Unpopular opinions

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. 👍🏻

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.

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.

100%

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 …

Or maybe job security for the people running the site? lol

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.

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.)

Same. It's a mindshift. Liberating even.

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. 😆

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.

We can blame 90% on the marketers. Common observations lead to this hypothesis: If the same effort and marketing had been towards healthy things, as long as there was not a rebellion, 90% of folks would follow healthy marketing as they do now follow unhealthy marketing. And there would be some other vice to complain about -but maybe not at the same degree.

Example of this happening healthy topics: pick up trash - dont litter campaigns, smoking campaigns,

Example of this happening unhealthy: promiscuity & romance idolization in ads and media.

But one campaign that partially succeeded: just say no to drugs.

Marketing simply works - that's why billions are spent to do it.

I think there's an extra dimension that's relevant here. I don't think people would follow marketing of healthy things in this same way (because to the extent that's been tried, it doesn't work), and I don't see what magic is going to make marketers turn their efforts in that direction.

I participated in an MBA program at a pretty big, reasonably well-respected university. I took graduate-level marketing classes. For full transparency, I didn't complete the degree, and I wasn't a marketing major, but marketing was part of the core curriculum for all majors. While I thought marketing was absolutely fascinating, I wouldn't work in the field, partly because I do think it's often ethically compromised in practice.

When regular people day to day talk about "marketing", they're usually talking about the advertising and adjacent aspects of it. That's for sure part of it.

But here's a thing that was drummed into us over and over in marketing classes: Advertising isn't where marketing starts, isn't the key. The start of the process: Figuring out what people really, really, in their heart of hearts want. (I'm going to put much of this cynically, which I think is kinda fair TBH.) Once you know what they really want, you develop that product and promote/advertise the heck out of it, often wrapping that message in a veneer of something people know they ought to want or can feel virtuous wanting. The advertising frequently also subtly layers in other things people really, really want (often sex in some way TBH) in order to make the product even more attractive.

What people usually really, really want in their food, in a way that will motivate them to seek out and purchase something, is that immediate gratification. The yummies, basically. Sugar, fat, salt.

Let's give some examples of some dimensions of that type of marketing that takes advantage of our baser wants:

Salads are healthy, right? People ought to want to be healthy. So the fast food joint offers salads . . . with crispy chicken on top, and more calories than a burger in many cases. Yummies, wrapped in the aura of health.

Now let's make a commercial for it: Maybe show date night, the happy pretty people all dancing around; the young, thin, pretty woman who is laughing with her handsome date is eating that salad. (Is that what the people in the actual real-life drive-through line are like? 😆🤣). On top of that, make it affordable (meal deal, value meal), and quick. Sold.

I'm really old. Over and over, companies have tried marketing things from the health angle. After all, people claim they want healthier options. A good case in point is granola bars. At first, they were fairly healthy whole-grain things, probably more calorie dense than ideal, but nutrient dense, too. Slowly, over time, they added chocolate chips, marshmallows, a chocolate or frosting drizzle, chewiness (caramel-y-ness, pretty much). Why? Because what people really wanted - voted with their dollars for - was a candy bar. The same thing is happening with protein bars now.

Sometimes it's not that straightforward, sure. Sometimes there are things we arguably need, and the "what we want in our secret heart" is used as the pick-me trick. For example, think about motor vehicles. Inherently, they're a tool, genderless, status-irrelevant. But some vehicles are sold as macho masculity enhancers, some as sexy accessories, some via their appeal to free-spirited fast-driving off-roading (even to people who never leave city streets).

Even now, there's a huge "self care" "health" market, bigger in dollar terms than "big pharma". Does it sell actual solutions? No, not mostly. If most of us thought seriously about it, we know how to lose weight or eat more healthfully, but that's boring and unenjoyable. We want the quick fix, the hack, the secret. That's what's marketed, again using what we really, really want: Health the easy way, without sacrificing the habits we like. In this case, a bonus for marketers is that when one quick-fix inevitably doesn't work long term, we move on to the next magic solution, keeping them in business.

It's convenient to say it's "90% marketers", but that's simplistic and doesn't point in any way toward a realistic solution.

Yes, marketers do cynical things and exploit our weaknesses. But we're complicit in that. Until we recognize that and behave differently, this won't change. Dollars are votes. Do I think we're likely to recognize that and behave differently, in large numbers? No, I don't. If there is some potential for improvement, it will be slow societally, and multi-factorial.

P.S. "Just say no to drugs" didn't work. It was a laughingstock. (I was an adult, and part of post-hippie culture when it was introduced, BTW.) @sollyn23l2 has a point: To the extent it had any effect at all - and it didn't have much - it was the stigma and ostracism it fanned among non-users. There's no clear causal relationship between that campaign and reduced incidence of illegal drug use.

Publicizing the "secondhand smoke" risks, combined with high taxation, had more impact on smoking rates than any of the "smoking is bad for you" advertising. Ostracism, inconvenience of smoking, high cost - those things worked together to reduce commonness of smoking.

Like it or not, yes, social shaming has been an effective force in limiting certain societal problems at certain times. But IMO we've amply demonstrated that stigma and ostracism aren't effective in reducing obesity.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but it's also partly an afterthought about something on this thread: Blaming a problem on something external to ourselves is disempowering. It puts us firmly in the victim position.

I'm not saying everything is our own fault. Far from it. I'm saying that blaming a problem mostly or entirely on something completely outside ourselves is a convenient excuse for doing nothing to solve that problem. We're powerless, right? 😉

Nah. Not usually.

A key piece of my personal philosophies is something that - surprisingly - I learned in a management training class: When there's a problem, think about what I personally did to create, promote, or allow that problem.

The point isn't self-blame. It's a way to home in, identifying the things I personally can change to improve the situation. It hightlights the parts of the situation I can control, or at least influence.

For sure, this was thinking that helped me with fitness improvement and weight management, among other things important to me.

With fitness and bodyweight, all the major factors are nearly 100% in my control . . . uncomfortable though it may be to admit that. I was out of shape and obese because of my decisions. It wasn't friends'/relatives' sabotage, marketers, the economy, menopause, additives, blah blah blah. Sure, those could be complicating factors when it came to success. But I had control, and I could decide to use it.