Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by spamtarget 1102 days ago
It appears that modern internet companies fail to understand that a "brand megaphone" is not a desirable product for anyone, except brands of course. The internet is sick now.
1 comments

Do any real end users really care about "interacting with brands?" If I stack-ranked all the reasons I enjoy the Internet, "Interacting with brands" won't even make the list. What does that even mean? Do people really go online so they can "interact" with Mountain Dew? What would that even look like?

After I wrote that last sentence I checked and indeed the "Mountain Dew" twitter account has 777.2K followers. W--T--F--? Am I the lone crazy person?

Doritos has 870K followers. McDonalds has 4.7M followers. Are these all bots? What real live human being actually wants a twitter feed from Doritos?

> What real live human being actually wants a twitter feed from Doritos?

Somebody who really likes Doritos and wants to know about new flavors, get discounts, et cetera. I'm sure there are plenty of people who fall into that category. Maybe not 870k, but definitely not zero.

I was about to laugh this away—only to realize that my brother-in-law is one of those people.
That really sounds crazy!
As crazy as beer, wine, and coffee snobs.
They have like lotteries where they e.g. award a free dorito to some new followers etc.
> What real live human being actually wants a twitter feed from Doritos?

The scary answer: people we share the world with. People on the roads with us. People who make decisions that can impact our lives.