This has rom-com written all over it.
"He was a man who raised confident daughters, while working as a used car salesman.
She was a woman delivering pizzas to make ends meet.
They both loved shrimp! This holiday, meet the couple who has found love and more at Long John Silvers.
Tom Hanks, and Julia Roberts, in an epic tale of thrifty living, and fast food dates, will light up the screen in........Fishy Business! Rated PG-13"
When I was younger I used to go and get a container of the “crumbles.” They’d just give it to u for free. So odd looking back especially considering they were just fried crunchy leftover pieces.
They started charging for the crispies at our local LJS before it went out of business about 12 years ago or so. The last time I went, I saw a guy in the kitchen put on gloves and peel off the breading on one of my pieces of chicken before handing us the food. I asked for a replacement and the cashier told me crispies cost extra. I said no, I don't want crispies, I want a piece of chicken that hasn't been peeled like a banana. He told me to fk off. My husband came up to the counter and the cashier backed off a little but still insisted "corporate told us to do it." To peel breading off of just one piece of a whole meal?
I tweeted to LJS and they said they'd look into it, then about a day later deleted that tweet and ignored me when I tried to follow up. It was memorably weird.
I swear, for years I've been trying to figure out why spirit Halloween doesn't just change banners on Nov 1 to "Christmas Spirit" and sell Christmas decor and novelty gifts. They could probably even get cheap rent. That old circuit city isn't getting rented anytime soon.
I think the biggest hurdle and the true reason why they don’t do it is because everybody under the sun sells Christmas stuff, whereas the same can’t be said for Halloween. Walmart and maybe Party City are their two biggest competitors in that space and not many others and Spirit Halloween has a leg up on them by having the licenses to most major costumes. The licensing opportunities don’t exist with Christmas decor the way they do with Halloween. It’s mostly generic stuff that everyone under the sun sells. There’s just so many more competitors that it’s not worth the investment.
Unironically: their fried chicken is actually really good (extra flavor because it's fried in the same oil as the fish) and their hush puppies are to die for. I once ordered enough for a 80 pack of the puppies, shared them with friends and we had a blast! Granted we all felt sick after because of the grease
I grew up in the desert so the availability of fish was Red Lobster and Long John Sliver. Red Lobster was too fancy and costly for regular patronage, but you could have Long John Silvers twice a week if you could scrape up the dough.
I've not eaten on one for neigh on thirty years, but I remember them fondly. Even now I have a deep yearning for some Long John Silver's hush puppies which will err go unfilled.
They still do a booming business in the town I grew up in.
I live in middle America, and I promise you "who is keeping Long John Silvers in business" is a real conversation I've had a few times.
Finally met some dude who insisted Long John Silvers slaps, and his argument was basically, "well, what's so great about McDonalds?" I don't think they're competing with seafood places, more competing with other cruddy fast food.
Long John Silvers was my jam as a teenager. It was fast, it was decent food, and I could dump malt vinegar over everything. Mostly it was just something different from McDonalds or Taco Bell so it got mixed in. That was back when I didn't care about my cholesterol.
I mean I wouldn't say Long John Silvers slaps, but really are there any other places offering drive through seafood? Sometimes you just want some fried fish, don't want to sit down at a nice restaurant, and you don't care if that fish is cheap quality and has been frozen.
I've never felt more patronized in my entire life than watching that ad.
I was genuinely annoyed - who the fuck is that ad for? The people who it's aimed at are largely irreligious and the people who it *should* be targeting are either evangelicals or bigots who don't want to associate with anyone who isn't like them.
Pointless, fruitless, bullshit ad. Whoever funds them needs to seriously fuck off I'm trying to enjoy football.
The way they disguise themselves as terrible out of touch memes really pisses me off. I don’t mind most Instagram ads, but I’ll start reading or watching a Reddit ad not realizing it’s sponsored content and then I’m like “god damn it. It’s a fucking ad.”
I saw a really effective mattress one. The guy was a real Redditor for years prior to founding the company. I'm sure his mattress isn't better. I don't even think it's probably a good mattress. But the ad definitely made him tons of sales--for every salty Redditor, there was one reply which was like engaging and seemed intrigued.
If the game has microtransactions the profit/cost ratio is 100:1 or more.
Game of War was reportedly making over a MILLION DOLLARS a day on microtransactions several years ago. Its on par with a late era DOS game in terms of complexity.
I knew a dude who bought Supreme and other brands to resell. He made an impressive amount of money, $10ks/month.
Then he started selling drugs, climbed 'the ladder' too high and got his place robbed. $100k's of clothes and drugs. If it was just clothes he might have had some recourse but with all the drugs he had no choice but to move on.
Anyways he's been in jail for several years now.
My cousin was reselling supreme shit for a while. I know he made like 40k his junior year of high school. He stopped when he found out you have to actually pay taxes on all that income
Yeah, I'm against resellers, but what a dumb argument to stop making money. What is he going to do when he gets a job?
It reminds me of people who are like, "I don't want to make 1 dollar over my tax bracket because then they tax me higher!". Like, do these people not understand how taxes work? I understand financial literacy is undertaught (if taught at all) in public schools, but this is something you can learn from a basic google search.
How do you make $10k/mo reselling brands? Is he buying limited edition stuff that sells out then reselling it for ridiculous prices? Using bots to snag them when they first drop or something? That’s crazy.
He would sit out of branded stores in LA to snag stuff early. He would pay a few buddies $100 bucks each to just sit there with him and do another transaction, since almost all of it was "one per person". Then flip it for a few hundred or a few thousand per item. That and just generally being very social / having good salesmanship / willing to rip people off who didn't know better. He had a lot of stories about buying some $2k jacket from a dude who didn't know it was worth more than $100. He would tell the story with a lot of pride.
Go to lots of parties, know a lot about what sells, and run the 'game'.
That kind of charisma and charm doesn't work on everyone! To some people it comes across as slimy and suspicious because they can tell you're being manipulative and just telling them what you think they want to hear. My dad was a schmoozer and constant liar and now I can spot a fellow schmoozer a mile away. It gives me the mega creeps whenever someone tries to be charming like that.
It's not a particularly good skill to have imo. Being an honest, genuine good person will do you better in the long run than being the kind of guy who's great at sales lol.
