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.
All of them
Even free samples?
Especially free samples.
Generally yes. If I don’t need it, I don’t need it for free either. The price doesn’t change how much I don’t need a product.
Only made sense when some supermarkets had samples of hams and cheeses in those sections before COVID. Helped decide which one to buy.
Does anybody get free samples because they need them? They get them because they want them.
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.
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!
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
The ones that say re: your order
Top 5 marketing tactics EVERYONE hates. You won’t BELIEVE number three.
Short of answering any questions about a product I ask, all of them.
If I want or need something, I will come looking. Anything beyond that is the market trying to solicit demand where none need exist.
So much waste could be eliminated if that just… Stopped.
Yeah, but the shareholders…
They own us
Stealing my time for nothing in return. Watching an ad to get content is a transaction. The door to door guy, or the guy who interrupts my shopping with “I’m not selling anything just asking you some questions” is annoying and I’m never going to use their product. The ones that persist after being told “not interested” can jump off a cliff.
I found a real easy approach to any undesired solicitation - zero contact, no reaction. Works on telemarketers, panhandlers, salespeople etc.
I have no shame about ghosting you publicly when the only thing you’re after is my money. If I’m in the home generator store, sure thing bro talk to me about my home power needs. If I’m walking out the supermarket and you slide around a booth to “help me keep my home safe during unrest” nah fam you can fuck yourself.
Cold open sales is parallel to pick-up “artists” imo. You want the transactional outcome for yourself, and my consent is the only thing you’re concerned about taking care of.
There’s a pest control salesman who goes door to door every year, who I can’t stand. Not only does he say outright incorrect things, but he can’t take no for an answer. Every polite refusal turns into, “You know what, we can knock 80 bucks off that right now” or “How about we just make the first month free.”
Next time he comes knocking, I’m going to be immediately upfront. I’m not interested in paying money to spray poison, that will end up in the canal and the river, to kill bugs that birds and frogs and bats could be eating.
Next one that comes to the door, I’m telling him he can have $20 if he humanely escorts the Latrodectus Hesperus living in our cupboard out. Let’s see if he has any tricks up his sleeve other than poison.
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.
All of them. I dislike every marketing tactic ever invented.
Yes.
Yes.
Happy cake day!
Asking me to give them profit so that they can donate is so obviously pretentious.
It’s a way for them to have their cake and eat it too.
They use the desire of people to buy something they want and think they did a good thing at the same time, while the business will just take that money to donate to a non-profit (helping their public image) while writing off a part of it on their tax records (helping their bottom line).
They’re not doing this from the bottom of their heart, it’s just a cost of doing business for gaining some PR karma.
Detaching basic features from an existing free product and making people pay a subscription for it.
Aka sso.tax
The thing is, if I want something I’ll go looking for it. At the point where I’m looking for it or something like it, I am happy to consume ads even tangentially related to that thing. If analytics marketing worked this way (showing me relevant ads when I’m shopping for something, even if it’s for something I am not actively looking for), things would be better. But ads have worked their way into the cracks of everything and that’s my problem with them.
I hate Billboards. I don’t like circulars (waste of paper and generally too much trash), I hate junk mail and I think it’s predatory. Popups (singing, flashing, scrolling when I scroll to stay on the page, tiny exit buttons, video, etc) are garbage.
I hate Billboards.
I don’t just hate them, but I’d straight up make them illegal. At least next to roads. They are specifically meant to get the attention of drivers. How can that be allowed?
If we used billboards for something like missing children or traffic announcements etc I’d be okay with that. But pretty much no actual ads for products. Billboards are a driving distraction and I don’t approve.
The job of sales is the overpromise and write checks that their ass won’t have to personally cash. Anything they say is to get you to sign on the line.
Fuck em all
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.
Sending my work email a calendar invite as the first communication. Just because you want to sell it doesn’t mean I want to buy it. Or even hear about it. If a calendar event is the first thing you send me, I will be the avatar of snark. My calendar is busy enough without you inserting yourself into it without my consent.
Double snark if you get upset that I didn’t accept it and reach out to find out why.
They can fuck off, all of them. Worthless pieces of degeneration. Zero sympathy from me.
