Everything is a scam now. You can’t exchange money for products or services anymore. We just exchange money for scams.

georgemcbay 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I can't speak for "US consumers" broadly, but this is 100% why I'm angry as a consumer.

Everything is a fucking scam.

And often also a subscription for something that doesn't warrant being a subscription, and signing up is one click, cancelling is a written letter or a 3 hour long phone call (because see again the part where "Everything is a fucking scam").

	▲	anal_reactor 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's incredible that a fucking TV is also a scam. I have an LG TV that only works as a dumb screen and it's really beautiful but now when I look at it, I don't see the technical marvel, I think "is someone at LG reading screencaps of my conversations and 4chan threads" because recently I got aware that this could be a very real possibility. And it's not about the TV itself, it's about having to be on 24/7 in order to avoid scams. You cannot just exchange one unit of money for one unit of product or service that gives you one unit of happiness, you have to first get PhD in avoiding scams. And often you watch yourself fall for the scam even though you're aware of it because realistically, you have no other options. Sometimes I need to buy something in a supermarket nearby and then it's "do you sir have our cattle-tracking ad-infested resource-draining attention-grabbing fucking-annoying useless dehumanizing app?" and if you don't you pay €5 extra because fuck you that's why, there's no winning move here. I sometimes go to a shop 30 minutes further down just to avoid the humiliation ritual.

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bruce511 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why does the US feel this way, while (it seems to me) most other places don't?

I've been traveling a bit lately, and (again, it seems to me) that the US is trapped by "exceptionalism". They are the self-proclaimed best at everything all the time. If that's the starting point, then improvement seems impossible.

I can only conclude that consumers are treated badly in the US simply because they want to be.

I don't mean to be flippant. I mean that it the US people (as a majority) vote against their own interest. A majority looked at a candidate who was an obvious grifter, who ran on a policy of gutting consumer protections, and said "I want that".

A majority looked at a man, obsessed with personal gain and transactional relationships, who constantly rewarded business over consumers and said "I want that."

The entire premise of the MAGA movement is to return to an era of limited company oversight, reduced voter franchise, poorer population. The very heart of it is taking a chainsaw to the state that grew around protecting people from robber barron's.

And this runs deeper than personality. More than half a nation, and all levels of govt, support a party that overtly supports business over consumers. They reduce taxes (for the rich), they bloat the deficit, they erode protections.

Therefore I think it is this way because deep down Americans want it this way. They are easily convinced that "both sides are the same" or "cutting taxes for rich people is good for less-rich people", or that "if you vote our way you'll be a billionaire like me".

Ultimately the US is the best at everything. To claim improvement is possible is, well, frankly Unamerican. To learn from anyone else is to suggest a weakness, when clearly there aren't any.

When in doubt, everyone suggesting that things can be better is obviously a communist. Because that's the only alternative to the status quo.