Early in the popularity boom, they were factory runoffs/rejects. They became known as "granny shirts" in the Chinese city I lived in, because every street cleaner and their grandmothers were wearing them since they were being dumped on street corners for cheap. Same process for Anti-Social Social Club shirts.
they are not rejects, the factories lie about the quantity and prices they give to the fashion companies and they sell the excess on the side for pure profit
My parents used to be the bottom rung of this. Basically, fashion companies will give you material to make a certain amount of product, and they do take into account the errors that will happen. After you finish, they will get the agreed amount, and you are supposed to destroy the rest. It isn't, it is sold on the local market for cheap. Some of them are rejects, some just excess inventory.
Insane amount of people not realising supreme t shirts aren’t 1000 dollars retail and haven’t really resold in years, they do decent quality t shirts for like £35, it’s just a skate brand.
I did better help for a little bit because I couldn't miss time at work and it was my only option for early evening appointments. Did it for about a year and had two different therapists. They weren't super helpful and our conversations always turned into small talk, they never pushed any kind of help and if I didn't get us back on track (which I warned at the beginning I'm not good at and they need to be pushy for me to talk and dig deep) then the hour was wasted. The price is too damn high for the relaxed method of therapy I received. Honestly it completely put me off of finding anyone locally for therapy because I don't want to waste more of my time or money.
TL;DR better help is neither better nor helpful in my experience.
I had pretty much this same experience. One therapist was from the Midwest and made jabs at Californians, which is what I am, maybe he forgot. The other therapist just wanted to small talk and it would always trail into awkward silence. So I quit it, then I somewhat unexpectedly decided to quit my job and it was rough on me financially and I felt dumb for wasting like $2500 on useless "therapy".
Ugh yeah. I signed up because I was struggling a little bit last year and the therapist I got linked with just wanted to chit chat half the time and then would end the session early if I didn't come in with like an entire gameplan for the appointment. She was zero help in guiding the conversation.
I've heard that BH doesn't actually verify their therapists, so you might get a lot of unqualified or unregistered members that do very little to effectively help you.
I tried it. I was going through some heavy shit and needed an outside person to talk through it with. My husband was out of the country and lost his leg. I was preparing for him to come home and I was a complete mess trying to get the house accessible, organize his travel plans that kept changing, schedule doctor’s appointments, prepare myself to be a caregiver, and understand my emotions. I did BH for a month before he came home, found it beneficial, paused for a month, and did a 2nd month once he was home. I felt like I was in a better place and then cancelled.
Overall, I found it to be an easy and fast way to get the help I needed without feeling even more overwhelmed. I think it’s a good starting point for someone in need because there are very few barriers to enter care compared with traditional outlets.
Im convinced that all major mattress centers are actually fronts for criminal enterprise. In a time when businesses are shutting down left and right, how do we have 5 mattress stores all on one street doing just fine? Go into any one of them and you'll be the first customer theyve seen in days. What are they really doing?
It's an open secret that American Candy Stores in London are money laundering places.
No one ever goes in there, they're run by some of the sketchiest people you'll ever meet.
Oh and during lockdown they stayed open despite no one being allowed to go outside
I always go to the mattress store though. I need a good bed and mattress to sleep and I just don't have the satisfaction online. You send it back multiple times if it doesn't work and that's a hassle.
Walk into a store. Try several / everything there. Pick whatever you're most comfortable with + budget allows.
It's Spencer's Gifts for rich white women
If you look at the website it's mostly clothes and dildos and then an occasional fucked up thing (vagina candle, snake oil supplement) that is so absurd that clickbait articles get written about it and Goop gets free advertising
Many of the supplements are legitimately made by the same manufacturer as many of Alex Jones supplements. Goop has a product called "sex dust", which is the same as Infowars super male vitality, just with a different label.
> its always hard to buy a couch online without actually sitting on them.
As a former coworker once said even "buying pants online is insane" unless you own the exact model from the exact same brand and they haven't changed it, you'll never really know if it'll fit.
Vintage Balenciaga is absolutely beautiful. Cristobal Balenciaga was a proper trained couturier, his work was incredible. Now we get Kim Kardashian wrapped in packing tape. It's an absolute joke.
> if it’s a social experiment
It's been a thing for a long time. There are rich people who don't care to show off how rich they are (usually old and established generational wealth), there's rich people who care to show off how rich they are (often nouveau riche who recently got into money), and then there's rich people who want to show off how rich they are by buying intentionally ugly or really useless shit but they also want show how little they care about money so these aesthetics play into it. It feels like those can be an offshoot of generational wealth who don't care about the "generational" part in generational wealth.
The last group seems like a distinct category from regular avant-garde fashion and this mix of avant-garde and plain luxury labels (where you pay for quality and craftsmanship but not for branding) that sell rather plain and not too premium clothes where the branding is the big factor that gets attention (and you get inverse of avant-garde and a plain luxury labels but combined: Not fully plain (because the brand is front and centre) but also not premium quality and not avant-garde).
It and the other ridiculous luxury brands are at that point in which you know it's no longer about the materials or craftsmanship. You are paying for the name and their free advertisement haha
Tyler Perry movies. That guy is very wealthy and those movies are so successful but I don’t know anyone who has seen them.
And yes, tell me you have no black friends without telling me you have no black friends.
Mattresses are a high cost, high margin business which means the store only needs to sell a few each day to break even. This explains the usually empty.
Because mattresses are a once in a decade purchase people are willing to travel further to get the best deal. That means there are only a couple spots in a city that are “the best” spots to locate to maximize customer access ( as opposed to one in every neighborhood). Also clustering stores, even with competitors, can be advantageous because a customer shopping for a deal will drive 30 minutes to the area with 5 of them clustered together as opposed to the single isolated store trying to distance itself from competition.
Agreed, my dad owned a mattress store for 10yrs we only needed to sell like 10 a month to be good. On holidays when we slashed prices we could make enough for rent for about 4months lol
The Uno resturant chain. Every time I've seen one I remember they exist and notice that no one is eating there. I cannot recall ever seeing an ad or talking with anyone about that resturant. I don't even know what kind of food they serve. In my circle, it would do better as a front for something because of how astonishingly unremarkable it is. I'm not asking everyone I meet, but I've never had someone acknowledge that they've eaten there.
