Unpopular opinions
Replies
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sincerest props to this recipe site for the disclaimer. First time I’ve ever seen this. Website was also to the point with tips, and not crammed with ads every paragraph. 👍🏻3 -
A fair fraction of people would get better results if they'd stop focusing on small details, and instead focus on getting the big-picture overall basics consistently tuned up.
Examples:
A few food additives a person can't pronounce didn't cause metabolic syndrome, NAFLD, etc. High odds tht eating way too much of mostly nutrient-sparse food and spending most time sitting caused metabolic syndrome, NAFLD, etc. (possibly with a little help from genetics).
I could go on and on - eating hot peppers or celery to burn extra calories, counting on supplements to add muscle, etc. - but I'll restrain myself.
Averaging overall good nutrition, reasonable calories, exercise that manageably challenges current fitness level: Those are the big deal. Hacks don't work and generally don't matter.
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My opinion today is MFP needs to police its ads. I didn’t renew Premium til I figure out what’s going on, so ads are now in the menu.
If I were not a reasonably tech savvy person, I might see this and think “Yay! MFP is offering me free barcode scanning!” and click the offer.
This offer has no app name, no identifiers, no nothing except sending me to the “App Store” to get the free barcode scanner.
There’s no guarantee that it’s not a spoof App Store site, that the unnamed app itself isn’t compromised. Anyone can photoshop an add and give themselves “star” ratings. Even I could do that.
Who creates sketchy ads like this, and what reputable company permits them on their website? Yeah yeah yeah, I know they have no control over the ads that appear, but surely it’s possible for multimillion dollar companies to specify what ads cycle through their system. I think companies should be demanding this on behalf of their users.
This one really got in my craw.3 -
i also didn’t renew premium and now have ads that surprise me. They are mostly for junk food, chips and what not. I have all my settings private and don’t browse my phone looking at chips and such.
They do have control over what ads are shown.. people spend a lot of money to market on the MFP site- what better way to make money that show someone on a diet - junk food. Or a barcode to someone annoyed they no longer have a barcode.
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If they have any control, I'm pretty sure it would just be to specify categories of ads. They may have ability to nix specific advertisers after the fact, if the advertiser is truly skeezy, not sure.
This is MFP's bread and butter, but I'm sure they don't have enough staff time to police all the ads, certainly not in advance. Policing them in advance may not even be logistically possible.
Personal opinion, probably unpopular: If we want software (that costs money to build/support) to be free for us to use, we're going to have to put up with some cr*p advertising. It's the price of admission.
As far as the ad posted above, I don't know how the Apple environment works, but I do know how my Android environment works. If I click an Android Play Store "Get" button, it will generally take me to that app's page in the store, where it will be instantly obvious who is the software company behind it. In this case, probably not MFP. If the "Get" button doesn't lead to the Play Store, and I worry about that in advance, I can usually grab the URL from the ad and put it in a checker to see the actual site, and investigate that site further without linking to it. Yes, that does require a little bit of technical knowledge, but not deep.
I'm sympathetic here, but my main feeling is that when software is free, we're going to pay for it somehow.
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I've only ever had the free version of MFP (was gifted a year of premium once, never even attempted to use the additional features, it eventually reverted back to free and I never noticed). Ads happen, commercials happen.
(I pay subscription to satellite radio since my daily commute takes me between cities. Music-only channels are commercial-free, non-stop music. But sports-talk channels have commercials, despite the fact I pay. Never have figured that one out.)
As I tell my girls, I NEVER click hyperlinks provided by anybody I don't inherently trust. If the ad or email is unsolicited, even if it appears to be from my bank or whatnot, I open a separate browser and navigate to either the bank site or Google the validity of company X. Taught my wife to never post online about upcoming travel plans, only share photos after the fact. She used to call me paranoid, but one thing the military really harps on is protecting yourself from scams, trolls, spies and thieves who would simply love to know your house will be empty on this date, or you will be in unfamiliar surroundings on this date.
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100%
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@nossmf i did an online anti financial fraud class with my bank earlier this week. They had a retired FBI agent speak.
I was gobsmacked when he said one of the biggest sources of financial crime is people paying bills with checks, and putting in their mailbox with the flag up for the mailman.
We’ve had a “cluster” mailbox in the ten years we’ve lived in the “city” (hahaha! It just tickles me to call us an urban area, but we are!) so I’d never even thought about it, but it is enough of a problem it was one of the first points he hit on.
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agree re putting up with it if it is free. Until recently I had been a paid member for years.. I’d gladly pay for premium if the community forum was loved on a bit more.
I’ll continue to ignore the ads …
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Yeah, shake my head at the ads for 'treats' on a 'diet' website! Sabotage, I tell ya!! LoL
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Or maybe job security for the people running the site? lol
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Think of it from the advertisers' perspective: Where better to advertise tempting high-calorie snacks than on a site where probably quite a few people are feeling like they're working really hard giving up all tasty treats, but getting no/slow results for their efforts?
NB: Given how internet advertising works, I suspect the advertisers also only get to specify general types of sites where their ads will appear, with maybe the ability to omit specific sites if they get complaints from their consumers.
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The mailbox thing has been an issue for years, but apparently not well communicated. I don't put outgoing checks - or much of any outgoing mail TBH other than misdelivered stuff - in my mailbox. There are two post offices not far from me, so I don't even need to put mail in isolated standalone mailboxes, just the ones at the P.O. but I do use the outdoor/drive-up ones there.
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It's been 5 years since the last time I wrote a check, and that was hand-delivered to my daughter's school.
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My unpopular opinion: If it doesn't taste delicious, don't eat it. That goes for all fruits and veggies too. (Ah ya yai, I could imagine my mom just randomly popping into my house from out of nowhere now to give me an earful for that one, but I truly can never consistently eat anything "healthy" that doesn't taste delicious to me.)
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Agreed. I refuse to eat anything I don't like.
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Same. It's a mindshift. Liberating even.
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Motivation doesn’t come from others… and it wanes. Habit and determination are possibly more important longer term (for weight loss or exercise) than motivation.
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Too many people want weight loss to be easier than it is; so adopt tactics that are harder than they need to be; so they can get the process over with faster than is realistically possible; because then they can go back to the normal pleasant routine that got them overweight in the first place.
Two wrongs don't make a right, and a person can multiply the wrongs out to infinity, but it still isn't going to be right. 😆
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and that’s why we see so many “I’m back!” posts from lifers, doomed to repeat the cycle like Prometheus.
Don’t ask me why he came to mind.
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Totally agree! I just watched a video where a lady talked about using the Elle Woods strategy of getting into Harvard Law School for going about weight loss "What, like it's hard?" (Remember Legally Blonde?) It made me think... so many people overcomplicate it and make it harder than it needs to be simply because they believe it should be complicated.
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The marketers feed that perception, too - that it's difficult, complicated, etc., so we need whatever they're selling. If regular people realize that the basics are manageably straightforward things we can do on our own, the marketers would be SOL. But yeah, it will be slow, undramatic, kind of boring, and require patient persistance.
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