What brands do you avoid at all cost? I don’t keep up with the news all that much, and many of the reasons to avoid something don’t make it there anyway. So I’m asking here to make a big list of things to avoid. It could be anything from bad security practices to really frustrating packaging. Working as a cashier myself, I definitely know there are plenty of brands I avoid purely on the basis that their product is a pain to stock.
On the flip side, what’s the alternative? If you avoid Pepsi, for example, what do you turn to instead?
Beech-Nut baby food. They have a history of bad faith actions including multiple citations, years apart and after litigation no less, for “selling artificially flavored sugar water as apple juice.”
Late to the apparent party but Phillip Morris . They own a shitton of food and pot licences.
CocaCola did what?? Why didn’t I know that? Guess I’m a pepsi guy now, wow.
Pepsi is literally no better. They do all the same shit and are in bed with Putin
Fair enough. I’ve never been, don’t much like coffee, and I can’t say I ever plan to go there. They don’t sound like the most pleasant of places to relax in.
Oh, the starbucks “thing” isn’t even coffee. You’re not losing anything by not going.
Even if you like coffee, they make absolute shit coffee. Go to a local coffee place instead. I like my Vietnamese coffee, so any Vietnamese coffee place will give me much better cup.
i wish the vietnamese places here did sugar free. every time i ask, they act like i grew a new eye right in front of them; but sugar might as well be poison for a diabetic old fart like me.
The defining feature of Vietnamese coffee is sweetened, condensed milk. Personally I don’t think I’ve seen sugar-free condensed milk. Not sure how you could make it.
Personally I don’t think I’ve seen sugar-free condensed milk. Not sure how you could make it.
it’s everywhere except vietnamese coffee places.
I guess coconut milk would work. For dairy milk though unsweetened≠sugar free. Looks like there are plenty of unsweetened condensed milks, but I don’t see any that are sugar free. Gotta get rid of the lactose for that.
Microsoft and Lenovo
I’m not that familiar with them; why Lenovo?
Apple
Relatable. I’m in a pretty Apple heavy area, so I’m in the minority in my dislike of anything Apple. At least they are easy to avoid, with how obvious they make their branding.
Samsung. For a bunch of reasons, but I think the main starter of it was when I learnt this story.
Amazon. I don’t think I need to explain why on this site.
Obviously both of these are near impossible to avoid completely. Samsung makes the internals of far more products than they put their name on, and AWS runs a big percentage of the web. But I avoid their store, Prime, and Audible.
Holy shit I hadn’t heard that story, that makes my blood boil. I would have contacted my embassy and turned that shit into an international incident. Also isn’t paying for someone’s flight in and refusing to let them fly back home some kind of trafficking charge?
Anyway, I guess it’s easy for me to say because I could at worst afford to pay for my flight home in a pinch.
Completely agree on both points. I actually use a Samsung phone, and it’s been nothing but a privacy nightmare. I’m planning to switch as soon as I’ve saved up enough to afford it.
Yeah, Amazon is a mess. I personally avoid anything even tangentially related to them. I’ve noticed that they tend to be lower quality with worse privacy than the alternatives, and their only benefit is price. Even then, Audible is a ripoff on a massive scale.
If I may ask, what are you switching to? cause in terms of privacy (without sacrificing usability and other important factors) the phone market looks like a hot pile of garbage. Well I guess FairPhones exist and they’re about as good as you can get but still runs android.
Not entirely sure yet. I do know that whatever I get, I’ll be installing Linux on it instead of android. I might try out one of those de-googled android copies, but I’m not sure.
I’ve got my eye on the rugged survival phone market though. They seem to have different priorities than everyone else, and it seems to really improve the quality of the phones. I haven’t yet found anything that exactly matches my personal requirements though, and most of them are unpopular enough that Linux support is unlikely to ever happen.
Overall, I’ll probobly have to settle for something less than optimal.
Ok so this still sacrifices usability for me
Even then, Audible is a ripoff on a massive scale
The thing is, from a customer perspective, Audible is such a great deal. It’s too good a deal, really. They desperately throw out free or cheap months to people who are trying to quit (offers to get them to stay), or who have quit quite some time ago (offers trying to convince them to return). That’s a great deal for customers.
The problem is that they’re such a massive ripoff to authors. They have some extremely anticompetitive policies that make it difficult to put your audiobooks anywhere else if you want to also be on Audible. And I think they are really harsh towards authors if a reader takes advantage of Audible’s very over-generous returns policy. (No-questions-asked return merely if you say you didn’t like a book, even if you listened to the entire thing.)
Obligatory: fuck Nestle
Fair enough. They’re so big I need an app just to keep track of if something’s made by them or not.
Sorry, I wasn’t very clear with my reply. I haven’t actually found an app that does this kind of thing very well, just yet. My reply was more in the line of “I wish I had an app to do this, because searching the internet takes forever”.
Some brief searching came up nowhere when I went looking a few hours ago. I did find two apps on Google Play that seemed like they might work, but both had their own blend of issues, and neither was on f-droid, unfortunately. They were “No Thanks” and “Boycott X”, if you want to try them out.
I used to use one called “buycott”, but it seems like that was abandoned years ago.