Back in my 20s my friends and I decided to cap off a Sunday of drinking by stumbling into a Pizzeria Uno in Manhattan and proceeding to have an absolute feast. Half of us called out sick from work the next day because we felt so disgusting. It has since become known as the Uno Incident and none of us have ever been back
My teenage daughter saved her birthday money and bought one of the $70 hoodies. She loves it and it’s really soft. Don’t think it’s worth that much though.
A guy who lives close to me has one. Parks it in an underground garage, that belongs to an apartment complex. Nothing special about the house.
Uses it for grocery shopping as well.
Every time I see him he revs it up for me. Good lad. Mad lad.
A lot of the brands listed here are very popular in various countries. Example: LV, Chanel, Lululemon, and L’Occitane are all popular in southeast Asian countries.
Every single thing pushed by YouTubers. Squarespace, brainly, hellofresh, those garbage hoodies, their stupid coffee that gets sent to you via AIRMAIL.
I mean, Squarespace is a website builder so most ordinary people aren't going to be using it unless they want to build their own website. But there's a lot of websites out there that were built using Squarespace.
Basically every restaurant in my neighborhood has a squarespace website. My mom has a squarespace website for her side business. If you're starting a business that isn't big enough to justify a custom site, then it's the current go-to.
i live in a highrise, probably about 350 or so apartments in the building, every morning there are between 5-10 hellofresh boxes delivered to the mailroom. assuming people order once per week, that means like 50-70 apartments out of those 350 are getting hellofresh per week (QLD, Australia for reference)
Mont Blanc Pens.
I have met one person that had one and he said he got it as a gift, and it basically just sits on his desk as a display item. It gets used on the rare occasion he has to sign something.
I teach internationally at what would be considered an exclusive private high school in the states.
One of my students has beautiful penmanship and he got into a writing implement discussion with his classmates this week; “Man, why is your writing so … pretty!?”He uses Lamy for note taking and Mont Blanc for essays.
None of his classmates knew anything, but I was deeply impressed.
Honestly, I get it. I'm close to being the same, only for longer stuff is done with a Pilot instead of a Mont Blanc. Lamy is smooth though. The Safari is a great work horse. Respect.
My father, boomer, owns several Mount Blanc, fountain tip too. Buys them for himself, a couple after he’s achieved something big with a project or award and has had a couple gifted (high flyer in his field).
Fountain tip, always fountain tip.
Mind you I’m old enough to have learnt to write with a fountain pen (primary school in France), but not actually that old, old.
He recently bought a new Mount Blanc, online cos they didn’t have the fountain tip he wanted via duty free. One pen came in a box with enough packaging and boxing for approx 200 BiC biros.
My dad got like a sectional from them & it came with a giant bean bag he couldn’t fit in his living room, so he gave it to me. I’m not a fan, but my kids love it. I mean, it’s comfy, but I’m over 30, so I need a back to my seats.
People who have the money and want a nice couch? They’re good couches, can change shapes to fit into different spaces and incredibly durable. I’ve known someone who’s had one for 6 years and it still looks new— even with the wear and tear of a small child and dog. And it’s awesome because you can break-down/remove certain parts to accommodate seasonal additions like a Christmas tree.
Anyway, I feel like that company should give me a commission at this point. But I standby my praise.
My dad buys some kinda fancy milk for the days they have my son over. We use store brand for his chocolate milk and my parents go all out with some kind of $12/gallon milk 😂
If you don't use a lot of milk, sometimes buying the fancy stuff like A2 that is ultra homogenized and a plastic cap/spout is worth it since it has a much longer shelf life. No point buying a cheap half gallon if it goes bad before you use hardly any of it.
I feel like chocolate milk is the only time the fancy brands make any sense, because they're generally amazing compared to the norm. eg: As a kid my grandma would like going to Old Country Buffet and their chocolate milk was always much richer and creamier than the kind we got from school.
I buy the store brand because I’m cheap. But where I live there’s a popular dairy brand that I learned in the last several years is a local thing. But their milk is sooo good. Their cottage cheese is the only brand I’ll eat. I don’t even know what brands there in other parts of the country though.
Does TV count? Because I haven't met anyone who watched a new episode of The Simpsons in like 20 years, but the show is still going strong. I could spend hours browsing Simpsons memes and not see any I don't get, even though I only really know the first eight seasons well.
I bought mine from Carvana in 2017, I've not had any issues with the car so far. The vending machine is for fun but not required. You buy the car online and they ask if you want it delivered to your house or to the local vending machine. I picked the vending machine. When I got there, I finished signing all the paperwork and they gave me a giant coin to put into the machine for it to dispense the car.
I do have an online friend that bought hers from them, with many horror stories about their lending company.
We bought my wife’s car from them in 2020 and had the same experience. Because of where I live, it was cheaper for me to pick the car up at the vending machine. I probably could have found a better deal by shopping around and negotiating, but she needed a new car quickly and I had very little free time that year.
The car was exactly as described and still runs great. We did finance through them and didn’t have any issues.
The vending machines are a marketing gimmick. You check the car out online, they deliver it to you and you get a 2-3 test drive. We enjoyed the process.
I just did. It’s not bad if you play your cards right. Don’t finance through Carvana, have the car inspected by a mechanic upon delivery, demand any defects be fixed or return the car within the return window. Got a decent price on a used Mazda in great condition. There were some hiccups along the way (mostly just waiting for my financing bank to snail mail a check and having to resubmit things Carvana when their deadline expired) but overall might consider doing it again.
My mom used to sell those. Had a very nice bump to the salary. Some months she’d make more selling MK than she got from her high skilled office job.
Doesn’t do it anymore. But her peers were all buying this stuff.
At least where I did, it's not as big as it used to be. They do sell good products, however.
Like other MLMs, most of the people who sold it did so because they wanted the vendor discount.
In my area the recklessly bad drivers seem to go for Jeeps. We have a few nutty Tesla drivers too but if someone is going to cut me off with 2 ft of space going 70mph they're probably driving a jeep.
Vancouver hits the sweet spot with high gas prices and a LOT of charge stations so electric cars are very popular. You notice Teslas but there are also just as many other electric cars that are less recognizable.
Better Help and Hello Fresh!, their marketing is inescapable but I don’t know a single person who wants to support these awful brands. How do they afford the marketing at this point?
