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How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

bonappetit.com

151–157 of 157 posts

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2/3 of my bushes died. One is still going strong. It takes time. They also need acidic soil.

> They also need acidic soil. For a while, I was saving the leftover from my morning coffee pot for a friend of mine, who used it to acidify the soil around her blueberry bushes. I don't know if it worked or not.

I did the same thing. It might have been too much and killed the plants at some point. That or the excess fertilizer lol.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#153

Even more insidious is the armies of salaried mechanical turks on 'grass root' social groups and forums pushing forward a company's whisper campaign without any form of disclosure. You'll notice the same messages surfacing in various online avenues of certain niches nearly at the same time. They make people believe they are on the inside lane of something new and count on them spreading the 'insight' organically amon…

> You'll notice the same messages surfacing in various online avenues of certain niches nearly at the same time

for example, right here on HN was a buncha posts about Moka pots. the coffee pot, that is.

also started popping on lemmy and reddit. then gone. haven't seen much discussion before, or since.

I own a couple of said pots and noticed the uptick since I'm a fan, but the suddenness of it was a surprise, and points to marketing efforts.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#154

Even more insidious is the armies of salaried mechanical turks on 'grass root' social groups and forums pushing forward a company's whisper campaign without any form of disclosure. You'll notice the same messages surfacing in various online avenues of certain niches nearly at the same time. They make people believe they are on the inside lane of something new and count on them spreading the 'insight' organically amon…

For a minute there I thought you described us (HN readership).

I mean, there is a lot of shillbot posting on the HN.

but also keep in mind it's a startup-focused new aggregator and is explicitly for pushing your new product, esp. the YC ones.

it's a concession you have to make to use the site regularly, and I can live with that.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you need/typically eat to feel its effects? I've never felt anything despite hoping for some benefits from them, I wonder if I'm not eating enough of it.

Typically 2-3 handfuls (~5-8 berries per handful). A lot, actually. Sometimes I can't stop eating them when I get started, haha. Maybe it's placebo, I don't know. But I had occasional stomach issues which seemed to have gone away once I started consuming berries.

Thanks, 2-3 * 5-8 berries isn't too high, I'll try having all my berries together the next time I do.

Re: How the Food Industry Pays Influencers to Shill Blueberries, Butter, and More

#157

I read "Trust me I'm lying" and it reaffirmed a lot of my theories about how modern marketing works. (This isn't a sly paid plug for the book. Trust me ;) Now I assume everything is marketing by default. A couple that come to mind: the ugly sonic design when the movie came out. You get a whole wave of promotion from the outrage, then another when the design is fixed. An innocuous "my girlfriend's shirt matched her co…

The thinking you’re speaking of, namely that marketers are the ones calling the shots and causing disaster in order to generate controversy and therefore attention, is indistinguishable from paranoid delusions and conspiracy thinking. It’s important to back up claims of conspiracy with hard evidence otherwise it’s just unnecessary slander. Everything could be a conspiracy, potentially. I can’t think of any situation…

Honestly, I have a similar theory about the Sonic design incident. I think there's characteristics to that incident (the timing, mainly) that make it at least seem suspicious.

My theory is not that it was marketing, but that the horrifying design was an order from above, and the trailer was a maneuver to create blowback against the design.

This is baseless, of course.

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