cygnus
@cygnus@lemmy.ca
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 1 day ago:
So perhaps the real story is simply “lots of tech marketers don’t understand their audience”. Which I think is true. When companies put their spec sheets and feature lists front and center, I’m definitely more likely to pay attention than if I have to dig through screen after screen of meaningless fluff to get any relevant details. So that’s something marketers could (but generally don’t) do to influence me.
It depends on the brand and who their target market is. I’d argue that Framework, for example, market in this way.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 days ago:
First off, thanks for the thoughtful and detailed reply.
Which raises another point: there are no monolithic demographics of any significant size. Anytime you generalize about “nerds” (or any other group), nothing you say will be 100% correct across the board. Generalizations are still useful when viewed in terms of trends and distribution curves. It’s fair to say that men are taller than women even though there are short men and tall women. It would be more precise to say that the height distribution for men skews taller than for women, but I think most people intuitively understand the truth behind the simple, plain English generalization anyway, even if they don’t think of it in precise terms.
Of course, and marketing itself works with generalizations about demographics and targetting etc. As in anything there are extreme outliers, but there’s definitely a bell curve, and I doubt most people are as near the poles as they think.
The way it looks: yes, absolutely. My current box is metallic black with a window. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one with no window at the same price, I would have. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one in hot pink for cheaper, I probably would have. (There is a functional aspect to appearance as well, since it’s in my field of vision and bright colors could be distracting, so I’d have to think about the pink. “Black” and “no window” are on my wanted-features list for this reason, but other factors can override those wants.)
Sounds lke you’re primarily a value shopper in this case, which is fair, but for every one of you there’s a r/battlestations poster who spent more for something aesthetic - and unlike others here I won’t start “no true nerd-ing” those people away out of convenience. I to a certain degree am one of them, and I’m definitely a nerd (as is everyone on Lemmy). I’m sure there are different things you choose to splurge on.
I feel like at this point we should talk about the oft-neglected difference between marketing and advertising. There is an aspect of marketing that directs product development down a path toward what they understand people actually want. When done well, this is good. It should be the marketing department’s job to learn what problems people have with products in the field, and make sure those problems are addressed in future products. Advertising is a subset of marketing that tries to directly influence consumer behavior to buy whatever they’re trying to sell.
In the industry we’d rarely refer to those people as marketers (more like “market research”, basically statisticians and much less cool) but you’re right that it’s on the same continuum. Focus groups fall in there too. I wouldn’t really count it in this argument though because for most of us it’s a fait accompli when we’re faced with whatever is on the store shelf. It isn’t something we can be “immune” to in any meaningful way, short of becoming a self-sufficient hermit.
But I’m no more likely to go into Dunkin or Starbucks just because they are advertised incessantly. You might find that hard to believe, and I wouldn’t blame you! I can’t prove it to you. And I understand that among the general population, repeated exposure affects perception, and by extension behavior, in subtle and deeply-rooted ways. I don’t imagine that I am immune to the effects that, for example, cause preschool children to prefer the same food from McDonalds bags vs unbranded bags (see pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17679662/). But we are more than our base nature, and these effects can be negated in practice. I suspect tech nerds in general have internalized stronger countermeasures than the general population. Not full immunity, because reality is too messy, but a notable resistance.
But do you have a favourite coffee place, or restaurant? How about a favourite hotel chain? We often don’t realize all the subconscious triggers we’re subjected to.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 days ago:
You’re right that nobody is truly “immune” to marketing, but as a matter of degrees, there’s a big difference across groups. There are people out there who look at ads and register them as useful information. There are people who intentionally click on ad banners on Instagram, rather than treating them like digital leprosy. There are people who click on the first Amazon referral listicle they find on Google and then treat it like independent journalism. There are people who use GoDaddy, when the only possible reason anyone would is because that racecar driver is hot. These are not behaviors you should expect among the kind of nerds this article is talking about.
Perhaps, but I’d argue people who click on ads knowing full well it’s an ad are more enlightened than the
nerd- sorry, “geek” - who thinks they operate on a higher plane of existence, not knowing that online review was bought and paid for or that Reddit post was made by an LLM.Same deal with most of my tech purchases, except that in that space there often are brands I’ve never heard of. And I’m (usually) savvy enough to tell when they’re legit and when they’re not. (I know more than I ever wanted to know about SSD controllers and I’m kind of angry about it.)
This is a bit different because it isn’t really an emotional decision - they are are fungible, functionality being equal. But would you choose, say, a computer acse without caring about the way it looks or makes you feel?
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 days ago:
I genuinely believe I’m immune to advertising.
You are not - you just don’t see it as such. Even if you didn’t use the internet at all (which we can see is not the case) you would still fall victim to its network effects.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 days ago:
80s memorabilia and 3D printers are not exempt form marketing. They are products just like anything else.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 days ago:
How do you think you “found” it? A whole supply chain of people, from branding to packaging to advertising, made it so that you can “find” things on websites that are themselves outright advertisements or at least funded by them.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 days ago:
If this irony, good job because I think most people will fall for it.
