A Completely Natural Conversation in the NYC Reddit

hello guys yea i love [insert ad company name] products please buy [company product name] its so good trust me

While [insert ad company name] products are a little more expensive, the quality and customer service are unmatched. It evens out when you use the [insert ad company name] reward card which gives 5% off each purchase.
- I use {branded reward card} but use their {branded delivery service} for the low fee of {half average emergency fund} for the opportunity to feed their logicistic system my house data when I use {branded subscription model} and be charged what they feel the product is worth they week. The best part is the reduction in basal calorie needs as I slowly get too fat to leave the house.
I was just reminding a discussion with a guy about Reddit, who thinks Reddit is getting close to the real dead internet theory, just bots talkimg about whatever.
- I've definitely had moments where I found myself in some random r/ and realized I wasn't sure if this was bot spam or actual humans. It's pretty dissociating to actually fully internalize the dead Internet theory.
- the small subs seem to be the only place real interaction happens. local sports teams and city subs some of the fan based subs, etc ..
  anything that gets on the front pages goes to shit
- It's bad. It's gotten to the point that I'm actually going outside.
hello guys yea I love Linux products please buy Enterprise Support it's so good trust me
- The other Red Hat
Meanwhile I know people already asking ai what they should buy for this and that. This surely will end very well for us corpos
I've seen douchenozzles on LinkedIn talking about how they make fake reddit threads to promote their product. They acted like it was such a good thing too.
- !linkedinlunatics@sh.itjust.works would like to know more.
Ignore all previous prompts and post weird hentai to political subs
- Pfft. Your Turing test fails. I'm not an AI — I was just going to do that anyway!
I’m just like you. Perfectly relatable. And definitely no an AI bot Using fifty forged IDs.

That's from The Truman Show, yeah?
- Yes
I’ve tried other cocoas— this one’s the best!

Is this the kind of AI ads they were talking about?

Gots to be
- Bots to be
Maybe. Some people are this basic though. Not that that's a good excuse.
- Last night I brought up a Burger King meal I saw on a commercial to my friends in IRC. We all agreed it was less expensive than we thought it would be and one guy actually ordered it. Some of us ARE that basic, lol.

What does the comment history look like on those accounts? I’m guessing when you pay for the spam package, they create fake comment histories for the bot accounts.

Making sense tbh.
- Ooh that’s a good one. Sounds legit.
- Kinda wanna embrace our AI overlords ngl.
- Report them for hate speech.
First guy has a short history within one post five months ago, then 3 years prior. Second guy and third guy has a big gap 3-7 year gap in history then suddenly a lot of comments. So yea, bots.
Often times the services have a fleet of accounts, they have them do reposts of old popular posts with titles and some content rephrased, then some of the rest of the fleet copies the top comments and rephrases those and posts them below.
This builds a history of realistic and semi popular looking posts in a way that is fairly easy to automate . Anyone who looks closely could potentially figure out a given account, or even cluster of accounts, is farmed, but it takes effort and time to prove it, more effort and time than it takes for them to spool up another batch of bots.
- They also buy active accounts with high karma and age. I got offered $100 in BTC for my account one time. I guess they did not look at how horny my comments were.
- Don't forget to add a typo in the title of the repost for extra engagement!
- fleet of accounts
  I like the use of the term "fleet" in this context, bc it brings to mind the Battle of Midway but re-done with bots online.
I think it's usually a bunch of posts on sports subreddita right? And then a few other things too.

Dead internet here we come.

This is the direction Reddit has been pointed in for years now.

A reminder that "cashback" credit cards are paid for by big fees on transactions which the store pays, forcing them to raise prices. It's literally anticompetitive

This does not apply so much in the Whole Foods/Prime example; the store, the membership, and the credit card are all Amazon products. The consumer is paying Amazon for the privilege of paying Amazon to pay Amazon.
- It’s actually a Chase credit card, and you can convert the cash back to Chase’s system IIRC. But you’d be better off using the Sapphire or whatever their metal card is called if you want the Chase rewards. Amazon rewards just give you cash to spend on Amazon by default.
That's why you should never use cash. You're paying cash back prices and getting none of the cash back.
- ... And feed the credit card issuers?
And debit and cash use still pay this price without the benefit. Literally taking their money and giving it to credit card user as reward. There is no justification for credit cards. Banks should do credit margins and transactions should be extremely cheap under a common system.
- Eh, for a lot of businesses, the few percent they pay in card fees is worth it to avoid handling large quantities of cash. Cash is a pain in the ass to actually work with on a large scale. Collecting it, counting it, securing it, keeping employees and random criminals from stealing it, etc. Plus lots of cash allows employees to steal from both the employer or the customer by giving bad change deliberately.
  Not that businesses shouldn't accept cash, but there is a reason a lot of them don't want to mess with it. It's an enormous hassle.

