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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • It’s more subtle than that. Obviously no one who already smokes is going to say “Oh, the packet isn’t as pretty as it used to be, guess I’ll quit smoking now.”

    It’s about the big, long-term picture. Companies spend money on branding and advertising because it works. You create the perception that your product is for a certain type of person, which makes them more inclined to buy it. By making cigarettes boring, you make them less appealing, and on average less people will smoke.

    The proof is in the pudding. Social attitudes to smoking in Australia have totally flipped within a generation or two. It used to be something that everyone did. It’s now mostly seen as a gross habit.


  • Great comment. We have the same thing here in Australia with tobacco laws. The most recent change was to ban almost all branding on cigarette packaging. They’re not allowed to use fonts, slogans, logos, or colours, just the brand name in plain text on a standard brown-green box.

    The logic being that branding makes a product more attractive to a consumer. Make it duller and less people will buy it.

    Tobacco companies fought it tooth and nail. Kept arguing it wouldn’t stop people from smoking. Well then why are you lobbying so hard against it? Obviously the only reason they will ever fight anything is because they think it will hurt their revenue. So whatever they oppose, I support.


  • What you said is often true but not always. Some communities prefer person-first language, some prefer identity first language.

    For example, generally speaking, “autistic people” is preferred over “people with autism”. The reasoning being “this is just part of who I am, it’s not an affliction that I have.”

    I’m not autistic but I have lots of friends who are, and they all prefer to say “I’m autistic” rather than “I have autism”.

    Like you said, it’s best to ask, or just copy the language that the person uses for themself.








  • You misunderstand. Larian is the company that made the BG3 video game, and they haven’t laid people off.

    However it’s a licensed game. Baldur’s Gate and D&D are IPs that are owned by a company called Wizards of Coast. And Wizards is owned by Hasbro. Hasbro is forcing layoffs at Wizards, specifically on the D&D team because it doesn’t print money as efficiently as say, Magic the Gathering does.

    The people at Wizards, i.e the people who actually make D&D are no doubt passionate wonderful people. But Hasbro (and probably some of the Wizards management) are awful corporate parasites determined to suck every last penny from their properties.

    They don’t give a shit how loved a product is, if it’s not making $100M per year then it’s basically worthless to them and they won’t fund it. So layoffs happen.





  • Bahaha fair call mate! The other artist who came to mind was Bryan Adams, who it turns out is Canadian so clearly I’m completely full of shit.

    Logic and reason aside… Idk it just feels like American fluff to me. To be clear, I don’t mean to hate on American culture with that statement. Every culture has its own vapid, meaningless fluff. God knows Australian culture does!

    Regardless of who sang it or wrote it, something about faith of the heart just feels really, really American to me. Obviously Trek has always been an American show, but it has always seemed to make an effort to be more universal than that. I still remember hearing faith of the heart for the first time and it just felt… foreign. Unrelatable.

    And personally I just hate power ballads so that’s my own bias haha. My whole argument is vibes and opinions really, I make zero claim to being correct or even internally consistent on this.