3 ms·

I just can't get super upset about this. Sure, OTC companies are duping customers with marketing, but what's new about that? As the person holding the money, it

by bityard 3mo ago

I just can't get super upset about this. Sure, OTC companies are duping customers with marketing, but what's new about that? As the person holding the money, it's my job to look at what is effective and what the active ingredients are in any given product. Or ask my doctor/nurse/pharmacist what to do, if I can't be bothered to make the effort myself. When I want to get irrationally angry about something in a department store, I'll walk over to the shampoos, which for some reason always have a whole entire aisle dedicated to a single product, when they all do literally the same exact thing, just with different scents and advertising budgets baked into the sticker price.

ryandrake 3mo ago
The reason to take this seriously is mentioned in the article: It is possible to OD on Tylenol, and when consumers miss the fact that these drugs are all just Tylenol+junk, they might believe they need to take several of them together to get well. It's similar to the shampoo example (a huge selection of borderline useless products that make money purely because of marketing) but with a minor safety consideration, too.
- kube-system 3mo ago
  Especially when the phenylephrine they took doesn't fix the problems the box promised to fix.
runarberg 3mo ago
You are ignoring the existence of consumer protection, which is not unusual as it seems like regulatory bodies around the world (but especially in Europe) have forgotten the existence of consumer protection as well. You ask what is new about this, and the answer is, in 2026 context: nothing, but compared to the year 2000: plenty. Regulators used to issue fines for this behavior, and for worst offenders, regulators used to shut them down. Lying to customers is illegal in most jurisdiction, it used to have consequences, and it should do so again.
robmccoll 3mo ago
Not totally accurate - there are a handful of foaming agents and surfactants that are mixed and matched to make shampoos, so really it's nearly the same except that no one has ever overdosed on applying too much sodium lauryl sulfate to their scalp.
- red-iron-pine 3mo ago
  and, you know, smells and such i don't need to smell like grandma
- cryzinger 3mo ago
  You won't OD from sulfates in shampoo, but there are serious pros and cons to using them at all: Sulfate-containing shampoos give you a deeper clean, but can dry out your scalp and make the color in color-treated hair fade. They're ideal for most people, especially if you don't wash your hair every day. Sulfate-free shampoos are more gentle, but if you're supremely oily and/or don't wash your hair every day, you might not feel like they clean your hair well enough. Almost all "color-safe" shampoos are sulfate-free. They're ideal if you wash your hair daily and/or have a dry scalp... and they're a must if you dye your hair and want to keep the color looking nice!
bgirard 3mo ago
> As the person holding the money, it's my job to look at what is effective and what the active ingredients are in any given product. But I don't have time to do that. I would rather have a retailer do that curation for me and provide me with effective high value products, and stand behind returns when they miss the mark. Then as a customer I can reward them for that value added work. That's why Costco is great most of the time. Although they sometimes miss the mark with certain products they stock.
- geraldcombs 3mo ago
  Additionally, if I'm buying cold medicine there's a really good chance I have a cold, and my ability and inclination to carefully analyze the ingredient list on a box of medicine smear-printed in 3pt sans will likely be diminished.
triceratops 3mo ago
> As the person holding the money, it's my job to look at what is effective and what the active ingredients are in any given product That ignores over a century of law regarding drug safety and efficacy, and false advertising.
- alistairSH 3mo ago
  Not to mention it ignores reality. Most consumers have neither the time now knowledge to research everything they buy. That's one of the roles of government.
  - Nifty3929 3mo ago
    That's one of the important reasons - I thought - that we have the FDA in the first place. But these days I'm really not so sure. So many promising treatments rejected (or just stalled forever) while pointless placebos and worse get or remain approved. So - why again does the FDA exist?
    - no-name-here 3mo ago
      > why again does the FDA exist? Is the argument that because the FDA may not be perfect, the public would be better off if it didn’t exist? The FDA handles many thousands of product categories, tens of thousands of prescription drugs, etc. Which items (and how many total) are you referring to? For many of them might there be a reason available as to why they didn’t end up as you recommended? Is there any country on earth without an FDA where you think the result is better than the US’s FDA?
      - alistairSH 3mo ago
        Sunscreen is the first thing that pops to mind. Until last week(?) we hadn't had a new sunscreen ingredient in decades, despite the RoW getting newer/better stuff for years. It was to the point that tourists to Korea and the EU would stock up on product to bring back. Yes, that (roughly) happened because the FDA regulates sunscreen like a drug and RoW mostly treats it as a cosmetic. And FDA drug approval is expensive, so nobody was bothering. Regardless, for those of us with pasty white skin, it kinda blows not being able to get a good daily sunscreen that doesn't make us look even more ghostly. EDIT - Yes, the FDA needs to exist, it's WAY better than nothing. But, it's probably due for some reform.
mannanj 3mo ago
> As the person holding the money, it's my job to look at what is effective and what the act ingredients are in any given product. I wish the industry, our health organizations, and most people in general acted as though this were true. The environment we live in in general is increasingly hostile to people who ask those questions, do their own research, and take responsibility for their health in this way. I have first hand experience having reversed chronic health conditions myself by doing my own research. What have and do others say about it? Everything: every person on the sidelines watching who have formed opinions about how things are supposed to be, and how doctors and nurses and pharmacists are supposed to know better, attack and ridicule me and others like me and when we "look at what is effective and what the active ingredients are" we are gaslit and told we can't possible understand and know that and to leave it to the experts. Of course the definition of expert is only ever tribal and is a moving trojan horse for whatever best allows the agenda of an industry to establish its control over you.
