shelves if everything stays the same.” I’m old and in a hurry and I was here to give you my fucking money. Don’t make it hard for me to give you my fucking money.
Pricing to the 9’s.
Filling the shelves with a bunch of things that don’t seem to sell all that well, taking up space that could have been used to keep more of the fast moving products on the retail floor, just to have the appearance of diversity on the shelves.
Drive-by advertising. When someone joins a forum I’m active on just to let us know about their shiny new product and doesn’t participate in any other way. Even if it’s relevant, it’s still pretty scummy.
Contacting me after I browse their website.
I’m gonna go the other way. The only marketing I acknowledge is factual reporting of design features that make a product suitable for the intended task. Anything else is dishonest and manipulative.
Think of Chris Cooper’s character from Interstate 50. Any marketing claim must be specific, measurable, verifiable, and accurate.
Right? Like…”which parts about being manipulated in order to take the money from you that you didn’t even want to have to rely on in a system that doesn’t make sense and actively hates you and uses you and then chews you up and spits you out do you not like?”
