this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2025
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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] 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

People pay for streaming and then complaining that their shows keep disappearing. Knowing full well that they are only allowed to watch the shows as long as the streaming service allows them to watch.

I truly don’t understand it. If they wanna do it go for it I’m not going to sit here and rip on them. I just don’t understand why. I say go by the disc so that way you own it. Then rip it to make your own digital file. Now with that digital file, you can do anything you want with it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I get your point of view, and I personally use Jellyfin with my own library. But I have a different perspective about people complaining about shows disappearing from services.

People like complaining about things, it's cathartic, and it doesn't necessarily mean they have to do anything about it.

Imagine you have a favourite restaurant. One day you go in and that thing you really love isn't in the menu anymore. You can grumble about it to the staff, complain to your friends, but you'll just order a different item.

If next week your next favourite thing disappears from the menu, you'll complain some more, or maybe just start going to a different restaurant. Yes, there is always the option to get the ingredients and make it yourself at home, but that's a whole extra level of effort. For most people, the effort to complain a bit and choose a different thing from the menu is far less effort than making it yourself at home.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Tax return filings in the US. There are free options provided by the paid companies... So that they can prevent real changes.

Kinda like pharmaceutical companies when the public demands cheaper prices. The pharmaceutical companies fight back with "what if instead of that we set up some programs that people can use for cheaper medicine! Win win! Then you don't have to make any real changes that might hurt us?"

Same with taxes. The accounting software companies and advisors companies said "wait hold on, you don't need to make taxes simpler and tank our business. Keep them complicated and well offer free alternatives that are just as easy as our paid services that people can pick if they don't want to pay! Win win!"

Which obviously I think is a crap solution. However if you are paying for someone to do your taxes you should stop. There are a lot of easy free services out there that make it pretty much effortless. They are just as good as the paid services now.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

(Conditionally) journals, studies and some books. And, for that matter, most television, film and music.

Particularly when paying is not supporting the creator, only the publisher.

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