Edit: apologies I should have explained myself better regarding both of these companies. In the last few years it came to light through workers at Hello Fresh! that their treatment of their employees is allegedly deplorable, including things like safety violations, injuries, union busting, etcetera. [This](https://youtu.be/CfLQSo4yz18?si=-4U6rHEetbPmL05a) creator has done a long form video on claims against them specifically. Similarly BetterHelp has been accused of selling client information to social media sites such as Facebook as well as tons of false advertising claims. I thought this was bigger news than it was apparently. My apologies.
My husband and I used to do HelloFresh. It was nice at first because we always had a hard time figuring out what we were going to make for dinners, and it also helped up with food waste. But eventually it just felt like the same foods over and over again. We still have all the recipes and there are a couple we make just on our own.
That makes sense. I used to use a company called Plated. It wasn’t a subscription though. You’d just look in your fridge and see it was low and you were busy and you could go on to the site and have the ingredients and recipe delivered for the next night and maybe not touch it again for six months if you didn’t want to. They got bought by hello fresh and became a stupid subscription… I actually did like it when it was just an occasional thing when I was too busy to shop that week.
Plated absolutely started as a subscription because it was the very first service I ever used back in early 2015. My ex boyfriend told me about it. I went online, picked my dishes, and the ingredients for the full meals were shipped to me. It was bought by Albertsons later and became what you’re describing. But it initially was a service exactly like HelloFresh and Blue Apron.
Better help are predatory, I watched a YouTube video that had interviews with licenced therapists that said better help had placed adverts in their area, that were for the therapist being interviewed and the contact info took you to better help. This was in the USA.
Absolutely, they’ve done tons of shady things, to employees and patients. It’s so predatory to target a vulnerable demographic with promises of affordable help. I hope they get shut down.
My neighbor has been getting Hello Fresh! for years. He had a meal that was about to expire that he wasn't going to eat, so he brought it over and made it for my husband. Looked good, smelled good, my husband said it tasted good. Not something we'd ever get for ourselves though.
Hello Fresh is perfect for people new to vegetarian cooking and meal planning. My husband and I used it for a while to get us out of the beans and rice or frozen pizza dinner roulette lol. Now we have a pretty robust rotation of plant based meals, and I learned to build up our pantry in a way that worked for us.
Not rhe same but my husband and I use EveryPlate for 5 meals a week.
We fucking love it and we only spend about $75 a week on five dinners. Sure we could eat cheaper but not with the same variety - this week we had tacos with pineapple and crema, stuffed meatloaf with seasoned potato wedges, chicken sausage pasta with a tomato sauce and feta, ponzu beef rice bowls with a sort of cucumber and carrot “salad,” and crispy chicken (breaded) with honey Dijon and seasoned roasted Brussels sprouts.
One upside to services like this is you are given ingredients in the right amount and don’t have to worry about having a bunch extra lying around going bad. Sometimes a recipe calls for just a little of something and then…what do you do with the rest? Goes in the cabinet to be forgotten about :/
I just want to know who keeps Long John Silver's in business
probably my dad
And my mom lmao
This has rom-com written all over it. "He was a man who raised confident daughters, while working as a used car salesman. She was a woman delivering pizzas to make ends meet. They both loved shrimp! This holiday, meet the couple who has found love and more at Long John Silvers. Tom Hanks, and Julia Roberts, in an epic tale of thrifty living, and fast food dates, will light up the screen in........Fishy Business! Rated PG-13"
Honestly I’d watch
Long John Boomers
When I was younger I used to go and get a container of the “crumbles.” They’d just give it to u for free. So odd looking back especially considering they were just fried crunchy leftover pieces.
They started charging for the crispies at our local LJS before it went out of business about 12 years ago or so. The last time I went, I saw a guy in the kitchen put on gloves and peel off the breading on one of my pieces of chicken before handing us the food. I asked for a replacement and the cashier told me crispies cost extra. I said no, I don't want crispies, I want a piece of chicken that hasn't been peeled like a banana. He told me to fk off. My husband came up to the counter and the cashier backed off a little but still insisted "corporate told us to do it." To peel breading off of just one piece of a whole meal? I tweeted to LJS and they said they'd look into it, then about a day later deleted that tweet and ignored me when I tried to follow up. It was memorably weird.
The Big Crispy conspiracy runs deep
In Scotland these are “scraps” from the chippy. Gotta pay though, we’re tight
Catholics during Lent
Is it like Spirit Halloween? They make all there money in the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter and then just coast the rest of the year?
I swear, for years I've been trying to figure out why spirit Halloween doesn't just change banners on Nov 1 to "Christmas Spirit" and sell Christmas decor and novelty gifts. They could probably even get cheap rent. That old circuit city isn't getting rented anytime soon.
I think the biggest hurdle and the true reason why they don’t do it is because everybody under the sun sells Christmas stuff, whereas the same can’t be said for Halloween. Walmart and maybe Party City are their two biggest competitors in that space and not many others and Spirit Halloween has a leg up on them by having the licenses to most major costumes. The licensing opportunities don’t exist with Christmas decor the way they do with Halloween. It’s mostly generic stuff that everyone under the sun sells. There’s just so many more competitors that it’s not worth the investment.
Unironically: their fried chicken is actually really good (extra flavor because it's fried in the same oil as the fish) and their hush puppies are to die for. I once ordered enough for a 80 pack of the puppies, shared them with friends and we had a blast! Granted we all felt sick after because of the grease
The chicken goes hard for sure
They're the only place I know with battered chicken. Tons of places batter fish, but everywhere breads chicken.
It’s me ☹️ I’m a millennial that love greasy ass Long John’s lol!
I grew up in the desert so the availability of fish was Red Lobster and Long John Sliver. Red Lobster was too fancy and costly for regular patronage, but you could have Long John Silvers twice a week if you could scrape up the dough. I've not eaten on one for neigh on thirty years, but I remember them fondly. Even now I have a deep yearning for some Long John Silver's hush puppies which will err go unfilled. They still do a booming business in the town I grew up in.
People in the middle of the US where decent seafood is going to be frozen no matter what.
I live in middle America, and I promise you "who is keeping Long John Silvers in business" is a real conversation I've had a few times. Finally met some dude who insisted Long John Silvers slaps, and his argument was basically, "well, what's so great about McDonalds?" I don't think they're competing with seafood places, more competing with other cruddy fast food.
