3 ms·
There seems to be a new broad trend of stretching feature names. Shopping for headphones, "noise cancelling" began to be used recently to mean "pretty good seal
by foobarbecue 7y ago
There seems to be a new broad trend of stretching feature names. Shopping for headphones, "noise cancelling" began to be used recently to mean "pretty good seal" and now I see "7.1 Surround Sound" on headphones with two drivers to mean "has some fancy audio processing."
- gumby 7y agoIt’s not new, sadly. The phrase “snake oil” goes back to the 19th century but names a phenomenon going back millennia.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThe original snake oil, from the Chinese water snake, (Enhydris chinensis), worked. Ingedients being hard to come by, and the market uninformed but spend-happy, hucksters appeared and the "medicine show‘ emerged. Patent medicines were also amongst the first widely advertised products in mass media beginning in the mid-19th century. https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-snake-oil-got-a-bad-rap/ https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-snake-oil-got-... http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/?q=10.1007%2Fs12686-014-0200-1 http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/?q=10.1007%2Fs12686-014-0200-1 http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/08/26/215761377/a-history-of-snake-oil-salesmen http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/08/26/215761377/a-h... http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/omega3-fatty-acids http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/omega3-fatty...
- hanniabu 7y agoI'm actually looking for headphones now. How would I know what headphones have actual noise canceling features?