I don’t care if anyone has a Xiaomi, Oneplus, Samsung, etc. Each brand is using a modified version of Android, and they chose to be compatible with each other. But for example the “blue vs green bubble” drama is a thing specifically because of Apple locking their unsuspecting users into a closed ecosystem. And it sure isn’t Android’s fault for not being compatible with it.
The more power a company like this gains, the worse will it be for the whole industry.
tell that the social cliques in high school. its marketing and its real.
source: kids.
If it isn’t the phone, it is shoes, or other stupid shit. people grow up and the realize that none of that stupid shit matters
it’s marketing thus seems more real than it is.
there will always be kids who treat poor kids bad for not having the cool new expensive stuff…
but that’s a classist problem, not limited to phones.
see also: jeans, shoes, makeup, e-bikes, pokemon, everything else
also, all the really cool kids use signal messenger and don’t use stock text messaging apps…
oh, understood. just saying that the marketing of social shame has been strategically exended into the colour of your text bubble pixels… from the “think different” company.
signal gets installed on every phone in my house, but the kids are drawn to where the other kids are and Apple snobbery is rife in the area I am in.
well your kids are really cool…
i wonder how much is actually apple, and how much is standard classist kid stuff…
there was a recent hydroflask craze with the kids around here… with kids chanting “sks” (sound at the end of hydroflasks)
but, i think that’s just because they’re nicer quality and expensive…
when i was a kid there was a big deal made about jean brands in my school…
I would say the majority of it is just the usual human monkey brained reactionary garbage that our species has always dealt with. the concerning bit is how our own brains have been weaponized against us with untold amounts of money and time expended in learning how to manipulate enough of us to extract and realocate “value” from the many to the few.
I think we are collectively building a benificial immune reaction to this invasion of our selves, but the attack is so pervasive and so persistent that it is, quite literally, mentally and physically debilitating - certainly by design. will we just exhaust ourselves into submission or change paths and try something that does not culminate in a species ending orgy of consumption and conflict? I have no idea, but very few of our possible futures look particularly hopeful to me at the moment.
I do, however, try to hold on to some thread of optimisim - I need a reason to get up in the morning.
I appreciate the dialogue, fellow internet denizen :-)
Who fucking cares what high schoolers think?
its their lived experience and they are the future adults of our world.
if the insane amount of micro-targeted manipulation and pressure these kids face on a daily basis does not concern you, then your lack of empathy is self evident and there is nothing else to be said to you.
Yeah, because we never experienced that as kids ourselves
No, you didn’t, or at least not at this level.
Sure, TV ads and even some old games had ads which were targeted to specific demographics (their audience), but modern digital ads are targeted to vulnerabilities of specific individuals (using location, search, purchase history, etc.). They’re also shown much more often and baked into products which are specifically designed to target your subconscious psychology (using nudging, gamification, etc.) so you use them more.
The kind of data required for the level of ad targeting done now did not exist more than maybe 15-20 years ago.
You’re completely glossing over the fact that there was a whole different set of problems my generation had to deal with in the 90s. But sure, only modern kids ever struggled. We’ll go with that.
Obviously every generation has its struggles, but I was never disagreeing with that. If you treat this as “just another generational problem,” you are fundamentally missing the point. It’s as you say, a whole different set of problems.
Micro targeted ads are hard to ignore because most of the time they’re influencing our subconscious state. This isn’t just another generational issue we’re facing, it’s fundamentally shaping the way people look at the world without them even being aware of it. It’s not limited to just the current generation, because everyone interacts with technology. However, targeting inner psychology will obviously impact people with less developed brains more than it will impact adults, and we’re beginning to see the effects of that already with Gen Z.