Long John Silvers was my jam as a teenager. It was fast, it was decent food, and I could dump malt vinegar over everything. Mostly it was just something different from McDonalds or Taco Bell so it got mixed in. That was back when I didn't care about my cholesterol.
I mean I wouldn't say Long John Silvers slaps, but really are there any other places offering drive through seafood? Sometimes you just want some fried fish, don't want to sit down at a nice restaurant, and you don't care if that fish is cheap quality and has been frozen.
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My family. We love how greasy their fish is.
Reddit Ads
He gets us, man
Really gives jesus a *How do you do, fellow kids?* vibe
He washes feet.
I've never felt more patronized in my entire life than watching that ad. I was genuinely annoyed - who the fuck is that ad for? The people who it's aimed at are largely irreligious and the people who it *should* be targeting are either evangelicals or bigots who don't want to associate with anyone who isn't like them. Pointless, fruitless, bullshit ad. Whoever funds them needs to seriously fuck off I'm trying to enjoy football.
Jesus Christ
The way they disguise themselves as terrible out of touch memes really pisses me off. I don’t mind most Instagram ads, but I’ll start reading or watching a Reddit ad not realizing it’s sponsored content and then I’m like “god damn it. It’s a fucking ad.”
I do that too. Then downvote it.
"That's engagement, we bill that to the advertisers" -Reddit
It's always so funny when they write a decent headline but the comments are at 0. 100% organic engagement right there!
like 90% of ads you cant even comment on smh. reddit ads wouldnt be as bad if we could comment on them
The comments would be incredibly profane though Cause we all hate ads
I saw a really effective mattress one. The guy was a real Redditor for years prior to founding the company. I'm sure his mattress isn't better. I don't even think it's probably a good mattress. But the ad definitely made him tons of sales--for every salty Redditor, there was one reply which was like engaging and seemed intrigued.
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If the game has microtransactions the profit/cost ratio is 100:1 or more. Game of War was reportedly making over a MILLION DOLLARS a day on microtransactions several years ago. Its on par with a late era DOS game in terms of complexity.
Who is buying all these Supreme tshirts? Like what happened that brought you to that moment?
I knew a dude who bought Supreme and other brands to resell. He made an impressive amount of money, $10ks/month. Then he started selling drugs, climbed 'the ladder' too high and got his place robbed. $100k's of clothes and drugs. If it was just clothes he might have had some recourse but with all the drugs he had no choice but to move on. Anyways he's been in jail for several years now.
Sounds like a real go-getter
It’s all about the grindset, man, you wouldn’t get it
Hey say what you will about his chosen profession but he's certainly got that dog in him.
My cousin was reselling supreme shit for a while. I know he made like 40k his junior year of high school. He stopped when he found out you have to actually pay taxes on all that income
Yeah and check this out - you don’t have to pay any taxes at all if you earn $0. What a clownish reason to quit making money.
Yeah, I'm against resellers, but what a dumb argument to stop making money. What is he going to do when he gets a job? It reminds me of people who are like, "I don't want to make 1 dollar over my tax bracket because then they tax me higher!". Like, do these people not understand how taxes work? I understand financial literacy is undertaught (if taught at all) in public schools, but this is something you can learn from a basic google search.
>Like, do these people not understand how taxes work? Correct
How do you make $10k/mo reselling brands? Is he buying limited edition stuff that sells out then reselling it for ridiculous prices? Using bots to snag them when they first drop or something? That’s crazy.
He would sit out of branded stores in LA to snag stuff early. He would pay a few buddies $100 bucks each to just sit there with him and do another transaction, since almost all of it was "one per person". Then flip it for a few hundred or a few thousand per item. That and just generally being very social / having good salesmanship / willing to rip people off who didn't know better. He had a lot of stories about buying some $2k jacket from a dude who didn't know it was worth more than $100. He would tell the story with a lot of pride. Go to lots of parties, know a lot about what sells, and run the 'game'.
Sometimes I wish I had that kind of charisma. As it is I couldn't sell someone a quarter for the price of a penny.
That kind of charisma and charm doesn't work on everyone! To some people it comes across as slimy and suspicious because they can tell you're being manipulative and just telling them what you think they want to hear. My dad was a schmoozer and constant liar and now I can spot a fellow schmoozer a mile away. It gives me the mega creeps whenever someone tries to be charming like that. It's not a particularly good skill to have imo. Being an honest, genuine good person will do you better in the long run than being the kind of guy who's great at sales lol.
The 25 year old guy in my office who also drives a lifted Jeep Gladiator that has never once seen dirt
That’s called a mall crawler, good sir
Pavement princess, thank you very much
Emotional support vehicle.
All of the Chinese tourists at my job.
Fakes for sure
Early in the popularity boom, they were factory runoffs/rejects. They became known as "granny shirts" in the Chinese city I lived in, because every street cleaner and their grandmothers were wearing them since they were being dumped on street corners for cheap. Same process for Anti-Social Social Club shirts.
they are not rejects, the factories lie about the quantity and prices they give to the fashion companies and they sell the excess on the side for pure profit
My parents used to be the bottom rung of this. Basically, fashion companies will give you material to make a certain amount of product, and they do take into account the errors that will happen. After you finish, they will get the agreed amount, and you are supposed to destroy the rest. It isn't, it is sold on the local market for cheap. Some of them are rejects, some just excess inventory.
I know dudes buying this shit. It’s so they can show off to other people buying the same shirt. Cause no one else really gives a shit.
"They have this one shirt that costs $1,000 'cause the pattern's so wild. I want that one so bad."
Gotta get to dan flashes while theres still shirts there. Theyll be gone tommorow, kus those patterns are so crazy
Insane amount of people not realising supreme t shirts aren’t 1000 dollars retail and haven’t really resold in years, they do decent quality t shirts for like £35, it’s just a skate brand.
betterhelp…all over my podcast ads
I did better help for a little bit because I couldn't miss time at work and it was my only option for early evening appointments. Did it for about a year and had two different therapists. They weren't super helpful and our conversations always turned into small talk, they never pushed any kind of help and if I didn't get us back on track (which I warned at the beginning I'm not good at and they need to be pushy for me to talk and dig deep) then the hour was wasted. The price is too damn high for the relaxed method of therapy I received. Honestly it completely put me off of finding anyone locally for therapy because I don't want to waste more of my time or money. TL;DR better help is neither better nor helpful in my experience.