Gillette. Due to their toxic masculinity ad. Why are they talking about that stuff? I went to them for shaving stuff, not for a talk about toxic masculinity or whatever. The good thing about the ad. It got me into safety razors. They’re way better then cartridge razors. So thank you, Gillette. For making me stop using cheap plastic razors.
Reasonable. Personally, I never learned how to use a razor, so I just use an electric shaver. It doesn’t give as good a cut, but I’m happy to contribute to a boycott anyway.
Personally, I never learned how to use a razor
🤔
Alright. Ima be ur daddy and tell you have to shave in 3 minutes flat.
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Acquire some BIC single blade razors
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Head to shower, put it on steaming hot and apply steaming hot water to face. Getting a hot towel after getting out of the shower and leaving it on your face for a while makes a tough shave even moar comfortable.
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Lather shaving foam all over face
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Run BIC razor under cold running water and shave until your face is like a baby’s bum
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Rinse thoroughly with cold water to remove all lather
I think the key that they never admit is that none of those disposable razors can really handle anything more than a couple of days growth. If you are someone who doesn’t try to stay cleanshaven, but just want to shave once you start to get scruffy, it will never work.
That’s where double edge, shavettes, and true straight razors excel.
Very true.
I generally just use my ceramic bladed hair cutter on 0 when I’m not required to have a clean, clean shave, and then like I say above just use a BIC when I need a baby’s bum face for work etc.
The twin / triple blades I find can be off-putting to some since if you have too much growth they latch on and snag.
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If it’s the ad I’m thinking of, I actually kinda liked it. But I definitely agree with you on the safety razors. Better shave and better for the planet. Don’t buy plastic cartridge razors, you’re getting ripped off and needlessly contributing to the plastic problem. Now if only I could find blades that a 100 pack didn’t mean 20 plastic 5-packs of blades, but it still is a lot less waste than a cartridge razor.
Same here. It got me to try other brands (I used to buy Gillette out of a habit) and all of them turned out to be better and cheaper. In the end - Wilkinson for the win!
Also, you got me to look up what a safety razor is. Looks classy!
chik-fil-a…
Huh, haven’t heard that one before. What did they do?
I’ve never been to one, so continuing that isn’t much of a bother to me anyway
Good enough for me, I’ll avoid them in the future.
Hyundai . i will never buy another one again. ever.
seats are hard as rocks. they break down way to fast. the rear view mirror is set way to low in the window creating a safety hazard for looking forward. it needs to be set much higher on the window. (so i have to look up a little to see the mirror… so f’ing what?!) get the damned thing higher so it doesn’t block my view when i try to look front and right of the car.
that’s just a few of my annoyances with that car. i’m done with that company.
☝️Note - only applicable in North America
They have virtually zero consumer protection laws so companies can get away with selling utter crap at inflated prices, and so obviously, they do.
Samsung home appliances, Hyundai and Kia cars, TVs with adverts built in (lol) are just a couple of examples of good quality products that have specific models that they only sell in the US because they can get away with it
Perfectly fine to buy them elsewhere
Jimmy John’s
The owner has been photographed with big game “trophies” of elephants and a leopard.
TW: deceased animals
This guy pisses me off so much. Hunting like this (where it’s private land, the staff do all the work of finding you a prize, & they basically point you at the endangered animal when it’s time to pull the trigger) is so obscene, grotesque, unnecessary, and self-fellating. Fuck this dude in particular.
It’s okay to have this kind of kindness and passion for all animals, you know.
Did you just “all lives matter” me? I do care about all animals, but hunting species that are barely clinging to existence is the topic of assholery in my post.
Completely inexcusable. How people can get away with this kind of behaviour is beyond me.
Question: how is it different than the atrocities against animals most people participate in every day?
McDonald’s.
I’m not much into fast food but if I’m craving a burger and chips I’ll get it from a pub.
It used to be cheaper. Nowadays you’ll spend the same amount of money at McDonald’s as the pub.
…for less money.
I gave up trying to maintain a principled list of companies because globalization and supply chains make it too hard to really find a single asshole.
Your chocolate was picked by slaves. Your clothes were almost certainly made by exploited workers. Does that toy have a lithium ion battery? You’re not going to like how many of the raw materials were extracted. The name of the company on the sticker of the shit you bought is just a small piece of the rot.
My chocolate is fair trade actually. You can find good options. Although, yeah, I’d probably struggle re clothing
After spending some time volunteering in Ukraine I concluded that probably the best option to ethically buy clothes might just be to buy the Made in UA clothes from Ukrainian local stores tbh.
So god damn good too
They did a limited run of copycat chocolates as a fuck you to the other makers, and they were so much better than the originals. Especially their Twix and snickers.
The saying “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism” is pretty true for most of us right now. The oligopoly we have going on makes it extremely difficult to consistently do the right thing. The only real way forward is to regulate the shit out of these products. If only we had another Upton Sinclair to scare the general populace into giving enough of a shit to demand unilateral action.
You can’t even vote with your wallet because like 10 companies own 90% of everything, keeping track of who owns what is a full time job on its own, and all of them are criminals.
Welcome to capitalist feudalism. Not long before it’s identical to the old feudalism.
