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Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

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Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#111

Post by tavavex »

wccrawford wrote: post #28

I don't care who has their name on the package. I just enjoy the different flavors. The Selena Gomez ones were great . I appreciate the different flavors occasionally, and buy them from time to time if I see them. I realize most people aren't like me. But that's even more reason to not bother to tell people this. People who like Lady Gaga are going to feel inspired to buy her Oreos, no matter what you say. They know…

The author describes a world that existed not that long ago where similar tie-ins would still be popular, but where engaging with them would be seen by some people as a guilty pleasure or beneath you. I don't think you're going to stop Lady Gaga fans from buying Lady Gaga products, but a resurrection of some anti-consumerist crowds would be a welcome sight, because they don't seem to really exist anymore.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#112

Post by tavavex »

scoofy wrote: post #42
nxc18 wrote: post #18

Author is way off base. Might as well tell me to stop breathing air, except they stopped selling air 6 years ago and I’ve been gasping ever since. Chromatica Oreos were absolutely wonderful (as far as mass produced garbage that is unfit for human consumption is concerned) and I miss them dearly. Telling me to stop eating them is like telling me to stop seeing a boyfriend who died tragically years ago. Worse, it bring…

There is a premise in the "selling out" scenario that assumes the artist is accepting money from a company so that company can sell more of the same -- or even a WORSE -- product using the artist to market the product. This CAN be true, and humans have a cogitative bias to remember negativity over positives. So we remember the times when the artists screwed over their fans... and hence we boo them. When marketing col…

> It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it.

Your view is very optimistic, you're trying to see the mega-brands in the best possible light. I would almost call it euphemistic. Celebrities don't vouch for a product, they're not reviewers (although they can be paid to pretend to be one), they can't provide neutral or negative feedback. They're advertisers. The ice cream brand could pay them to promote ice cream blended with shredded cardboard for all they care, and because of the celebrity's face on it there would be an uptick in sales regardless of the quality.

If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it. Of course, some good ideas that deserved the light of day may not get appropriately rewarded, especially if the product is good but revolutionary. But I would take that possibility over having our singular, sellout, corporate mass of sludge of a culture dominate everything.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#113

Post by tavavex »

I think the author exaggerates how much artists were shunned for selling out in the past - sellout pop culture has always existed to some degree. The bigger issue is the almost complete vanishing of a counterculture. There's almost no people who understand why someone's random collabs with every company ever could ever be seen in a negative light.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#115

Post by scoofy »

tavavex wrote: post #112
scoofy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a premise in the "selling out" scenario that assumes the artist is accepting money from a company so that company can sell more of the same -- or even a WORSE -- product using the artist to market the product. This CAN be true, and humans have a cogitative bias to remember negativity over positives. So we remember the times when the artists screwed over their fans... and hence we boo them. When marketing col…

> It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it. Your view is very optimistic, you're trying to see the mega-brands in the best possible light. I would almost call it euphemistic. Celebrities don't vouch for a product, they're not reviewers (although they can be paid to pretend to be one), th…

> If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it.

Most products fail. All the products you see in the stores are the result of a massive war that’s constantly being waged by companies fighting to the death.

Anyone serious about selling something either needs to bootstrap the crap out of it on tiny margins forever, or they need to launch their product.

Again, most products fail which often means bankruptcy for their creators. Having someone put their reputation on the line for something good-but-unintuitive is a great way to have consumers become more willing to take a chance on something they might otherwise be skeptical of. The George Forman grill is the perfect example of a bizarre product that benefited from a celebrity endorsement. I seriously doubt a “two sided griddle” is successful at all unless you give people a reason to listen to the sales pitch, and even then to give it a shot.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#116

Post by sanderjd »

majormajor wrote: post #99
sanderjd wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me a lot of the tension the I felt when I was first coming of age as a young adult in the late 00s. At that point, it wasn't grunge, it was hipsters. But I always felt like: How can hipsters be hip and counterculture and a movement that is big deal culturally at the same time? As soon as a "counterculture" becomes a mainstream movement, it's no longer a counterculture... So which is it? Was Cobain a big…

> So which is it? Was Cobain a big deal in the mainstream, or was he countercultural? I don't think you can have it both ways. But why not? Result (huge sales, mainstream popularity) and process (not aiming at that goal, or even resenting ending up there) are entirely decoupled because the result is the sum of actions done by everyone else and only the process is the action of the person involved. To be a big deal in…

I think this is a reasonably framing, and I agree with your take by this framing. But I don't think it's the same thing as "mainstream" vs "countercultural". I think those two things are just antonyms.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#117

Post by Finnucane »

ssl-3 wrote: post #110
Finnucane wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nostalgic for lard?

Perhaps, but: Lard hasn't been a part an Oreo cookie for ~30 years. (Anyone want to talk about OS/2 Warp like that's still a current event?)

Yes, but the post wasn't specific about which particular change of formula they were made about.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#118

Post by cwal37 »

midtake wrote: post #107

Why is this domain trending all of a sudden on HN? Three articles all highly upvoted.

I saw the first article on thick art. This was linked within that article.

I enjoyed reading both, then popped over to see if this one had ever been submitted to HN. It hadn't, so I did. Figured that if people liked the first one, they might like this one as well.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#119

Post by ssl-3 »

Finnucane wrote: post #117
ssl-3 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but: Lard hasn't been a part an Oreo cookie for ~30 years. (Anyone want to talk about OS/2 Warp like that's still a current event?)

Yes, but the post wasn't specific about which particular change of formula they were made about.

I mean: Yes, but you introduced the concept of lard. And I'm nostalgic for lard (and for OS/2 Warp).

The filling for Oreos used to just be lard that was folded together with granulated cane sugar. That's all that the white stuff was (according to a good friend of mine who made Oreos way back then, and still makes them today). It definitely was a different experience back then.

So was IBM's now-completely-forgotten WebExplorer browser, especially when hacked to have 8 network threads downloading at once instead of 4. :)

And that's OK. Modern Oreos are still tasty; they're just not quite the same. And the modern web experience still works, even though it is very different compared to what it was back then.

Re: Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos

#120

Post by triceratops »

sharadov wrote: post #60

I was in Vegas a few years back with friends. While walking the strip, notice this massive throng of kids all around us. I learned they were in town for the BTS concert. I noticed this young girl, no older than 20, wearing a Pink Floyd "Dark side of the Moon" t-shirt, I asked her what she thought of the band. To my abject dissatisfaction she responded "I bought the T-shirt because it looked cool". In that moment I a…

To be fair it is a cool-looking cover.

There's no reason to expect someone to have listened to an album released 50 years ago. That would be like upbraiding an 80s kid for not caring about Elvis.

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