Plagued Consoomers / Consoomer Culture - Because if it has a recogniseable brand on it, I’d buy it!

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Second button on the right is the mute button
Unfortunately some stations have disabled that so it does nothing.

Others like my local Speedway have the sound coming from loud overhead speakers instead the pumps themselves.

I avoid all the stations that are un-mutable, like I avoid the ones that have gone pre-pay only.
 
I refuse to get gas at these places unless I absolutely have to.
It's such a joy to have WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER blasting in your ear while you watch your food budget for the week get poured into your gas tank.
That's why Costco memberships exist. 30 cents a gallon less and no "Celebrity Pop TV" where a nasally-voiced vocal-fry "host" reads out lists of who's dating who over millennial whoa-whoa music while you're just trying to fill up your car.
 
I refuse to get gas at these places unless I absolutely have to.
It's such a joy to have WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER WHOPPER blasting in your ear while you watch your food budget for the week get poured into your gas tank.

Same, and as more places disable the mute button my mental list of places to avoid grows longer and I don't care how long it gets and how far I have to go. If there is a surefire but subtle way to vandalize the speakers I am ready for it.
 
IIRC I read in some business article that some business person claimed the age of the "free" (as in "free beer") internet is ending.
Oh I'm not surprised. The big reason why the old internet was "free" was because most of it was funded by excited hobbiests willing to run or pay for their own servers, which also meant the bar was higher for entry and there was generally less people because plug and play like Wordpress wasn't quite around yet (sort of, something similar came out but I won't ramble about the downfall of the personal website here). MySpace, then later Facebook, changed all that. It brought in the easy, lazy consumer, who is very easy to get addicted to things, and they made sure of it by gamifying Facebook once it opened to more than just college students.

I don't mind paying for things. I also don't mind ads, as long as they aren't autoplaying at me or obnovious gifs following me around my screen. It would be nice if there was a good middle ground, like regular ole .jpg banners with the hyperlink. It's incredibly easy to find out where your traffic is coming from and pay accordingly these days, but of course some nerd with a bot farm will ruin it for everyone (like a lot of places like Kotaku did to get venture capital).

Just typed a totally random word into the search, "crocodile," and found university web pages related to paleontology, ancient Egypt, and the Roman coliseum. That's a fuck of a lot better than the YouTube shorts and TikTok videos that come up alongside Britannica and Wikipedia pages that I could have looked up on my own if I wanted to read them.
It may not get you exactly what you want unless you play around with how to search on it, but yeah it comes up with a lot more interesting results that don't even show up on page 10 on the main search engines anymore. The fun part is if you look at the dates, some of the more personal ones have been chugging along since the mid-90s. What troopers.
 
On some pumps, the second button from the bottom on the right works.
We had local pumps that had the mute button function turned off. I once saw an angry redneck banging on the screen as he pumped his gas.
It doesn't take them very long to revert I assume because country folk aren't used to being constantly consoomed at like city people, so the complaints get bad enough or enough people just go to the other gas station in town that it isn't monetarily viable for them to keep it going.
 
IIRC I read in some business article that some business person claimed the age of the "free" (as in "free beer") internet is ending.
The big reason why the old internet was "free" was because most of it was funded by excited hobbiests willing to run or pay for their own servers
No, its because the consolidation process its finally over, the big guys have cornered the market and so its time to get paid.

Before that it was all speculation so everyone involved was willing to throw money at any shit that might stick, it was borderline retarded 20 years ago when absolutely abysmal ideas got VC funding, but despite the dotcom bust the part picked up back again around 2004-2005 and continued until recently.

Now its just the FAANG, and they want their money back.
Fun fact: there was a real meat obelisk in antiquity, it just wasn't animal meat...
 
No, its because the consolidation process its finally over, the big guys have cornered the market and so its time to get paid.
I think this is only partially true. There were many places that were clearly nothing more than a labor of love, funded either entirely out of the owners pocket and/or funding from donations for a very long time. It was easier to handle at the time because most people barely knew how to turn on their own computers, let alone use the internet. What retarded speculative investors do and did is just par the course.
 
