Earlier quoted context omitted.
I cant believe ebay hasnt been disrupted yet...
For those in europe - check out vinted.com
Isn't that just ebay anyway?
I made $100K from a dick joke
251–260 of 270 posts
Re: I made $100K from a dick joke
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean Coca-Cola is junk food, it's unhealthy and we know it is. They advertise to maintain the illusion that it leads to success and happiness. They can't afford for scientific understanding to win over the brainwashing of 'brand advertising'as that would be the death knell for the company (or 99% of it).
Not a single human being alive in the world believes that drinking Coca-Cola "leads to success and happiness." Coke advertises so that when you're in the store or a gas station and you think "maybe I'll get a soda" you think of Coke before Pepsi. They advertise so that someone starting a restaurant thinks to buy the Coke syrup before they think to buy the Pepsi syrup.
>Not a single human being alive in the world believes that drinking Coca-Cola "leads to success and happiness."
And yet somehow we still reflexively choose it, because something in our brain associates it with big smiles, success, happiness, being fit, etc., almost as if we've been fed imagery every day of our lives to try to convince us of that fact.
Re: I made $100K from a dick joke
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm banned from eBay since about 2010. Sold a cellphone which my sister shipped without requiring signature, guy just said he never received it. My sister was working at a Telco so we just confirmed that he had actually received it because he put a SIM card into it, proof and everything eBay didn't care. I withdrew the money from my PayPal account before they could claw it back. PayPal still works for me but eBay is…
Situations like these really annoy me. And the platform's complete disregard is infuriating.
when ebay was "invented", i remember reading articles talking about how amazing it was that it actually worked, total strangers would send each other goods and money across the internet.
the incredulity was that everybody imagined that there would be more scammers out there than honest people, but there weren't.
but what is ebay supposed to do about people who claim they sent things vs people who claim they didn't receive things?
Re: I made $100K from a dick joke
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just remember eBay has almost no way to report scam listings, hacked seller accounts, obviously fraudulent buyers, etc. They don’t want to clean up their act. Caveat emptor. Two executives were recently imprisoned over harassing a journalist, to give you an idea of the corporate culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal
Last year, I accidentally canceled a return request after realizing I was being scammed by the seller. eBay refused to refund my money because the request had been canceled, even though the return address provided by the seller was fake. I wrote letters to two state consumer protection agencies and that worked. I eventually got my money back.
how does a seller giving you a fake return address enable a scam? had they sent you something fake that you were trying to return, and they were keeping their "identity" a secret?
Re: I made $100K from a dick joke
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
What alternatives are there to eBay? Craigslist seems sketchy and Amazon doesn't support the auction model as far as I'm aware. I want to use good alternatives and encourage my family, friends, and co-workers to do so as well. eBay seems unsalvageable and I think the best thing for us is for it to die due to economic starvation.
Some niche markets have alternatives - like Reverb for music gear - but other than that eBay still has the best selection, unfortunately.
Reverb got acquired by Etsy. Don't know if it has led to any changes.
https://investors.etsy.com/press-releases/press-release-deta...
Re: I made $100K from a dick joke
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if he was trying to resell your laptop and wasn't going to pay until he got an order for your laptop
That’s what I was thinking too. There are whole subreddits setup to work this kind of hustle. These people see nothing wrong with what they do, even going so far as to claim that they’re doing a service to the world. In my eyes, they’re bottom-feeding scum no better than scalpers, car salespeople, or MLM huns.
>no better than scalpers
scalping is entirely rational, there is an item that you can acquire cheap and sell for a lot, that's the basis of every business that exists.
yes, at your family home you can expect that people will leave you "your" cookie (actually, not my siblings) but bringing that ethos to the marketplace will lead to disappointment.
Re: I made $100K from a dick joke
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s what I was thinking too. There are whole subreddits setup to work this kind of hustle. These people see nothing wrong with what they do, even going so far as to claim that they’re doing a service to the world. In my eyes, they’re bottom-feeding scum no better than scalpers, car salespeople, or MLM huns.
> no better than scalpers scalping is entirely rational, there is an item that you can acquire cheap and sell for a lot, that's the basis of every business that exists. yes, at your family home you can expect that people will leave you "your" cookie (actually, not my siblings) but bringing that ethos to the marketplace will lead to disappointment.
> that's the basis of every business that exists
No, it's really not. Someone who buys up all of the new PS5s with a script and then re-sells them on Ebay for 2x retails is providing no positive service. Same shit is happening even to publicly reservable campsites lately. I don't believe in Hell, but if there is one then there's definitely a spot reserved in the 7th layer for people who scalp.
Re: I made $100K from a dick joke
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a single human being alive in the world believes that drinking Coca-Cola "leads to success and happiness." Coke advertises so that when you're in the store or a gas station and you think "maybe I'll get a soda" you think of Coke before Pepsi. They advertise so that someone starting a restaurant thinks to buy the Coke syrup before they think to buy the Pepsi syrup.
>Not a single human being alive in the world believes that drinking Coca-Cola "leads to success and happiness." And yet somehow we still reflexively choose it, because something in our brain associates it with big smiles, success, happiness, being fit, etc., almost as if we've been fed imagery every day of our lives to try to convince us of that fact.
If you honestly believe that people drink Coca-Cola because they subconsciously associate it with "big smiles" and physical fitness I really don't know what to tell you, man. Everyone I know who drinks it has one because they want a soda every now and then.
Plenty of people are entirely capable of knowing that drinking a thing is not an objectively healthy act - soda and alcohol are the two big ones that come to mind - without pathologizing the act or pretending that the people making money off of it are Mr. Burns-level caricatures or mustache-twirling super-villain billionaires.
Re: I made $100K from a dick joke
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
I listen to How I Built This . It's not unusual to do this. Especially when they're trying to get a retailer to carry their items. They'll create fake buzz. Stuff like getting all your friends to go to a store asking "Do you carry X?" soon after you've pitched X to the store is a method that's worked for over a century.
Maybe that's why I'm not rich? Because I am honest? I think this culture of normalizing lying means that more and more humans are just garbage. Because being able to trust someone is telling the truth is just a fundamental part of integrity. Without integrity we have.. well I guess the world we live in.. dangerous, full of trash. Everything is bullshit. I hope the machines take over soon.
> well I guess the world we live in.. dangerous, full of trash. Everything is bullshit.
Just like the world we grew up in...?
This type of lying-marketing has been around well over a century. There are documented cases of the tactic I described going back a century.
Unlike back then we at least regulate false advertising now. Overall the space is more honest than it historically has been.
Re: I made $100K from a dick joke
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'm often unconvinced with arguments like "marketing is about fulfilling a customer's needs" or "adding efficiency to the market". This product is actually an ideal case for marketing, because most people weren't aware that a product like this existed. The best ads notify you about something you genuinely want to buy. What you're really complaining about is astroturfing , not marketing. The more dubious sort of mark…
> Acme won the auction because it was able to bid more. It was able to bid more because it has better lifetime value per customer, i.e. it does a better job of satisfying customer needs. This is obviously not true. What if they are backed by investors? And there are a gazillion other reasons why they could spend more on that ad ...
>What if they are backed by investors?
I agree that could nix the argument about better lifetime value per customer. I think the overall argument ends up going through anyways, because investors want to invest in companies that make good products. Paul Graham is constantly emphasizing the importance of pleasing your customers.
>And there are a gazillion other reasons why they could spend more on that ad ...
I think ads are still statistical evidence though.