Live data from Hacker News

Shell using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to convince kids fossil fuels are cool

kotaku.com

191–200 of 238 posts

Re: Shell using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to convince kids fossil fuels are cool

#191
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you let your baby sleep with you, you are a bad mother" that leads to a number of accidental suffocations. I think that’s pretty reasonable to educate the public about that.

That's mostly an urban legend and the vast majority of such cases happen when the parent is not sober and essentially knocked out unconscious. I mean, infants are typically warmer than adults and they wriggle around a lot - it's hard enough to sleep next to them, much less within suffocation distance.

Literally 18 hours ago on this very site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37796452

> they got into a weird position between a very very drowsy mum and some cushions and we didn't notice.

> parent is not sober and essentially knocked out unconscious.

Parent of newborn sleep deprivation is extreme.

Re: Shell using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to convince kids fossil fuels are cool

#192
post #49

Man we have really entered an era were companies have access to powerful tools to convince people using psychological techniques.

This has been the case for a hundred years already. It is why Santa is dressed in red. Why people buy diamond engagement rings. Why cigarettes were readily available for literally decades after they were already known to be harmful. And why American gun control laws have never matured despite all the evidence that proves the status quo isn’t viable.

Just gonna point out that the modern image of Santa Claus (or him wearing red) wasn't actually created by Coca Cola:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-claus-that-refreshes/

It probably helped cement that as the standard image of the character, but that was becoming the default look anyway.

Re: Shell using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to convince kids fossil fuels are cool

#193

People have the right to know from where their quality of life comes from. So if you think quality of life = cool , then it's true that fossil fuels = cool. Don't let any private jet flying tech CEO or yacht enthusiast actor tell you otherwise. They want to brainwash you to have the exclusive on fossil fuels consumption much like they want to brainwash you to pay the maximum amount of taxes while they structure their…

> Don't let any private jet flying tech CEO or yacht enthusiast actor tell you otherwise. They want to brainwash you to have the exclusive on fossil fuels consumption much like they want to brainwash you to pay the maximum amount of taxes while they structure their affairs through trusts in Puerto Rico, Curacao or St. Kitts and Nevis. I think you're spending a bit too much time in the conspiracy rabbit hole. Kim Kard…

> > If she manages to get 1% of her following to reduce their footprint by 1% for a year, she undoes more than she emits in a year

It should be the person who has a footprint of 200x the avg. person to make cuts to their CO2 emissions because they are the low hanging fruit as far as quality of life is concerned, not the avg. person.

It's a fairly easy concept, like taxation, you take from those who have, not from those who don't have anything...oops my bad it's the country of the MAGA tax breaks and tax writeoffs on new and used private jets, while Flint doesn't have clean water since forever.

Re: Shell using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to convince kids fossil fuels are cool

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't get easily offended, but I've honestly never seen anything more disgusting in my entire life. Try watching some documentaries about Tiananmen Square or Uyghurs. I am curious if this statement will still hold.

Someone has a problem? I will bring my problem!

Isn't that how you get regexes?

Re: Shell using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to convince kids fossil fuels are cool

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on how you calculate this, but fossil fuels are not cheap by any means. The IMF has some staggering numbers for direct and indirect subsidies of fossil fuels, https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel... : “… explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) more than doubled to $1.3 trillion.” If we just got rid of those subsidies, we’d see a faster shift. Then there are all th…

You're misquoting with your explicit subsidies. Undercharging is an implicit, not explicit. The vast majority of these subsidies are implicit subsidies. "Getting rid of" these subsidies means taxing an extra trillion dollars not scaling back something handing the oil companies a trillion dollars. If you want to argue we should levy a trillion dollar tax on fossil fuels that's fine but let's at least be direct about i…

Am I misquoting that? I read that report as saying that the implicit costs are about $7 trillion dollars, and the explicit subsidies are $1.3 trillion, which is the number I used in the quote because, I agree, the implicit costs are harder to understand.

Re: Shell using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to convince kids fossil fuels are cool

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misquoting with your explicit subsidies. Undercharging is an implicit, not explicit. The vast majority of these subsidies are implicit subsidies. "Getting rid of" these subsidies means taxing an extra trillion dollars not scaling back something handing the oil companies a trillion dollars. If you want to argue we should levy a trillion dollar tax on fossil fuels that's fine but let's at least be direct about i…

Am I misquoting that? I read that report as saying that the implicit costs are about $7 trillion dollars, and the explicit subsidies are $1.3 trillion, which is the number I used in the quote because, I agree, the implicit costs are harder to understand.