That freak thinks a mall is a happy place for "meditation" (derping around daydreaming). And in the "Sonichu" comics, there's some freakish lawyer who preached about "the importance of intellectual property" (or something like that) in that travesty of a trial.
And he thought it was totally normal that in the comics his own mayor's office was inside the Cwcville mall. I understand that in American's teenage culture at that time malls were the social gathering place and Chris never matured past that, but still. Very baffling.
 
never matured past that
"Honor Roll" hasn't really matured past being a little kid, except that he has a sex drive. Which is very disturbing. And why the mall? In the backwater "census designated place" he lived in, the mall was likely the closest thing to real "culture" that's also where he could buy stuff to add to hoard. Not to mention that idiotic "Love Quest".

(and he's also a "consoomer" of course)
 
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like a site detailing every single Lamp Post known to man.
I think I know what you're talking about - ran by one guy, dedicated to streetlamps? Or the more blog formatted one? The object autists are a fun niche, and can end up being another kind of consoomer if they get into "collecting".
 
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I think I know what you're talking about - ran by one guy, dedicated to streetlamps? Or the more blog formatted one? The object autists are a fun niche, and can end up being another kind of consoomer if they get into "collecting".
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If it’s not this guy, that means there’s more than one of them.
 
on the topic of google, and similar search engines- theyll often change your query or add shadow terms to it that you cant see or control, this is just one of the ways that they affect what you see
it can range from 'helpful' additions and synonyms, like when you search for "clothes" it might secretly add "clothing" "outfits" "appearl", but also adverts, like "[brand name] clothing"

theres a pretty interesting video on the topic

its also quite scummy how there are certain websites that are so closely affiliated with google that you cant search for anything without finding them, making them the de facto leaders of their respective category
like how searching for anything to buy brings back an entire first page of amazon results, or how looking for info will not only immediately reccomend wikipedia, but also plaster a snipper of the wikipedia article on the front page, this is how google helps convince everyone in the world that wikipedia is the ultimate source of information, theyve successfully marketed it as "the one and only" place to learn from

"Honor Roll" hasn't really matured past being a little kid, except that he has a sex drive. Which is very disturbing. And why the mall? In the backwater "census designated place" he lived in, the mall was likely the closest thing to real "culture" that's also where he could buy stuff to add to hoard. Not to mention that idiotic "Love Quest".

(and he's also a "consoomer" of course)
can Chris be described as "addicted" to consuming? if you asked me this question back when Bob was alive, id probably say 'no'
sure he loves his games and toys, but he's well off and can afford to have em, and he's a sheltered, socially challenged autist- this is his one passion in life, he has nothing else, so he might as well indulge in it
thats not neccesarily unreasonable, even if uncomfortable
but when he continued buying despite being in debt, hell, despite being ON THE RUN- thats when you gotta wonder if buying this stuff is an addiction of his
he knew he couldnt even play with most of it, so perhaps just the act of buying and acquiring it helped him cope, a way of convincing himself that this will all blow over and he will soon go back to playing vidya and putting together legos in his room like before

speaking of which, i think his recent purchasing habits are no different than his old ones
previously he'd spend all his money on games and toys, but cheapen out on other things, like clothing for example- but i wouldnt say that he has changed or matured now that he spends more money on things like clothes or crystals, because to him, those are still toys
playing with crystals and incense is kind of a more "adult", feminine and socially approved way of wasting your time- we all know a 40 year old woman with a house and a family who spends her time doing hooha magic and playing around with weegie boards, who would probably call a man her age playing vidya "a manchild" and tell him to grow up
chris didnt stop playing, he just plays in a way he believes society approves of

this is something ive noticed itt with other people too, they consume like children do, but in a way thats percieved to be acceptable for an adult
 
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