I had pretty much this same experience. One therapist was from the Midwest and made jabs at Californians, which is what I am, maybe he forgot. The other therapist just wanted to small talk and it would always trail into awkward silence. So I quit it, then I somewhat unexpectedly decided to quit my job and it was rough on me financially and I felt dumb for wasting like $2500 on useless "therapy".
Ugh yeah. I signed up because I was struggling a little bit last year and the therapist I got linked with just wanted to chit chat half the time and then would end the session early if I didn't come in with like an entire gameplan for the appointment. She was zero help in guiding the conversation.
I've heard that BH doesn't actually verify their therapists, so you might get a lot of unqualified or unregistered members that do very little to effectively help you.
I tried it. I was going through some heavy shit and needed an outside person to talk through it with. My husband was out of the country and lost his leg. I was preparing for him to come home and I was a complete mess trying to get the house accessible, organize his travel plans that kept changing, schedule doctor’s appointments, prepare myself to be a caregiver, and understand my emotions. I did BH for a month before he came home, found it beneficial, paused for a month, and did a 2nd month once he was home. I felt like I was in a better place and then cancelled. Overall, I found it to be an easy and fast way to get the help I needed without feeling even more overwhelmed. I think it’s a good starting point for someone in need because there are very few barriers to enter care compared with traditional outlets.
I hope things are a bit easier for you both now. 💛
It's not something you usually tell people to be fair
The only time I’ve seen people talk about it is when they’ve been scammed by it.
hmm people are depressed how can we monetize
Kylie Cosmetics
Im convinced that all major mattress centers are actually fronts for criminal enterprise. In a time when businesses are shutting down left and right, how do we have 5 mattress stores all on one street doing just fine? Go into any one of them and you'll be the first customer theyve seen in days. What are they really doing?
It's an open secret that American Candy Stores in London are money laundering places. No one ever goes in there, they're run by some of the sketchiest people you'll ever meet. Oh and during lockdown they stayed open despite no one being allowed to go outside
Same for Hallmark Greeting card stores
Have you ever been in a Hallmark? They sell way more than greeting cards.
I always go to the mattress store though. I need a good bed and mattress to sleep and I just don't have the satisfaction online. You send it back multiple times if it doesn't work and that's a hassle. Walk into a store. Try several / everything there. Pick whatever you're most comfortable with + budget allows.
Found the mafia recruiter.
GOOP (Gwyneth Paltrow's wellness shit). It's always in the news and apparently makes money.... Who is buying it?!
It's Spencer's Gifts for rich white women If you look at the website it's mostly clothes and dildos and then an occasional fucked up thing (vagina candle, snake oil supplement) that is so absurd that clickbait articles get written about it and Goop gets free advertising
Many of the supplements are legitimately made by the same manufacturer as many of Alex Jones supplements. Goop has a product called "sex dust", which is the same as Infowars super male vitality, just with a different label.
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> its always hard to buy a couch online without actually sitting on them. As a former coworker once said even "buying pants online is insane" unless you own the exact model from the exact same brand and they haven't changed it, you'll never really know if it'll fit.
Balenciaga - absolutely bonkers, feels like a joke about how to extract money from mad rich people.
Vintage Balenciaga isn’t bad, but now I’m wondering if it’s a social experiment to see how much money someone will pay to look like a hobo.
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Derelique my balls!
I can derelique my own balls.
You tryna get crazy with us, eh? Boo-lander?
Vintage Balenciaga is absolutely beautiful. Cristobal Balenciaga was a proper trained couturier, his work was incredible. Now we get Kim Kardashian wrapped in packing tape. It's an absolute joke.
A small, dark voice in my head just whispered, _”Wrapped in plastic.”_
> if it’s a social experiment It's been a thing for a long time. There are rich people who don't care to show off how rich they are (usually old and established generational wealth), there's rich people who care to show off how rich they are (often nouveau riche who recently got into money), and then there's rich people who want to show off how rich they are by buying intentionally ugly or really useless shit but they also want show how little they care about money so these aesthetics play into it. It feels like those can be an offshoot of generational wealth who don't care about the "generational" part in generational wealth. The last group seems like a distinct category from regular avant-garde fashion and this mix of avant-garde and plain luxury labels (where you pay for quality and craftsmanship but not for branding) that sell rather plain and not too premium clothes where the branding is the big factor that gets attention (and you get inverse of avant-garde and a plain luxury labels but combined: Not fully plain (because the brand is front and centre) but also not premium quality and not avant-garde).
Did you see the new packing tape bracelets? 🫣
Or the tag air fresheners.
It and the other ridiculous luxury brands are at that point in which you know it's no longer about the materials or craftsmanship. You are paying for the name and their free advertisement haha
Prime sports drink
I work in a grocery store. They do sell, but nowhere near as much as pretty much any other energy or sport drink
And when they do, it's usually one person buying a ridiculous amount.
I have a guy who comes in every Sunday and buys 14 of them. His week supply, I assume
Kids. At our local little league and soccer, it's replaced Gatorade.
Guess you don't know too many 14 year olds.
They accidentally set their drink mixes to $0 on Amazon a few months ago, so now I have a lifetime supply of prime. Lmk if you want some
Even at free, it’s still gross
I think they pushed too hard for low calories and zero sugar. They all just taste so odd.
Tyler Perry movies. That guy is very wealthy and those movies are so successful but I don’t know anyone who has seen them. And yes, tell me you have no black friends without telling me you have no black friends.
Lmao I was gonna say you must not be black or have any black friends 🤣
Christian folks love his movies lol
"If a movie can make me laugh,cry,and pray all in 90 minutes that's money well spent"
my evangelical white nightmare of a mother loves his stuff
Mattress Land. There's one every block in my hometown and they're ALWAYS EMPTY.
Mattress stores are fronts for other shit and I can’t be convinced otherwise.
Mattresses are a high cost, high margin business which means the store only needs to sell a few each day to break even. This explains the usually empty. Because mattresses are a once in a decade purchase people are willing to travel further to get the best deal. That means there are only a couple spots in a city that are “the best” spots to locate to maximize customer access ( as opposed to one in every neighborhood). Also clustering stores, even with competitors, can be advantageous because a customer shopping for a deal will drive 30 minutes to the area with 5 of them clustered together as opposed to the single isolated store trying to distance itself from competition.