- triceratops 3mo ago
  "hostile" how?
  - mannanj 3mo ago
    Let me first get our agreement on the word hostility: > a state of unfriendliness, antagonism, or ill will Do you agree on this definition? Assuming so, I hear you asking how can asking particular questions get you this? I'll assume you have good will and are willing to engage with friendliness. Simply asking specific questions about health, about diseases, about diet, about social media addiction, about controversial topics like politics, etc release hostility from a handful of people. These people engage with ill will and not friendliness. And it is assumed by them that the asker (me usually) meant unwell - this hostility represents my intentions and assumptions as ill will assumptions. Oddly enough this usually is strongest from people with strong identity attachment to a particular belief or set of beliefs that when questioned releases so much dissonance their nervous system gets hijacked and without the emotional intellgience or mindfulness skills to pause before they engage what comes out is a slop of hostility and aggression most commonly being Ad Hominem or Straw Man attacks as I've mentioned. All when all I did was asked questions. When someone demonstrates this without actually inquiring into ones assumptions or why they asked, thats a clear demonstration of hostility. Do you need more examples?
kube-system 3mo ago
> When I want to get irrationally angry about something in a department store, I'll walk over to the shampoos, which for some reason always have a whole entire aisle dedicated to a single product, when they all do literally the same exact thing, just with different scents and advertising budgets baked into the sticker price. Somewhere on a shampoo forum people are complaining that all computers do the same damn thing. I guess they probably just don't know what they're talking about.
- triceratops 3mo ago
  > all computers do the same damn thing They're all Turing machines
kelnos 3mo ago
I think I have two opinions on this, from different angles. I think the phenylephrine stuff is absolutely messed up. I personally had no idea it was ineffective, and I've bought medicine with that included, believing it would do what it says it does in the active ingredients list. To me, this is criminal, and these companies should be taken to court for outright lying about their products. (And the FDA should be slapped, hard, for not having done something about this by now.) But when it comes to the CVS brand of acetaminophen costing $5 and the NyQuil brand costing $10, that's just... the result of normal market forces. I'm not a big "free markets" guy (because we don't, and can't, have truly free markets, and if we could and did, it would be a disaster), but it's pretty normal and common for people to pay more for something just because some company did a better job advertising it than their competitor did. That's just life. It's funny, because when I go to a pharmacy, the store brand is usually shelved right next to the big-name brand, and there's even often a little card next to the store brand (or even printing directly on its packaging) that says "Compare ingredients to $BIG_NAME_BRAND!" And yet, people still buy the big name brand. ::shrug::, that's life.
eatsyourtacos 3mo ago
>Sure, OTC companies are duping customers with marketing, but what's new about that Downvoting you isn't enough. How about we stop trying to take advantage of people and extra every dollar from them in every possible way?
nitwit005 3mo ago
If someone buys an overpriced shampoo, it only negatively affects them, but the are costs to overall society if people suffer health issues, addiction, etc. In the past, a lot of people unknowingly ended up addicted to morphine, as it turned out both companies and individual doctors were happy to mislead them about the contents of medication.
annzabelle 3mo ago
That shampoo opinion is a sure tell that you're not a woman with long hair (men with long hair tend to be less picky). My hair behaves noticeably differently with different shampoos/conditioners even within the same brand, and depending on your specific porosity, oiliness, texture, and humidity of the local climate, different hair care products and routines make a big difference if you have hair past chin length and want it to look healthy.
RIMR 3mo ago
While I can appreciate the principle of not blindly trusting OTC medicine marketing, it is not realistic to expect every person to be highly competent in fully understanding their medical choices. It is far more reasonable to expect the companies marketing healthcare products to be honest to their customers. If anything, you need honesty from healthcare companies in the first place if you're even going to begin making an informed decision. You're putting the cart before the horse here: people absolutely should be doing their own research before medicating themselves, but it is the OTC companies that obstruct that. And, secondary to all of this, your analogy about shampoo is misinformed. Still, it is fitting for this scenario, but not in the way you intended. There are lots of different hair types, including ethnic hairstyles that require specific treatments. There are also a number of lifestyle choices that can change your hair treatment needs. As a result, the shampoo aisle actually is stocked with a wildly varying assortment of haircare choices, but actually figuring out what product works best for your needs can be challenging because it is walled behind layers of marketing nonsense that don't inform the consumer adequately on what makes each product different. This isn't much different than the problems in the medicine aisle. It took a lot of secondhand research to find the ideal hair care product for my thick, curly hair that would mitigate the damage of thrice-weekly swimming in a chlorinated pool. I can assure you, not everything in the shampoo aisle is exactly the same. It was especially hard figuring this out as a man, when so many products are arbitrarily marketed to specific genders.

