I only had occasional luck with this even on Reddit. Some smaller subs for hobby stuff had genuinely good advice, but a lot of times it'd just be people repeating the same brands and products with a shallow recommendation. And there was a lot of astroturfing. Over the years I've learned to ask elsewhere:
For major appliances, the best approach I've found is to find a local business – a well reputed one that's been around for years, and does service as well as sales – and simply ask the salespeople what they recommend. If the shop's willing to warranty it, it's probably good enough.
For gadgets I tend to start looking at recognizable review sites that are easy to skim (RTINGS is especially useful, but Ars, The Verge etc. all have decent reviews) and then expand out to YouTube for the products I'm most interested in. Sometimes it's a good idea to look up the company itself for anything that might change your mind about them (Western Digital's unlabeled change to SMR drives is a recent example).
Shoes and clothes are the hardest thing to get good advice on. The most useful advice I've received has been very general stuff about what to look for in fit and quality. I've also found that high ethical standards from a clothing company tends to go hand in hand with quality and longevity.
Cars are an area where Reddit was still helpful. YouTube can be helpful here, but not so much typical car review channels: the most helpful YouTube videos are often from people who've owned a particular model for a year or so and can speak with experience about its quirks.
Finally, and most of all, I've learned to check the instinct to look up reviews. It's worth spending some time to research stuff between you and the ground, or that you'll use daily, but I've wasted too many hours comparing details that really don't matter. Make sure it's something you legitimately care about before you reach for other people's opinions.
Be careful on that appliance recommendation strategy. Even small businesses salespeople receive kickbacks from manufacturers. And pretty much every service plan from a store these days is underwritten by someone like Assurant.
If you can get in touch with either someone in customer service or a repair tech then you'll get the best info.
Customer service generally has the incentives in the right place. If they tell you something isn't returned often then that means they don't have to deal with you coming back and complaining for no monetary benefit to themselves.
There's also lots of channels on YouTube from small appliance repair companies and they're more than willing to tell you who sucks.
They’re independent and don’t accept advertising, but are subscription-based. You can usually find them at your local library (i.e., hard copies or sometimes in their online database).
I was browsing Disney+ with my kids last night and realized that he had a show. I was so happy to see it though of course I couldn't convince my 10 and 4 year olds to watch it.
If you don't remember, this is the black man who had the cops called on him when he had the audacity to ask a white person to leash their dog in a part of Central Park where dogs are supposed to be leashed. She refused, so he started giving the dog treats, which as someone who used to be afraid of dogs seems like a smart move!! Instead of leashing her dog this entitled person called the police and claimed that the scary black man was threatening her life. He filmed it, of course, since Philando Castile had been shot on camera a few years earlier in Minneapolis. The video went viral. (George Floyd was actually killed later the same day as the dog incident.)
The caller got fired from her job with an investment firm they next day. She sued to get her job back but the judge agreed with the firm. Mr Cooper wrote a book, and now has a TV show. That's great news!!
when you sue someone, its in civil court. its not about legality. the company is in the US. the family memebers will take them down and they no longer ha e their ceo.
Courts aren't limited to prosecuting crimes that happen in their jurisdiction. For example, German courts are prosecuting sex crimes committed by tourists in Thailand. So just because there is no court nearby doesn't mean you can do whatever you want.
welp. shouldn't Kbin, lemmy, etc. become the new reddit slowly? So I guess after a while we will have pretty good guides and answers in these platforms.
For expensive electronics, I search some reviews. Then I google "{device_model_number} problems" or "{device_model_number} not working" and see what the results are like. I buy one that didn't have a lot of results there.
Sadly, the results are usually from reddit. But you also get some various hardware discussion forums and such.
Knitting can be quite fun and somewhat low cost if you don't get influenced too much. But ask any knitter about their stash and you'll discover we're all hoarders who will not hesitate to pay ridiculous amounts of money for a single skein of hand died yarn (in the ugliest colours) that most likely will end up in the stash and never get knitted. Tools are the same. Why settle for a very basic and fully functional set of needles when you can get the most expensive one?
If you know a knitter, just know they are most likely sitting on a small fortune worth of yarn and tools.