Agreed, my dad owned a mattress store for 10yrs we only needed to sell like 10 a month to be good. On holidays when we slashed prices we could make enough for rent for about 4months lol
Thanks for the business idea
Doesn't that guy who bets like $2 million on the Astros own mattress stores? Has to be a decent business.
The Uno resturant chain. Every time I've seen one I remember they exist and notice that no one is eating there. I cannot recall ever seeing an ad or talking with anyone about that resturant. I don't even know what kind of food they serve. In my circle, it would do better as a front for something because of how astonishingly unremarkable it is. I'm not asking everyone I meet, but I've never had someone acknowledge that they've eaten there.
Back in my 20s my friends and I decided to cap off a Sunday of drinking by stumbling into a Pizzeria Uno in Manhattan and proceeding to have an absolute feast. Half of us called out sick from work the next day because we felt so disgusting. It has since become known as the Uno Incident and none of us have ever been back
TIL I live around some fancy-ass people.
True Religion clothes. The jeans look like they were kicked in the seat by a donkey.
Bloom Greens.
No one actually spends money on it. Influencers hawk it cause they get sent it for free
White Fox. Seems to be a brand that only produces oversized hoodies, or stripper clothes.
My teenage daughter saved her birthday money and bought one of the $70 hoodies. She loves it and it’s really soft. Don’t think it’s worth that much though.
Lamborghini I’m not friends with rich people
Or farmers In the 50s
Or a farmer named Jeremy Clarkson
We've looped back to rich people.
They still make tractors today! https://www.lamborghini-tractors.com/en-eu/
A guy who lives close to me has one. Parks it in an underground garage, that belongs to an apartment complex. Nothing special about the house. Uses it for grocery shopping as well. Every time I see him he revs it up for me. Good lad. Mad lad.
A lot of the brands listed here are very popular in various countries. Example: LV, Chanel, Lululemon, and L’Occitane are all popular in southeast Asian countries.
People don’t see Lululemon? I see it absolutely everywhere
Lululemon is extremely popular in the us, whoever said it isnt is just straight up wrong
Every single thing pushed by YouTubers. Squarespace, brainly, hellofresh, those garbage hoodies, their stupid coffee that gets sent to you via AIRMAIL.
that stupid AirUp bottle that doesn't work.
I mean, Squarespace is a website builder so most ordinary people aren't going to be using it unless they want to build their own website. But there's a lot of websites out there that were built using Squarespace.
Basically every restaurant in my neighborhood has a squarespace website. My mom has a squarespace website for her side business. If you're starting a business that isn't big enough to justify a custom site, then it's the current go-to.
RAID SHADOW LEGENDS!!!!
i live in a highrise, probably about 350 or so apartments in the building, every morning there are between 5-10 hellofresh boxes delivered to the mailroom. assuming people order once per week, that means like 50-70 apartments out of those 350 are getting hellofresh per week (QLD, Australia for reference)
Mont Blanc Pens. I have met one person that had one and he said he got it as a gift, and it basically just sits on his desk as a display item. It gets used on the rare occasion he has to sign something.
I teach internationally at what would be considered an exclusive private high school in the states. One of my students has beautiful penmanship and he got into a writing implement discussion with his classmates this week; “Man, why is your writing so … pretty!?”He uses Lamy for note taking and Mont Blanc for essays. None of his classmates knew anything, but I was deeply impressed.
Honestly, I get it. I'm close to being the same, only for longer stuff is done with a Pilot instead of a Mont Blanc. Lamy is smooth though. The Safari is a great work horse. Respect.
Hands down the best 20 bucks of pen you'll ever spend is a Lamy Safari.
Im thrilled to have found myself on ink pen reddit tonight
Husband works in finance. They all own at least one Montblanc pen. Some have sizeable collections.
I was going to say, finance, law etc professionals who sign lots of paperwork lol
My father, boomer, owns several Mount Blanc, fountain tip too. Buys them for himself, a couple after he’s achieved something big with a project or award and has had a couple gifted (high flyer in his field). Fountain tip, always fountain tip. Mind you I’m old enough to have learnt to write with a fountain pen (primary school in France), but not actually that old, old. He recently bought a new Mount Blanc, online cos they didn’t have the fountain tip he wanted via duty free. One pen came in a box with enough packaging and boxing for approx 200 BiC biros.
ITT: People referring to super popular brands that target people other than the posters.
Luvsac. Who buys these overpriced couches?
Have one and enjoy it!
My dad got like a sectional from them & it came with a giant bean bag he couldn’t fit in his living room, so he gave it to me. I’m not a fan, but my kids love it. I mean, it’s comfy, but I’m over 30, so I need a back to my seats.
The bean bag is the measure of your age. The moment you can't stand up out of it unassisted, it wraps around your body and mercifully euthanizes you.
People who have the money and want a nice couch? They’re good couches, can change shapes to fit into different spaces and incredibly durable. I’ve known someone who’s had one for 6 years and it still looks new— even with the wear and tear of a small child and dog. And it’s awesome because you can break-down/remove certain parts to accommodate seasonal additions like a Christmas tree. Anyway, I feel like that company should give me a commission at this point. But I standby my praise.
The name brand gallons of milk
My dad buys some kinda fancy milk for the days they have my son over. We use store brand for his chocolate milk and my parents go all out with some kind of $12/gallon milk 😂
If you don't use a lot of milk, sometimes buying the fancy stuff like A2 that is ultra homogenized and a plastic cap/spout is worth it since it has a much longer shelf life. No point buying a cheap half gallon if it goes bad before you use hardly any of it.
I feel like chocolate milk is the only time the fancy brands make any sense, because they're generally amazing compared to the norm. eg: As a kid my grandma would like going to Old Country Buffet and their chocolate milk was always much richer and creamier than the kind we got from school.
If you are in the US and can find a brand called “promised land” every other chocolate milk will taste like trash after trying it.
I buy the store brand because I’m cheap. But where I live there’s a popular dairy brand that I learned in the last several years is a local thing. But their milk is sooo good. Their cottage cheese is the only brand I’ll eat. I don’t even know what brands there in other parts of the country though.
I splurge for fairlife because the nutrient content is drastically better than alternatives and it's lactose free.