by bityard 3mo ago

ryandrake 3mo ago

The reason to take this seriously is mentioned in the article: It is possible to OD on Tylenol, and when consumers miss the fact that these drugs are all just Tylenol+junk, they might believe they need to take several of them together to get well. It's similar to the shampoo example (a huge selection of borderline useless products that make money purely because of marketing) but with a minor safety consideration, too.

kube-system 3mo ago
Especially when the phenylephrine they took doesn't fix the problems the box promised to fix.

runarberg 3mo ago

You are ignoring the existence of consumer protection, which is not unusual as it seems like regulatory bodies around the world (but especially in Europe) have forgotten the existence of consumer protection as well. You ask what is new about this, and the answer is, in 2026 context: nothing, but compared to the year 2000: plenty. Regulators used to issue fines for this behavior, and for worst offenders, regulators used to shut them down. Lying to customers is illegal in most jurisdiction, it used to have consequences, and it should do so again.

robmccoll 3mo ago

Not totally accurate - there are a handful of foaming agents and surfactants that are mixed and matched to make shampoos, so really it's nearly the same except that no one has ever overdosed on applying too much sodium lauryl sulfate to their scalp.

red-iron-pine 3mo ago
and, you know, smells and such i don't need to smell like grandma
cryzinger 3mo ago
You won't OD from sulfates in shampoo, but there are serious pros and cons to using them at all: Sulfate-containing shampoos give you a deeper clean, but can dry out your scalp and make the color in color-treated hair fade. They're ideal for most people, especially if you don't wash your hair every day. Sulfate-free shampoos are more gentle, but if you're supremely oily and/or don't wash your hair every day, you might not feel like they clean your hair well enough. Almost all "color-safe" shampoos are sulfate-free. They're ideal if you wash your hair daily and/or have a dry scalp... and they're a must if you dye your hair and want to keep the color looking nice!

