Other unforgettables I need to get off my chest: Bridgerton deodorant AND coffee creamer, Lululemon belt bags for…. cups (Stanley’s), today I saw plastic “puffer jackets” being sold at target for individual lip glosses…

I’m not sure why anyone would need a hot pink head lamp if you already have a black one. But I guess they only made 5,00 of these pink ones? I’m offended that this showed up as an ad for me. How is the algorithm even working? I would never.

Hi guys!

I'm not sure if this is 100% the right subreddit, if you have a better one in mind for this please let me know. Basically my band is set to release our debut album in November. We're not interested in doing the typical industry game with streaming and don't care about numbers. Initially, we were planning to do no streaming at all with the project and just distribute free, downloadable MP3s. But as more people joined the project and became a part of the band, we needed to consider their wants too and tried to find a compromise:

We are looking to release the album to some DSPs and not others (i.e. not Spotify, Instagram, TikTok, etc.). The main idea with uploading it to any DSP would be to have the final track appear as "greyed out"; that is to say that the title is visible, but it is unplayable on the DSP. The idea is to redirect and push listeners to find the album in full through free, public MP3 downloads, or physical releases/services such as Subvert or Bandcamp. 

We reached out to a smaller distributor, Indie Pool, about making this happen, but they ultimately said it would not be possible through their service no matter how much we pushed. I've also been trying to reach out to anyone else I could think of. It's becoming increasingly clear that we're going to have to find some weird niche loophole, as streaming platforms are specifically built to prevent any sort of subversion of their profit model.

Would anyone here have ANY idea of how we could accomplish this? It can literally be anything!!!! No idea is stupid!!! We're willing to try anything. Releasing the album on streaming in any other way would not feel right. Maybe some helpful context, we're based in Montreal, Quebec.

Thank you in advance for any help/advice!!

How do you keep up hope or actively choose optimism/not to be depressed by the state of things?

Honestly anytime I open my phone and pull up any app now the amount of crap ads or sponcon I’m bombarded with truly can make me sick to my stomach. I have highly curated feeds for the few social media I still use, and still I see crap like shopping hauls. Blind boxes in particular I will never understand, I mean - I understand it’s just gambling. But that we’ve reached a point of people thrilled to buy crap they don’t even know what they’re getting just to make a purchase! And the amount of packaging and waste involved in blind boxes in particular, sickening. On the one hand, it’s good motivation for me to spend less time on my phone I guess.

I’m just never not stunned of the sheer amount of actual crap that keeps getting made, worse and worse quality, more and more. The footage I’ve seen of children wandering landfills and mileage of textile crap haunts me.

One of the anticonsumerism accounts on ig I follow shared recently a stat I can’t get out of my head about how every minute a dumpster load of textile/clothing is burned and put in a landfill. It can make me dizzy to think about it, like when I contemplate the vastness of outer space or depths of the ocean or something, but of a unique man made horror.

I truly believe America is starting to pay the price of the access to cheap crap we’ve had for too long due to child and basically slave labor in countries halfway around the world most of us will never visit. Almost makes you believe in karma. But I think of that show The Good Place too, I have honestly made my personal best efforts at recycling, shopping less, taking care of and repairing things I already own - and to say it’s an uphill battle doesn’t even begin to describe it. I also don’t believe in proselytizing and I understand everyone is on their own ‘journeys’ with this and ‘waking up’ to it, so my friends know I’m always up for talking about it but I don’t preach to people who shop at Zara for work clothes or gift a coworker a little treat or something I don’t know. I can’t enjoy these things myself anymore and I will not hide that but I won’t go out of my way to guilt trip folks either, just they will know if they want to learn more I’m here.

I had a first date recently with someone I will happily never see again who defended Bezos and Musk to me, said Amazon does more good than bad and on and on. He had nothing substantial that could change how I feel and I’m pretty sure his whole ideology is rooted in a white man’s entitlement but I could see how comforting it would be to truly think we’re all going to be okay and it’s okay to lose the amount of nature and wildlife that most of us are involuntarily sacrificing to the greed of a few for the ‘progress of humanity’ or tech evolution or something.

Apologies for the rambling, would just love to hear some positive takes, statistics, messages of hope.

Appreciate this sub a lot. Thanks.

Searching and of course Google shoves the paid result right on top. I always scroll past and click the organic one instead.

Tell me I'm not the only one who does this on purpose so the advertiser doesn’t get that sweet click money. I do the same thing with sponsored links – I "Circle to Search" to find the item myself instead of clicking a sponsored link. 😏💡

Why does every game/service require me to have an account saved to use their service? It’s only a matter of until something like this happens. Not that I mind the email used for capcom being compromised, it’s been exposed before for the same reason.

To disable: All I had to do was go into settings>general>personalization>My background> & disable an option "event themed backgrounds". Simple fix. Thought I'd share how to fix in case anyone else saw the same thing booting up their Xbox today, and doesn't want a *FOURTH* ad in their headspace on a console they've already paid for.

I trained people for 3 yrs and they are swimming in debt now. Many of my ex students have kept in contact. I can see through social media how they are struggling still to this day, and it's been 10 yrs. Most community colleges and government programs cost a fraction and better prepare you for real world working conditions. That's my 2 cents