I double checksd the source and you're right that isn't a misquote, but it isn't quite accurate in the end. A lot of the "undercharging" is essentially not making new taxes. Most of the explicit subsidies are subsidies that pretty much any large business gets, nothing special about the oil industry there. Things like local tax deferments for plants that supposedly bring jobs to an area are common for just about any large employer. Maybe we shouldn't be doing this in general, but it's not something special to oil industries.

We should probably just end all of those "subsidies" and loopholes in general.

Sorry for misunderstanding and missing what you were quoting. My overall point still kind of stands though, a lot of these "the government is subsidizing the oil industry trillions of dollars" is usually talking about these implicit costs that aren't taxed like they'd like.

Re: Shell using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to convince kids fossil fuels are cool

#198
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of big corporations using propaganda, especially towards children but, that topic aside, people are kidding themselves if they believe their way of life would exist without fossil fuels. Look up the Haber process; your ability to walk down to a Whole Foods in a city of millions and buy groceries to support your vegan diet wouldn't be a thing. The stepping stone to things like nuclear and solar wou…

I'd never heard of the Haber process, it was interesting to read about according to wikipedia it cut the required farmland to feed a population in four. obviously it's hard to argue with more food for more people, but it clearly made urbanisation and overpopulation that much easier. quite a brilliant invention of engineering, but is it actually a good thing for a population to grow at that rate?

Easy to say when it’s not your kids dying of starvation.

Re: Shell using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to convince kids fossil fuels are cool

#199
post #192
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been the case for a hundred years already. It is why Santa is dressed in red. Why people buy diamond engagement rings. Why cigarettes were readily available for literally decades after they were already known to be harmful. And why American gun control laws have never matured despite all the evidence that proves the status quo isn’t viable.

Just gonna point out that the modern image of Santa Claus (or him wearing red) wasn't actually created by Coca Cola: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-claus-that-refreshes/ It probably helped cement that as the standard image of the character, but that was becoming the default look anyway.

I didn’t mean to suggest they invented Santa. Just popularised the red and white colour scheme.

Yeah it existed before, but it wasn’t the standard representation. And now it absolutely is.

Re: Shell using Fortnite, TikTok, etc. to convince kids fossil fuels are cool

#200
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't get easily offended, but I've honestly never seen anything more disgusting in my entire life. That's a pretty bold statement to make. I don't know what kind of isolated world you live in if you think that a Shell ad is the most disgusting thing you ever saw in your life, but I can give you a hundred examples off the top of my head. One example that might be related to this subject are working conditions in…

I get your point, but I think it's relative to the society which it takes place. Corruption in China? If anything, it's to be expected. It's a literal part of how their political system operates. Corruption in a liberal democracy? Much less acceptable. Of course, that's just one point of view. As for your comment about EVs, I don't necessarily disagree. My main outrage is that they used children to sell oil. As for y…

I wasn't talking about corruption in China. I was implying that we outsource the "disgusting" part of producing lithium batteries to get a ready-made product that we can use. In the same way you see a steak in a supermarket rather than years of force-feeding cattle with antibiotics and steroids, you see a Tesla Model 3 driving on the road. You don't see what it takes to produce the "stuff" that powers your car.

I'm not quite sure I get your counter-point to competition. We already heavily regulate the oil industry and subsidise EVs. We tax fossil fuels, we tax ICE cars, we favour EVs in city centres and we even brought in a law to completely ban purchasing new ICE vehicles by year X. If your product is so great, it shouldn't need government intervention to promote it; and Musk's Tesla company is a great example of that.

My original comment addressed the illusion that most Westerns live in and downvoting just proves that. Service-based economies seem to be removed from reality and don't understand the "disgusting" things that have to take place in order for them to function. Like someone said in another thread, if you're really concerned about morals then you will probably have to throw your entire PC out the window.

EDIT: > I'm curious, but would you have been against the breaking up of Standard Oil back in the day?

Sorry I am not aware of that so can't comment.

Post reply on HN