bgirard 3mo ago

> As the person holding the money, it's my job to look at what is effective and what the active ingredients are in any given product. But I don't have time to do that. I would rather have a retailer do that curation for me and provide me with effective high value products, and stand behind returns when they miss the mark. Then as a customer I can reward them for that value added work. That's why Costco is great most of the time. Although they sometimes miss the mark with certain products they stock.

geraldcombs 3mo ago
Additionally, if I'm buying cold medicine there's a really good chance I have a cold, and my ability and inclination to carefully analyze the ingredient list on a box of medicine smear-printed in 3pt sans will likely be diminished.

triceratops 3mo ago

> As the person holding the money, it's my job to look at what is effective and what the active ingredients are in any given product That ignores over a century of law regarding drug safety and efficacy, and false advertising.

alistairSH 3mo ago
Not to mention it ignores reality. Most consumers have neither the time now knowledge to research everything they buy. That's one of the roles of government.
- Nifty3929 3mo ago
  That's one of the important reasons - I thought - that we have the FDA in the first place. But these days I'm really not so sure. So many promising treatments rejected (or just stalled forever) while pointless placebos and worse get or remain approved. So - why again does the FDA exist?
  - no-name-here 3mo ago
    > why again does the FDA exist? Is the argument that because the FDA may not be perfect, the public would be better off if it didn’t exist? The FDA handles many thousands of product categories, tens of thousands of prescription drugs, etc. Which items (and how many total) are you referring to? For many of them might there be a reason available as to why they didn’t end up as you recommended? Is there any country on earth without an FDA where you think the result is better than the US’s FDA?
    - alistairSH 3mo ago
      Sunscreen is the first thing that pops to mind. Until last week(?) we hadn't had a new sunscreen ingredient in decades, despite the RoW getting newer/better stuff for years. It was to the point that tourists to Korea and the EU would stock up on product to bring back. Yes, that (roughly) happened because the FDA regulates sunscreen like a drug and RoW mostly treats it as a cosmetic. And FDA drug approval is expensive, so nobody was bothering. Regardless, for those of us with pasty white skin, it kinda blows not being able to get a good daily sunscreen that doesn't make us look even more ghostly. EDIT - Yes, the FDA needs to exist, it's WAY better than nothing. But, it's probably due for some reform.

mannanj 3mo ago

> As the person holding the money, it's my job to look at what is effective and what the act ingredients are in any given product. I wish the industry, our health organizations, and most people in general acted as though this were true. The environment we live in in general is increasingly hostile to people who ask those questions, do their own research, and take responsibility for their health in this way. I have first hand experience having reversed chronic health conditions myself by doing my own research. What have and do others say about it? Everything: every person on the sidelines watching who have formed opinions about how things are supposed to be, and how doctors and nurses and pharmacists are supposed to know better, attack and ridicule me and others like me and when we "look at what is effective and what the active ingredients are" we are gaslit and told we can't possible understand and know that and to leave it to the experts. Of course the definition of expert is only ever tribal and is a moving trojan horse for whatever best allows the agenda of an industry to establish its control over you.

triceratops 3mo ago
"hostile" how?
- mannanj 3mo ago
  Let me first get our agreement on the word hostility: > a state of unfriendliness, antagonism, or ill will Do you agree on this definition? Assuming so, I hear you asking how can asking particular questions get you this? I'll assume you have good will and are willing to engage with friendliness. Simply asking specific questions about health, about diseases, about diet, about social media addiction, about controversial topics like politics, etc release hostility from a handful of people. These people engage with ill will and not friendliness. And it is assumed by them that the asker (me usually) meant unwell - this hostility represents my intentions and assumptions as ill will assumptions. Oddly enough this usually is strongest from people with strong identity attachment to a particular belief or set of beliefs that when questioned releases so much dissonance their nervous system gets hijacked and without the emotional intellgience or mindfulness skills to pause before they engage what comes out is a slop of hostility and aggression most commonly being Ad Hominem or Straw Man attacks as I've mentioned. All when all I did was asked questions. When someone demonstrates this without actually inquiring into ones assumptions or why they asked, thats a clear demonstration of hostility. Do you need more examples?

