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What are you surprised that people pay for, when there are free alternatives in existence? (kbin.melroy.org)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

227 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was going through my Wal-Mart+ subscription plan that I got for free and I saw their offers. One of which was EMeals, that was a 60-day trial. I thought that this was like Blue Apron or other meal delivery services so I thought I'd take a crack at it and hope that it would get me on a path to eat better.

Turns out, it's just a meal planner. And it's absurd to me why and how would anyone pay for something when there are countless and countless recipes and meal planners readily available for free. Who'd the fuck would want to pay for a planner? That's like paying for a calendar app.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

"Ah, yes I see I see, and that's very understandable. Thank you for paying us by the way.

Now, since you've been so loyal for all these years...what about [slides agreement across the table] you pay for it...AND you watch ads?"

-- Basically every streaming service hopping on the bandwagon at this point

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Streaming services are raising prices because prestige television was expensive and are using ads as a way to reduce the bill.

And you don't have to pay for streaming if you don't find it too be worth it. I've cancelled subscriptions because the increased price wasn't worth it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Maybe the television being produced ought to stop being garbage that nobody wants.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

They tried making prestige TV first, not enough people bought it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sidenote: Lol I'm getting downvotes for mocking streaming giants and ads on Lemmy. That's different 🤔.

Honestly, I hear you. Media isn't easy to make and takes a ton of talented people a lot of hours to accomplish. I also drop off of subscribing to stuff if it was really nice but "enshittified" into forcing ads into every interaction.

Something needs to change fundamentally though, because we're once again on the cable-TV slope of "20 minutes of entertainment extended to 45 minutes by interrupting it with the exact same ad of a mega corporation pretending to be an underdog influencer."

My personal take is that if your average person were paid fairly, they'd have the money to spend on entertainment where ad-pollution wouldn't be necessary, and if the entertainment distributors/platforms/whatevs asked the fair amount required to pay everyone involved fairly, everyone would be happy.

Lol a guy can dream.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

And I wish that kind of world existed where people could fund that kind of media landscape.

I've just been aware that, for over a decade, streaming prices weren't sustainable because they were subsidized by cable and broadcast.