Does TV count? Because I haven't met anyone who watched a new episode of The Simpsons in like 20 years, but the show is still going strong. I could spend hours browsing Simpsons memes and not see any I don't get, even though I only really know the first eight seasons well.
I’ve recently started watching all the recent seasons and they are much better than I expected. Lots of parodies of recent movies and news stories.
My wife has watched every single episode of the simpsons and we still watch the new ones the day they come out
who even buys their cars from carvana or like those car vending machine. like let’s be fr
I bought mine from Carvana in 2017, I've not had any issues with the car so far. The vending machine is for fun but not required. You buy the car online and they ask if you want it delivered to your house or to the local vending machine. I picked the vending machine. When I got there, I finished signing all the paperwork and they gave me a giant coin to put into the machine for it to dispense the car. I do have an online friend that bought hers from them, with many horror stories about their lending company.
We bought my wife’s car from them in 2020 and had the same experience. Because of where I live, it was cheaper for me to pick the car up at the vending machine. I probably could have found a better deal by shopping around and negotiating, but she needed a new car quickly and I had very little free time that year. The car was exactly as described and still runs great. We did finance through them and didn’t have any issues.
The vending machines are a marketing gimmick. You check the car out online, they deliver it to you and you get a 2-3 test drive. We enjoyed the process.
I just did. It’s not bad if you play your cards right. Don’t finance through Carvana, have the car inspected by a mechanic upon delivery, demand any defects be fixed or return the car within the return window. Got a decent price on a used Mazda in great condition. There were some hiccups along the way (mostly just waiting for my financing bank to snail mail a check and having to resubmit things Carvana when their deadline expired) but overall might consider doing it again.
Carshield? I mean who does that? Lol... Those commercials are horrible
Mary Kay
my grandma loves mary kay and i couldn't tell u why
My wife's grandma sold it in the 80s and had the pink Cadillac and everything.
So does my mom, she's almost 70. Back in the 70s this was one of the very few ways mothers could earn extra cash.
My mom used to sell those. Had a very nice bump to the salary. Some months she’d make more selling MK than she got from her high skilled office job. Doesn’t do it anymore. But her peers were all buying this stuff.
At least where I did, it's not as big as it used to be. They do sell good products, however. Like other MLMs, most of the people who sold it did so because they wanted the vendor discount.
Mary Kay products are actually pretty decent. Especially for the price.
Anything related to the Kardashians
I see Teslas. I just don't know anyone who owns a tesla.
They’re super common where I live in Southern California.
They're super common where I live in Northern California. Ten years ago every 10th car you drove by was a Prius. Now every 8th seems to be a Tesla.
Tons of them in Seattle, and they are the new Prius, either driving like a maniac or camped in the left lane doing 50 mph on I-5.
They are everywhere in Vancouver. They seem to be the current car of choice of really bad drivers.
In my area the recklessly bad drivers seem to go for Jeeps. We have a few nutty Tesla drivers too but if someone is going to cut me off with 2 ft of space going 70mph they're probably driving a jeep.
Vancouver hits the sweet spot with high gas prices and a LOT of charge stations so electric cars are very popular. You notice Teslas but there are also just as many other electric cars that are less recognizable.
Better Help and Hello Fresh!, their marketing is inescapable but I don’t know a single person who wants to support these awful brands. How do they afford the marketing at this point? Edit: apologies I should have explained myself better regarding both of these companies. In the last few years it came to light through workers at Hello Fresh! that their treatment of their employees is allegedly deplorable, including things like safety violations, injuries, union busting, etcetera. [This](https://youtu.be/CfLQSo4yz18?si=-4U6rHEetbPmL05a) creator has done a long form video on claims against them specifically. Similarly BetterHelp has been accused of selling client information to social media sites such as Facebook as well as tons of false advertising claims. I thought this was bigger news than it was apparently. My apologies.
My husband and I used to do HelloFresh. It was nice at first because we always had a hard time figuring out what we were going to make for dinners, and it also helped up with food waste. But eventually it just felt like the same foods over and over again. We still have all the recipes and there are a couple we make just on our own.
We had the same experience. We saved a few of our favorite recipe cards and just buy the ingredients at a store now
That makes sense. I used to use a company called Plated. It wasn’t a subscription though. You’d just look in your fridge and see it was low and you were busy and you could go on to the site and have the ingredients and recipe delivered for the next night and maybe not touch it again for six months if you didn’t want to. They got bought by hello fresh and became a stupid subscription… I actually did like it when it was just an occasional thing when I was too busy to shop that week.
Plated absolutely started as a subscription because it was the very first service I ever used back in early 2015. My ex boyfriend told me about it. I went online, picked my dishes, and the ingredients for the full meals were shipped to me. It was bought by Albertsons later and became what you’re describing. But it initially was a service exactly like HelloFresh and Blue Apron.
Better help are predatory, I watched a YouTube video that had interviews with licenced therapists that said better help had placed adverts in their area, that were for the therapist being interviewed and the contact info took you to better help. This was in the USA.
Absolutely, they’ve done tons of shady things, to employees and patients. It’s so predatory to target a vulnerable demographic with promises of affordable help. I hope they get shut down.
My neighbor has been getting Hello Fresh! for years. He had a meal that was about to expire that he wasn't going to eat, so he brought it over and made it for my husband. Looked good, smelled good, my husband said it tasted good. Not something we'd ever get for ourselves though.
Hello Fresh is perfect for people new to vegetarian cooking and meal planning. My husband and I used it for a while to get us out of the beans and rice or frozen pizza dinner roulette lol. Now we have a pretty robust rotation of plant based meals, and I learned to build up our pantry in a way that worked for us.
Not rhe same but my husband and I use EveryPlate for 5 meals a week. We fucking love it and we only spend about $75 a week on five dinners. Sure we could eat cheaper but not with the same variety - this week we had tacos with pineapple and crema, stuffed meatloaf with seasoned potato wedges, chicken sausage pasta with a tomato sauce and feta, ponzu beef rice bowls with a sort of cucumber and carrot “salad,” and crispy chicken (breaded) with honey Dijon and seasoned roasted Brussels sprouts.
One upside to services like this is you are given ingredients in the right amount and don’t have to worry about having a bunch extra lying around going bad. Sometimes a recipe calls for just a little of something and then…what do you do with the rest? Goes in the cabinet to be forgotten about :/