kube-system 3mo ago

> When I want to get irrationally angry about something in a department store, I'll walk over to the shampoos, which for some reason always have a whole entire aisle dedicated to a single product, when they all do literally the same exact thing, just with different scents and advertising budgets baked into the sticker price. Somewhere on a shampoo forum people are complaining that all computers do the same damn thing. I guess they probably just don't know what they're talking about.

triceratops 3mo ago
> all computers do the same damn thing They're all Turing machines

kelnos 3mo ago

I think I have two opinions on this, from different angles. I think the phenylephrine stuff is absolutely messed up. I personally had no idea it was ineffective, and I've bought medicine with that included, believing it would do what it says it does in the active ingredients list. To me, this is criminal, and these companies should be taken to court for outright lying about their products. (And the FDA should be slapped, hard, for not having done something about this by now.) But when it comes to the CVS brand of acetaminophen costing $5 and the NyQuil brand costing $10, that's just... the result of normal market forces. I'm not a big "free markets" guy (because we don't, and can't, have truly free markets, and if we could and did, it would be a disaster), but it's pretty normal and common for people to pay more for something just because some company did a better job advertising it than their competitor did. That's just life. It's funny, because when I go to a pharmacy, the store brand is usually shelved right next to the big-name brand, and there's even often a little card next to the store brand (or even printing directly on its packaging) that says "Compare ingredients to $BIG_NAME_BRAND!" And yet, people still buy the big name brand. ::shrug::, that's life.

eatsyourtacos 3mo ago

>Sure, OTC companies are duping customers with marketing, but what's new about that Downvoting you isn't enough. How about we stop trying to take advantage of people and extra every dollar from them in every possible way?

nitwit005 3mo ago

If someone buys an overpriced shampoo, it only negatively affects them, but the are costs to overall society if people suffer health issues, addiction, etc. In the past, a lot of people unknowingly ended up addicted to morphine, as it turned out both companies and individual doctors were happy to mislead them about the contents of medication.

annzabelle 3mo ago

That shampoo opinion is a sure tell that you're not a woman with long hair (men with long hair tend to be less picky). My hair behaves noticeably differently with different shampoos/conditioners even within the same brand, and depending on your specific porosity, oiliness, texture, and humidity of the local climate, different hair care products and routines make a big difference if you have hair past chin length and want it to look healthy.

RIMR 3mo ago

While I can appreciate the principle of not blindly trusting OTC medicine marketing, it is not realistic to expect every person to be highly competent in fully understanding their medical choices. It is far more reasonable to expect the companies marketing healthcare products to be honest to their customers. If anything, you need honesty from healthcare companies in the first place if you're even going to begin making an informed decision. You're putting the cart before the horse here: people absolutely should be doing their own research before medicating themselves, but it is the OTC companies that obstruct that. And, secondary to all of this, your analogy about shampoo is misinformed. Still, it is fitting for this scenario, but not in the way you intended. There are lots of different hair types, including ethnic hairstyles that require specific treatments. There are also a number of lifestyle choices that can change your hair treatment needs. As a result, the shampoo aisle actually is stocked with a wildly varying assortment of haircare choices, but actually figuring out what product works best for your needs can be challenging because it is walled behind layers of marketing nonsense that don't inform the consumer adequately on what makes each product different. This isn't much different than the problems in the medicine aisle. It took a lot of secondhand research to find the ideal hair care product for my thick, curly hair that would mitigate the damage of thrice-weekly swimming in a chlorinated pool. I can assure you, not everything in the shampoo aisle is exactly the same. It was especially hard figuring this out as a man, when so many products are arbitrarily marketed to specific genders.