- Comment on Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds 2 days ago:
Yeah, this is self-aggrandizement from a group of people who consistently believe they’re smarter and more self-aware than everybody else, when in reality they just lack self-awareness. Nerds will smugly post in this thread as a wall of funk pops and Star Wars slop looms behind them.
- Comment on Samsung brings ads to US fridges 2 days ago:
Me yelling “enhance” at my router so it blocks ads better
- Comment on Samsung brings ads to US fridges 2 days ago:
I couldn’t even list all the horror stories I’ve heard firsthand about Samsung appliances, including massive damage to people’s houses caused by leaks.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
I wish the second-hand battery market were more lively. Using half-worn car battery packs seems optimal for home use.
- Comment on Stop Talking to Technology Executives Like They Have Anything to Say 4 days ago:
You nailed it. Attention accrue to them because of their money (and the power it gives them), not the other way around. Without his money and control of OpenAI, Altman would be - along with Elon Musk - just another dork posting on Reddit during his shift at the electronics store, and would get the attendant amount of public attention.
- Comment on 18% of people running Nextcloud don't know what database they are using 2 weeks ago:
I use the prebuilt Hetzner one and have no idea either.
- Comment on How OnlyFans Piracy Is Ruining the Internet for Everyone | Innocent sites are being delisted from Google because of copyright takedown requests against rampant OnlyFans piracy. 2 weeks ago:
DMCA takedown abuse isn’t anything new, this article seems like it was just due to 404 media having to deal with it, onlyfans is tangentially related and clearly just used in the headline for clickbait purposes… I really expected better of 404 media, The issue is a valid and increasingly worse one, it shouldnt need a clickbait headline. “DMCA Automation is ruining the internet” or something to that effect would have been a lot better.
That’s true, but if the important thing is to draw attention to this issue, this is a good way of doing it even if it’s a creative interpretation of the truth.
- Comment on Leaked emails link NHS data privatiser Palantir to Jeffrey Epstein 2 weeks ago:
Damn, I didn’t know Jeff had boys too.
- Comment on Instagram Caught Hiding Posts That Say "Immigrants Make the Country Great" 4 weeks ago:
Those who use Instagram will keep using it and forget all about this within 24 hours.
- Comment on Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia' 4 weeks ago:
Those homophones have reeked havoc for too long!
- Comment on My petty gripe: forced software updates just make everything worse 4 weeks ago:
I’m sure all those enterprise clients are positively champing at the bit to switch to Linux 🙄 Can I have a conversation about computers here without it being about Linux? And I say this as somebody who uses Linux full-time on all their computers.
- Comment on My petty gripe: forced software updates just make everything worse 4 weeks ago:
includes a much broader library of softwate than Microsoft has ever maintained.
This is true, but isn’t what I was referring to. The problem MS are facing is not what they themselves have built, but the huge number of apps that other businesses have built over the years which prevent MS from rewriting or deprecating many parts of the bloated zombie that is now Windows.
- Comment on My petty gripe: forced software updates just make everything worse 4 weeks ago:
All software is either shit to begin with or becomes shit when it gets big enough. If a Linux distro were forced to maintain as much legacy cruft as Windows it would be shit too.
- Comment on X plans to show ads in Grok chatbot's answers 1 month ago:
Nah, it’ll be the usual crypto and supplement scams that already pollute Twitter, Truth Social, etc.
- Comment on Meet the AI vegans: They are choosing to abstain from using artificial intelligence for environmental, ethical and personal reasons. Maybe they have a point 1 month ago:
They do know how to monetize it. API access generated $1Billion in 2023.
And all that $1B revenue cost them was a $5B loss! www.wheresyoured.at/howmuchmoney/
- Comment on Helion Secures Land and Begins Building on the Site of World’s First Fusion Power Plant 1 month ago:
Per the Reuters article they already have a test reactor but, like everybody else, haven’t figured out how to produce more electricity than it consumes. I’m not sure why they’re jumping ahead to building a new facility when they don’t yet have a working product, but I hope it isn’t just to collect subsidies.
- Comment on Helion Secures Land and Begins Building on the Site of World’s First Fusion Power Plant 1 month ago:
I want to believe
- Comment on The Substack app sent a push notification promoting a Nazi newsletter to several users. 1 month ago:
Lemmy is more like Reddit than Substack. Ghost would be the Substack equivalent.
- Comment on US condemns French inquiry into Elon Musk's social media platform X/Twitter. 1 month ago:
Pretending there are none - that it’s a society without in-groups, with social mobility.
- Comment on US condemns French inquiry into Elon Musk's social media platform X/Twitter. 1 month ago:
Name what?
- Comment on US condemns French inquiry into Elon Musk's social media platform X/Twitter. 1 month ago:
Every state or social group has its shibboleths - the American one is just to performatively pretend they don’t have any.
- Comment on EU Gives Platforms 12 Months to Deploy 'Strict' Age Verification 1 month ago:
I hate that they get to label this a “hack”. It was sheer negligence - they stored these images in an unsecured bucket.
- Comment on I self hosted a World of Warcraft server. 2 months ago:
Oh wow, thanks for the recommendation. This looks perfect.