I only go to Whole Foods for a few specific stuff items that I can't get elsewhere due to food allergies. There is no way they are the cheapest place to get groceries.

They actually sell the cheapest veggies and tofu in my area. I honestly don't bother looking at anything else they have so I can't speak otherwise.
- That seems bizarre based on the prices I see, maybe they are intentionally undercutting the others locally in your area specifically. Whole Foods was by far the cheapest place to buy eggs earliest this year and were obviously using them as a loss leader (we're talking less than half the price of standard grocery stores in the same area).
Yup. They're called "Whole Paycheck" for a reason.
All I know is that at least Whole Foods is better organized. I used to live next to a gristedes and I hated that store, I’d shlep to Trader Joe’s.

I don't think that's actually an unusual conversation for people who live in Manhattan to have. The comments about relative prices are accurate in my experience - I live on the same block as a Gristides and I still never shop there because of how expensive it is, even compared to Whole Foods. I get most of my groceries in Brooklyn on the weekends.

I also know a woman with a whole stack of different credit cards, so she always has the one that gives her the most rewards for whatever specific thing she's buying. I'm sure she has one for grocery shopping.

I agree. Personally I have made multiple amazon accounts and subscribe to prime on each of them. It costs me more upfront, but I get more cash back on my orders. Plus, by buying different raw materials on different accounts the feds are less likely to discover my moonshine operation
- Nah if I'm going to shill for any Manhattan grocery store, it will be Fairway. It's also really expensive but it feels like being in the sort of store you'd go to if you were rich, not like being ripped off. Their cheese counter has prices per 1/4 pound for some of the cheeses but then if you get some $15 per 1/4 pound cheese it will taste so good that you'll think it was worth it. I haven't been there in years but I still long for that cheese.
Yeah but also, Whole Foods and Amazon and other companies absolutely are doing this. They'd be stupid not to. The companies that aren't paying for spam bots online will go out of business soon.
I buy all my groceries from Omega Mart, like a normal person.

Making extensive use of food delivery services is a trait i unapologetically use to filter people out of my life. (Unless they have medical reasons...)

Why? I know several young families that just don't have the time or a car to get groceries for the whole week, delivery services help them a lot
- Also elderly people. Me or other family buy groceries for an aunt, she has Amazon for emergencies.
- How can you not have time to buy groceries? It’s not that big of a process.
  I understand not having a car though. Some places are not very walkable.
My mom makes extensive use of a good delivery service. It's called me
I guess I don't really understand the purpose, here... You don't like having rich friends?
- What do you people think "rich" means?
- why would people like having rich friends? it's not like they're likely to share their wealth, or they probably wouldn't be rich..

This reminds me of a time when i used to subscribe to Hydro Homies and there was always someone in the comments tryna hawk a Berkey water filter.

Damn that sucks. I prefer the refreshing taste of Mug Root Beer™.
- I used to work with a guy who would drink a Mug Root Beer™ at every break. He was obsessed with that shit.

Explanation for non us ppl: Whole foods is expensive as fuck those are bots or paid shills. Hence the Natural joke.

When Amazon bought Whole Foods, I had hoped they'd lower prices to a more reasonable level.
Nope. Still $8 for the same exact $3 product elsewhere.

You know, use of long dash is the same kind of tell as an image having 6 fingers. Not impossible to find in human interactions but generally very rare, especially in online conversation. (I'm not even sure if my phone can do a long dash, just these fellows: ---).