This is a highly contagious problem, and it effects those who crochet as well. I uh, got the bug and made this yard winder from scratch for my girlfriend lol. I use it too, when I get nice yarn in hanks, but it was wildly unnecessary.
I will preface this by saying I have zero hate for people enjoying themselves without harming others.
When someone injects extreme representations of themselves into every encounter they have with no regard for context, it can be frustrating. It's off-putting to be having a typical conversation and suddenly have someone use RP text. It's not the culture that is off-putting, it's the out-of-context actions.
I understand that for some, social cues and context around conversation might not be as clear or understood. I just personally have a hard time handling a conversation when the other party is suddenly RPing as their fursona outside of that space.
Just because someone doesn't understand that is no reason to have some sort of extreme hate towards them though.
I find the anthropomorphic children's cartoon aesthetic of furries to be extremely cringe. Its juvenile and ugly, and then when its sexualized or people are making fursuits, it becomes exponentially more cringe.
I think if furries had a better art style and less weirdly anthropomorphized, I might even be on board.
Edit: I just want to be clear that I don't hate furries at all and have friends who are furries who I love and respect. I'm just trying to be honest about what I find off-putting about it because I imagine there are other people who have a similar "cringe" reaction to the art style and translate that into hate.
That's a good question. Some anime styles, definitely not. Other anime styles, maybe. But it definitely doesn't feel "childish" to me in the same way anthropomorphic animals do. It may be my personal experience. I associate anthropomorphic animals, and the particular art style of furries, to media I consumed between the ages of like 2 and 8. I wasn't exposed to anime until I was a young teenager, so it doesn't really have that association with childhood for me.
I really do find it fascinating to analyze these biases, because I do consider it an irrational bias that I have. I can analyze the reasons for it, but it isn't really a logic, just a feeling.
I'm not a furry, I'm chill with furries, but I do wish there was more variety in the art style. A lot of it is human anime-esque with furry features or too mascot-y. I think I would be a furry if more of them were drawn like disney, looney toon, and other western cartoons. But not much is.
So even though I like cartoon animals, I can only consider myself maybe 5% furry at best.
I thought hating on furries was a 4chan meme that became a tiktok meme.
But I’ve a few reasons why that meme may have gained traction. Firstly it’s not a sexuality like homosexuality. It’s more of a fetish, and people make fun of fetishes all the time - see feet, or, idk, midget. I’m sure some maintain its not sexual, but the community overwhelmingly is. Second, it has associations with beastiality. Now I’d assume the vast majority of furries don’t harbour sexual attractions to real animals, but it’s certainly on that side of the Venn diagram, which may cause some concern. Finally people involved generally seem to be social outcasts. You don’t see many captain of the football team furries or cheerleader furries. If school kids are already picking on the weebs and the nerds, finding out some of them dress up like animals and hang out is fuel for the fire.
As for calls to killing furries, I’d wager the majority of that is just joining in on the meme. I’m sure furries would get bullied at school, but as for vehement violence I doubt it transcends the bullying that the D&D kids receive. Not that I condone any violence or bullying towards anyone, furries included. But if you were wondering why people dislike em, maybe this helps.
I would not say its a fetish, but a fetish can be attached to it. First and foremost its simply a liking for antro characters in e general sense.
And about sexuality, which is certainly the point where people show the most hate. Furries are into human based fanatsy characters with a wild mix of features, from nature inspired to completely made up and that with a great emphasis on the human base of the character.
Finally people involved generally seem to be social outcasts.
A great amount of us are aspergers, me as well. We are by nature social outcasts and the target of everyone that can somehow have power over us. So its neither getting worse nor better.
Inserts are those junk ads that always fall out everywhere when you pick a magazine up, right? How about Editorial, since posts/microblogs tend heavily towards being longish personal commentary?
Although Ernest said a few days ago he was thinking of changing the terminology. I don't remember if he said to what, just that he should. Kinda mixed about that. It makes talking about them more confusing both for cross-platform and for new users, but I got used to it now and I fear change
I've already started calling magazines "mags" in my head. I think it's fine the way it is, though if they were renamed to "zines" that would be fine too.
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