6 ms·

Why do I feel like I've just read a covert advertisement?

by mawadev 9mo ago

cons0le 9mo ago
Sometimes I feel like the people here live on a different planet. I can't imagine what type of upbringing I would have to have, to start thinkinkg that "eating food" is an engineering problem to be solved. This might be a controversial opinion, but I for one, like to eat food. In fact I even do it 3 times a day. Don't yall have a culture that's passed down to you through food? Family recipes? Isn't eating food a central aspect of socialization? Isn't socialization the reason people wanted to go to the office in the firt place? Maybe I'm biased. I love going out to eat, and I love cooking. But its more than that. I garden. I go to the farmers market. I go to food festivals. Food is such an integral part of the human experience for me, that I can't imagine "cutting it out". And for what? So you can have more time to stare at the screen you already stare at all day? So you can look at 2% more lines of javascript? When I first saw commercials for that product, I truly thought it was like a medical/therapeutic thing, for people that have trauma with food. I admit, the food equivalent of an i.v. drip does seem useful for people that legitimately can't eat.
- xnorswap 9mo ago
  I'm with you on this one, the idea of trying to "optimise" away lunches and break time to cram in more "study time" seems utterly alien.
- AstroBen 9mo ago
  I like eating, I just don't like spending so much time and decision fatigue on prep. I'm probably the target audience for Huel but I don't actually think it's good for you 90% of meals aren't some special occasion, but I still need to eat. Why not make it easy? Then go explore and try new things every now and then Treating food as entertainment is how the west has gotten so unhealthy
- johnisgood 9mo ago
  I like satisfying my hunger (my goal most of the time when it comes to food), but making food is not a hobby to me. That said, cooking is often a nice, shared experience with my girlfriend.
- pixl97 9mo ago
  I'm a foodie, I love food and cooking and the eating experience. This said, I know people that food is a grudging necessity they'd rather do without. At the end of the day there's a lot of different kinds of people out there.
- anttiharju 9mo ago
  > I can't imagine what type of upbringing I would have to have, to start thinking that "eating food" is an engineering problem to be solved. I was really busy with my master's degree, ok? :D
jennyholzer4 9mo ago
[flagged]
anttiharju 9mo ago
I mean I don't think I'm giving a particularly favorable view of the product
- jerf 9mo ago
  I expect AI ads to start with blindingly obvious overwhelmingly excited endorsments, but it won't take long for that to show up in the metrics that won't work very well past the initial intro, and they'll get more subdued over time... but they're always going to be at least positive. The old saying "there's no such thing as bad publicity" is wrong, and the LLMs aren't going to try to get you to buy things by being subtly negative on them. If nothing else, even if you somehow produced a (correct) study showing that does increase buying I think the marketers would just not be able to tolerate that, for strictly human reasons. They always want their stuff cast in a positive light.
  - anttiharju 9mo ago
    heh. I think I've seen an adtech company use AI influencers to market whatever product a customer wanted to sell. I got the impression that it initally worked really well, but then people caught on to the fact it was just AI and performance tanked. I don't actually know whether that was the case but that's the vibe I got from following their landing page over time.
mawadev 9mo ago
Why do I feel like my genuine comment has been overtaken by more bots posting a lot of meaningless text?

Why do I feel like I've just read a covert advertisement?

by mawadev 9mo ago

Why do I feel like I've just read a covert advertisement?

Sometimes I feel like the people here live on a different planet. I can't imagine what type of upbringing I would have to have, to start thinkinkg that "eating food" is an engineering problem to be solved. This might be a controversial opinion, but I for one, like to eat food. In fact I even do it 3 times a day. Don't yall have a culture that's passed down to you through food? Family recipes? Isn't eating food a central aspect of socialization? Isn't socialization the reason people wanted to go to the office in the firt place? Maybe I'm biased. I love going out to eat, and I love cooking. But its more than that. I garden. I go to the farmers market. I go to food festivals. Food is such an integral part of the human experience for me, that I can't imagine "cutting it out". And for what? So you can have more time to stare at the screen you already stare at all day? So you can look at 2% more lines of javascript? When I first saw commercials for that product, I truly thought it was like a medical/therapeutic thing, for people that have trauma with food. I admit, the food equivalent of an i.v. drip does seem useful for people that legitimately can't eat.

xnorswap 9mo ago
I'm with you on this one, the idea of trying to "optimise" away lunches and break time to cram in more "study time" seems utterly alien.
AstroBen 9mo ago
I like eating, I just don't like spending so much time and decision fatigue on prep. I'm probably the target audience for Huel but I don't actually think it's good for you 90% of meals aren't some special occasion, but I still need to eat. Why not make it easy? Then go explore and try new things every now and then Treating food as entertainment is how the west has gotten so unhealthy
johnisgood 9mo ago
I like satisfying my hunger (my goal most of the time when it comes to food), but making food is not a hobby to me. That said, cooking is often a nice, shared experience with my girlfriend.
pixl97 9mo ago
I'm a foodie, I love food and cooking and the eating experience. This said, I know people that food is a grudging necessity they'd rather do without. At the end of the day there's a lot of different kinds of people out there.
anttiharju 9mo ago
> I can't imagine what type of upbringing I would have to have, to start thinking that "eating food" is an engineering problem to be solved. I was really busy with my master's degree, ok? :D

jennyholzer4 9mo ago

[flagged]

anttiharju 9mo ago

I mean I don't think I'm giving a particularly favorable view of the product

jerf 9mo ago
I expect AI ads to start with blindingly obvious overwhelmingly excited endorsments, but it won't take long for that to show up in the metrics that won't work very well past the initial intro, and they'll get more subdued over time... but they're always going to be at least positive. The old saying "there's no such thing as bad publicity" is wrong, and the LLMs aren't going to try to get you to buy things by being subtly negative on them. If nothing else, even if you somehow produced a (correct) study showing that does increase buying I think the marketers would just not be able to tolerate that, for strictly human reasons. They always want their stuff cast in a positive light.
- anttiharju 9mo ago
  heh. I think I've seen an adtech company use AI influencers to market whatever product a customer wanted to sell. I got the impression that it initally worked really well, but then people caught on to the fact it was just AI and performance tanked. I don't actually know whether that was the case but that's the vibe I got from following their landing page over time.

mawadev 9mo ago

Why do I feel like my genuine comment has been overtaken by more bots posting a lot of meaningless text?