Comment on Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

• Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I mean you SHOULD boycott starbucks for their business practices. But you can’t say their coffee sucks. They don’t have coffee. They have “diabetic inducing coffee flavored sugarwater”

  But it’s not coffee

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  • Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think the point being made here is that many people clearly enjoy what Starbucks offers. So, saying they suck is preaching to the choir. The only people listening to that are the people you aren’t trying to convince. If you want an impact, suggest an alternative that will make those people happy. To do that, start with an understanding of the value Starbucks brings them. Failing that, you are just signaling that your thinking isn’t for them. They’ll just ignore you and continue to happily give Starbucks their money.

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    • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Many people enjoy Starbucks.

      Many more go because it is convenient due to the drive-through and also because it has probably driven the local coffee shops out of business, but would definitely take another, better option if it presented itself.

      Which they are. A smaller (but still pretty big) chain called Scooter’s opened up here and Starbucks has taken a huge hit.

      So it’s a bit more complicated than you make it out to be.

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      • Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yeah! That’s precisely what I mean. Scooters is making an impact because they understand what people want and are providing a reasonable alternative that makes those kinds of people happy. They’re not just saying, Starbucks is bad, don’t go there.

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    • suction@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s a bit more complicated: In your example, if someone from the outgroup (e.g. a liberal person or in general someone who isn’t as mindless and as purely driven by hedonism) suggests that “they” should prefer a different coffee chain, they’ll dig in and go to Starbucks even more because by doing that, you gave them another tool to feel like they’re rebelling against the “elites”, i.e. going to Starbucks went from something they did because they were uneducated to a new source of their personal and group identity. There’s no easy solution to bring people to live in their own best interest when they can make every little aspect of their lifestyle into a culture war battleground. It’s as hard as getting people out of a cult.

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      • Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yeah, put another way, make something controversial and people will pick sides and stop their thinking then and there. If anyone, including themselves, thinks “Starbucks sucks” then they’re the enemy and should be disproven.

        I’d argue there’s a great solution. Respect the people that go to Starbucks and their opinion. Understand it. And then, from a place of compassion and understanding see how you can help them. People respond a lot better to that. But I’ll admit that in this climate everyone is making things an us vs them controversy. So it’ll be hard when others are trying to create that divide and you are trying to bridge it.

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  • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You can, in fact, go to Starbucks and order an Espresso. Let’s just say that it tastes as if the barrista had never drank one straight.

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  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They have regular coffee at Starbucks.

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• golli@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  people find a lot of value in the products and services they offer

  This is definitely true to some degree, but there imo is also another side to this.

  Yes, they there are underlying problems/demands that they solve, but they definitely also create and shape those since psychology sadly works extremely effective. And they really try their hardest to manipulate customers.

  Another aspect is that they might have originally created that value and given the users what they wanted, which got them in the position they are in now. Sometimes even operating at a loss to bully competition out of the market. But once they achieved this dominant position enshittification commences. Which wouldn’t be that much of an issue, if they wouldn’t also often prevent competition from growing enough to be able to compete.

  Example Google search: The demand for a way to navigate the web is real and google fulfilled it best, which made them huge. Timejump to the present: the demand is still the same, but now google shows you what they want you to see and pay billions to be the default search engine to hinder any competition from gaining any traction.

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• suction@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s a timeline. tech companies have become much worse, and people warning about them more vocal, so the lower educated classes who mindlessly use their products have (partially) woken up to the real motives of companies who create “free to use” products, i.e. data mining. In the EU, we have a lot of dummies who we call “remote controlled”, who want to simulate a version of the US lifestyle (huge cars, celebrity adulation, eating like shit, single-issue voting, vapidness). These mainly teenagers but regrettably also low-class adults. Those are also the people who still use social networks because they have nothing else going on and are too lazy to invest their free time in worthwhile activities. So it’s a class issue, the social underbelly of the EU is remote controlled by US culture and corporations almost like the social underbelly of the US is.

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• barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Americans found lots of values in Starbucks coffee because Americans have no concept of coffee that’s simultaneously black, not bitter, not acidic, and sweet. It would be wrong to blame Starbucks for that, they’re a symptom, not the cause, but yes their coffee sucks. As it does everywhere else in the US, the country that thought that percolators were a mighty fine idea.

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  • lolcatnip@reddthat.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I didn’t know how you think that’s relevant to what I said.

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    • barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Starbucks can provide value to Americans and their coffee can suck, those two things are not mutually exclusive.

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