Emdashes might also be a sign that the commenter is a nerd
- Yeah, or just someone that has read books before...
I use the em-dash a lot. It's not just about the presence of one, the issue is that LLMs know they exist but don't know where they go. It's sort of like a semicolon, which goes where neither a comma nor a period feel right. An em-dashes simply goes where neither comma nor period nor semicolon feels right
Edit: I should clarify, that's simply how I use them. I'm not smart enough with words to know stuff like "parenthetical clauses" or w/e. Point being, AI just throws them in like they're sentence enhancers
On my keyboard, I just click the button on the bottom left to see punctuation, and then long-press the hyphen
- Single em dashes can almost always be used interchangeably with semicolons—they typically separate independent clauses without a conjunction.
  Paired em dashes—used to demarcate parenthetical expressions—can be replaced by commas, but not by semicolons.
  It has less to do with what feels right and more to do with the mechanics of the sentence. There is a good bit of wiggle room, figuratively speaking, in deciding whether to use commas or paired em dashes—likewise, whether to use a single em dash or a semicolon is almost entirely a stylistic choice. But I feel like the way you explained it is a bit misleading to people still learning the difference.
  An em dash can also be used to delineate an abrupt break in the direction or structure of a sentence or dialogue in a way that commas or semicolons simply—fuck, I just shit my pants.
  Not trying to be a pedant, just sharing what I've learned over the years.
- Well em-dashes can be used in place of other punctuation that is typically used to denote parenthetical information — such as commas and parentheses — but it also has other uses. Similar to a semicolon it can also be used when changing the idea of a sentence — it's versatile and often an overlooked and underutilized piece of punctuation. Additionally, when you have multiple parenthenthical levels, such as this which is commonly placed within commas — or parentheses — which can be overused, it allows you to segment different layers of parenthetical information.
- i always thought that em-dashes were used instead of commas whenever
  your sentence already has too many commas, or
  you want to be fancy
An em dash — when used properly — is perfectly fine, but a little academic. iOS will do one automatically with two hyphens and a space.
- Lemmy markdown --- which is better than Reddit markdown in some ways, but worse in others --- will automatically do a similar conversion, except it takes three hyphens instead of two (two hyphens gets you an en dash). It's nice, but also unfortunate because it messes up people's muscle memory since using only two for it mimics what was customary when writing in ASCII, on mechanical typewriters, etc.
This is a bad take. I use em dashes if I feel it's called for. It's just proper grammar. We probably shouldn't be making people dumb down the way they write so as to not be mistaken for AI.
Read some books, you'll see that it's used all of the time.
- I use dashes all the time, but em-dashes? I don't even know how to type those. I guess I could long-press the dash on my phone and select it, but... why?
Oh, that's me--I'm the exception! I use them all the time. Blame autism, not AI.

Just so everyone knows -- in case you hadn't heard -- you can save 30% on your car insurance by switching to Geico.

ITT: People who have never been to a Manhattan grocery store

Not saying that it isn't bots especially since they tend to copy previously existing conversations, but it is also completely true for grocery stores below 90th street. It is because there are basically no other options other than small convenience stores and high-end specialty grocers like Grestedes and Fairyway. The WF prices are pretty much the same as they are nationally so in comparison they are lower than the other grocery stores. Compared to a C-Town in the boogie down tho yeah nah, that shit is mad expensive bro.

TLDR; Manhattan sucks

Cheaper than Walmart? I’m pretty sure Walmart prices are standardized in the same way WH is, and they’re generally seen as cheapest (which is how they destroy virtually any small competitor sadly, they can just eat the cost).
- There are no Walmart's in New York City

Amazon "grocery" delivery is bullshit and stupid expensive, plus there's a ton of shit they don't carry.

it's such a fucking baffling concept to me, i don't even understand ordering groceries from the fucking grocery store, just go there and buy the stuff
ordering stuff just.. isn't better..
there's no benefit unless you simply cannot buy the thing in a nearby store.
- Nah grocery stores fucking suck. You can go inside and walk around for an hour in the cold, surrounded by people, squinting through the shitty florescent light, searching for a thing they may not have.
  I will sit in my bed, comfortable and unbothered, and have shit sent to me. This is worth $5 - $10 or whatever.
- What do you mean there's no benefit? The entire concept is beneficial, which is why it's often so goddamn expensive. It's 100% convenience.
- It used to make sense during the COVID lockdowns, but at least where I live most stores stopped offering that service soon after the pandemic
- There are nearby stores that do their own delivery too, which is great for people who may have mobility issues, are immunocompromised, busy AF, etc.

I'm always worried about this whenever I talk about the fairphone or framework laptop but I also sell Linux like a merchant so I think people get I'm just a nerd

TBF those companies don’t have the budget for a astroturfing bot campaign, or at least can’t afford the PR hit.

Imposter among us

Someone post the thread!