I wonder if this ties into our general disposability culture (throwing things away instead of repairing, etc)

Admittedly I use an NVMe drive but I’ve never had this happen once in the years I’ve been using KDE. Dolphin is so much snappier than Windows Explorer on the same hardware that it’s almost funny.

But… Why? It’s just a mediocre and laggy copy of Dolphin.

Should cable subscribers be counted 200 times, once for each channel?

True - I guess it depends on whether we’re defining “subscribers” as people or total paid accounts.

I don’t think those numbers are additive like that - you’d be double-counting people.

If my googling is right, in total there are ~207 million subscribers.

This says 128M, which seems far more plausible. https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/disney-stop-reporting-subscriber-numbers-disney-plus-hulu-espn-1236480413/

Depends how attractive it needs to be. “Entry level” could be an old PC you kave kicking around.

Maybe this article was written by a bot to distract us from the bots talking about other bots. Maybe I’m a bot. Hmm…

So perhaps the real story is simply “lots of tech marketers don’t understand their audience”. Which I think is true. When companies put their spec sheets and feature lists front and center, I’m definitely more likely to pay attention than if I have to dig through screen after screen of meaningless fluff to get any relevant details. So that’s something marketers could (but generally don’t) do to influence me.

It depends on the brand and who their target market is. I’d argue that Framework, for example, market in this way.

Excuse me but “it” is not my preferred pronoun. That’s pretty disrespectful.

First off, thanks for the thoughtful and detailed reply.

Which raises another point: there are no monolithic demographics of any significant size. Anytime you generalize about “nerds” (or any other group), nothing you say will be 100% correct across the board. Generalizations are still useful when viewed in terms of trends and distribution curves. It’s fair to say that men are taller than women even though there are short men and tall women. It would be more precise to say that the height distribution for men skews taller than for women, but I think most people intuitively understand the truth behind the simple, plain English generalization anyway, even if they don’t think of it in precise terms.

Of course, and marketing itself works with generalizations about demographics and targetting etc. As in anything there are extreme outliers, but there’s definitely a bell curve, and I doubt most people are as near the poles as they think.

The way it looks: yes, absolutely. My current box is metallic black with a window. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one with no window at the same price, I would have. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one in hot pink for cheaper, I probably would have. (There is a functional aspect to appearance as well, since it’s in my field of vision and bright colors could be distracting, so I’d have to think about the pink. “Black” and “no window” are on my wanted-features list for this reason, but other factors can override those wants.)

Sounds lke you’re primarily a value shopper in this case, which is fair, but for every one of you there’s a r/battlestations poster who spent more for something aesthetic - and unlike others here I won’t start “no true nerd-ing” those people away out of convenience. I to a certain degree am one of them, and I’m definitely a nerd (as is everyone on Lemmy). I’m sure there are different things you choose to splurge on.

I feel like at this point we should talk about the oft-neglected difference between marketing and advertising. There is an aspect of marketing that directs product development down a path toward what they understand people actually want. When done well, this is good. It should be the marketing department’s job to learn what problems people have with products in the field, and make sure those problems are addressed in future products. Advertising is a subset of marketing that tries to directly influence consumer behavior to buy whatever they’re trying to sell.

In the industry we’d rarely refer to those people as marketers (more like “market research”, basically statisticians and much less cool) but you’re right that it’s on the same continuum. Focus groups fall in there too. I wouldn’t really count it in this argument though because for most of us it’s a fait accompli when we’re faced with whatever is on the store shelf. It isn’t something we can be “immune” to in any meaningful way, short of becoming a self-sufficient hermit.

But I’m no more likely to go into Dunkin or Starbucks just because they are advertised incessantly. You might find that hard to believe, and I wouldn’t blame you! I can’t prove it to you. And I understand that among the general population, repeated exposure affects perception, and by extension behavior, in subtle and deeply-rooted ways. I don’t imagine that I am immune to the effects that, for example, cause preschool children to prefer the same food from McDonalds bags vs unbranded bags (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17679662/). But we are more than our base nature, and these effects can be negated in practice. I suspect tech nerds in general have internalized stronger countermeasures than the general population. Not full immunity, because reality is too messy, but a notable resistance.

But do you have a favourite coffee place, or restaurant? How about a favourite hotel chain? We often don’t realize all the subconscious triggers we’re subjected to.

You’re right that nobody is truly “immune” to marketing, but as a matter of degrees, there’s a big difference across groups. There are people out there who look at ads and register them as useful information. There are people who intentionally click on ad banners on Instagram, rather than treating them like digital leprosy. There are people who click on the first Amazon referral listicle they find on Google and then treat it like independent journalism.

Perhaps, but I’d argue people who click on ads knowing full well it’s an ad are more enlightened than the nerd - sorry, “geek” - who thinks they operate on a higher plane of existence, not knowing that Youtube review was bought and paid for or that Reddit post was made by an LLM.

There are people who use GoDaddy, when the only possible reason anyone would is because that racecar driver is hot. These are not behaviors you should expect among the kind of nerds this article is talking about.

You’re really dating yourself with this reference, and I am by understanding it. Incidentally, who do you think bought all that gamer girl bathwater?

Same deal with most of my tech purchases, except that in that space there often are brands I’ve never heard of. And I’m (usually) savvy enough to tell when they’re legit and when they’re not. (I know more than I ever wanted to know about SSD controllers and I’m kind of angry about it.)

This is a bit different because it isn’t really an emotional decision - they are are fungible, functionality being equal. But would you choose, say, a computer case without caring about the way it looks or makes you feel?

I genuinely believe I’m immune to advertising.

You are not - you just don’t see it as such. Even if you didn’t use the internet at all (which we can see is not the case) you would still fall victim to its network effects.

You are not immune to marketing (or to propaganda in general). The more you become at ease with that fact, the better equipped you will be to deal with the deluge of shit that is coming for all of us.

What makes your opinions here worthwhile?

As I said in another reply, I worked in marketing for a long time, so I have first-hand experience that most others here don’t. Many have a rather narrow definition of what they’re willing to label “advertising” and don’t realize how much is actually happening all around them. I’m applying a blanket label because the blanket is covering all of us, even those who fervently deny it and insist that it’s simply warm and cozy wherever they are.

80s memorabilia and 3D printers are not exempt form marketing. They are products just like anything else.

I knew somebody would try to play that card. People who insist on that distinction are the least self-aware of all.

How do you think you “found” it? A whole supply chain of people, from branding to packaging to advertising, made it so that you can “find” things on websites that are themselves outright advertisements or at least funded by them.

If this irony, good job because I think most people will fall for it.

Yeah, this is self-aggrandizement from a group of people who consistently believe they’re smarter than everybody else, when in reality they just lack self-awareness. Nerds will smugly post in this thread using their overpriced mechanical keyboard as a wall of Funko pops and Star Wars slop looms behind them. I worked in marketing for a long time and I know damn well I’m not immune to it.