They’re all competing for recruits.

Wow, I didn’t even consider that. It makes them seem so much less human to me, and so much more like a pack of hyenas.

Huh, we had 7 for our school district (one for each branch, and I think the army and navy had two), but my high school alone did have just under 3000 kids.

We had all 7 of these guys (and one woman) going from class to class every day for a month giving four 90-minute presentations per day to pander and force-feed each individual classroom of ~30-50 students a glorified recruitment ad. They even set up one of the portable classrooms as a recruitment office for that month.

I’m curious, did the recruiters hand out forms to kids under 18 that required parent/guardian signatures?

I’m asking because ours did, and I could swear that these forms were a sort of pre-enlistment contract that needed parent/guardian signature in order to waive the 18+ requirement for agreeing to enlist. So although we wouldn’t actually be enlisted until we turned 18, we could agree to enlist beforehand with a parent’s signature. But, as strong as that memory is, I still can’t help but doubt myself because of how insane and illegal that all sounds.

Sure, but they return it as well for a refund or new item. Both the seller and new buyer get reimbursed in full by amazon. Plus, it makes amazon a worse place to shop overall, and I don’t think is a bad thing if irritated customers choose another site to shop from, loosening the near-monopolistic grip they have on online shopping.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shitty and immoral thing to do, generally speaking. It would make me feel guilty thinking about the poor schmuck who gets whatever junk I send as a return. I’ve been the guy who receives a busted piece of shit in my “new” package from amazon, and it’s irritating as hell. But I think amazon suffers most from that type of shitty behavior because it poisons the overall trust people have in them, and makes it more inconvenient to use amazon’s services.

So you might disagree, and that’s fine, but it’s because of the negative impact that shitty immoral behavior has on amazon that makes me feel 0% guilty overall, and hope the same scummy return scheme spreads like a plague to a point where amazon and wish have a similarly iffy reputation. Because I think they deserve to fall from their throne.

What a disgusting video.

Greedy, manipulative, despicable behaviour like this is why I take no issue with people who just repair their broken things by ordering a new one on amazon and sending the broken one as a return for a full refund. I’m not sure how a person could even feel remorse while pissing in the face of a company pushing shit like this into their employee’s faces.

A surprising amount of people I know like to upgrade their graphics cards this way, returning their old card in the new box, getting free cutting-edge upgrades as soon as they become available on amazon’s dime. Seems to have worked pretty well for them over the years 🤷

It’s unfortunate how often it is that the best solution is to combine the powers of 2 sites that have been (not so) recently dipping their toes into the “detestable corporations” side of things.

I share the same sentiment, but the problem is finding a better “elsewhere”.

Google search used to be so far beyond the capabilities of all other search engines, but lately it’s been closing that gap from the top down. Even in its enshittified state, it still outperforms the other search engines out there more consistently, albeit just barely.

That’s my experience anyway, I would love to be introduced to something better if anyone happens to have suggestions!

Lots of people still think that introverts hate social interactions, or feel better without any social interactions at all, but we do need to be social. Some people get dogs or cats and that helps them a lot. But lots of introverted people will tend to find some way to mask the loneliness by distracting themselves that requires a lot of attention, or occupying themselves with something that emulates social interaction. Playing a game while watching twitch streams of that game can fill both of those roles, listening to the streamer and reading chat periodically. That can work in a pinch, but it’s not a real solution. And I don’t have a real solution, aside from “find your balance”, but I know that’s not helpful.

I can suggest something that I found to be a more effective distraction, though. And it even could lead to the first steps to a solution to introvert loneliness if you’re lucky. You can try going to a local bar/pub on a slow day. It helps if you drink alcohol, but you really don’t have to. And of course if there’s a history of alcoholism in your family, you should definitely avoid the alcohol. Make sure to sit at the bar, because a lot of bartenders will start up conversation with lone patrons in their down-time, and the same goes for drunk people getting up to buy another drink, so you don’t have to initiate if you don’t want to. You can end up having a few interesting conversations in a night (or sometimes none at all), and go home either feeling good about going out on your own free will (I.E. Not being forced into a social situation), or exhausted from any overbearing social interactions and therefore a bit more content with going back to spending time by yourself for a while.

This helped me before I made a couple of friends (who I met at the pub) while living alone in a new city, after my distractions got stale. I say it’s worth a try, but everyone is different.

It was hard to initiate that first trip to the bar though, it felt very, very weird. But halfway through my second beer, I felt mostly content with even just listening passively to background conversation. By the time I ordered the 3rd, the bartender had initiated conversation, and before I knew it that feeling of loneliness was gone. It’s important to keep moderation in mind though, I could see that being very effective in catalysing a drinking problem. I did this 2-3 times per month, and that was just enough for me.

So ymmv, but it helped me a lot.

I’m certain it is. I sent an objection/data deletion request, and their “privacy info” pages are absolutely in violation of GDPR, because their forms are NOT reasonably accessible. I needed to use 3 separate mobile browsers and my desktop. When you finally get to the form, they ask some basic info, and the box where you’re supposed to make a request ends by asking something like “what rights do you believe are being violated, and why?”. The fucking gall on these cunts.

I planned on dropping some links, but they all have hard-coded non-functional redirects, which is intentional and absolutely infuriating. The redirects either just break like this one, which is suppose to be the one that contains a link to the form:

https://help.instagram.com/contact/117037592428568

Or they take you somewhere barely related, like this one which was the hidden start page for the form:

https://m.facebook.com/help/1221288724572426?wtsid=rdr_0bxiU4jakSVimlO8y

Or maybe it was this one? I can’t remember, because it doesn’t fucking take me to the page I saved the url for:

https://m.facebook.com/help/238318146535333?wtsid=rdr_0LKGtSJZTQyEH3R9N

Anyway, I’m mad if that’s not obvious. If you happen to find the form, you can try opting out. I haven’t heard back yet. Here’s the thorough and crystal fucking clear message I wrote, feel free to copy/share it:

The rights granted to me as a resident of an EEA country and a citizen of an EU member state, which are outlined in the GDPR, would be violated if Meta is non-compliant to my requests and objections. I’ve noted the exact sections within the GDPR outlining my rights, just before each pertaining request/objection, to explain why I believe my rights and freedoms are impacted by the data processing (although, I should not need to explain why).

I am exercising my right to object outlined in GDPR Article 21 Sections 1, 2, and 6:

I object to the processing and collection of my personal data for direct marketing, and request that no further collection or processing of my personal data is carried out.

I am also exercising my right to erasure outlined in GDPR Article 17 Section 1 (b) and ©:

I request that all of my collected and/or processed personal data be erased.

I am also exercising my right of access outlined in GDPR Article 15 Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, and Section 4:

I request a full copy of my processed personal data, as well as any relevant details listed in each subsection of GDPR Article 15 Section 1.

If any of my personal data is stored under an email address other than the ones currently or previously associated with my account, then I will need the preceding requests and objections to be carried out for the personal data generated under each of the following: [all email addresses I’ve used anywhere in the past 20 years].