This is the weirdest goddamned thing I have seen in quite some time. I keep poking at it and finding more weird shit.
Did you know that the reddit marketing team just spent a week in Cannes with a bunch of their big clients congratulating themselves on how well they’re all doing?
Did you know that reddit is bragging about those incredibly weird ads that say “Psst… Can’t stop scrolling? It’s time for a hydration break” as a success story?
What the fuck is this? I don’t understand the majority of it but it definitely doesn’t sound good. E.g. “Tinuiti joined the Reddit Independent Agency Program in 2022 and has gone on to triple its spend on the platform, managing successful campaigns for clients including e.l.f, PacSun, Unilever Health & Wellbeing Collective, and Yohana.”
What is this video? It… honestly makes sense to me that their ads work well comparatively speaking (as I’m sure they did for Gamestop). But that doesn’t mean the whole video isn’t super weird.
What the fuck do they mean by “a generation turns to Reddit’s finance communities to safeguard their futures” and why do they keep talking about crypto, anxiety, and mental health when offering “insights” about these communities to their advertisers?
Why does the header for their insights about “The LatinX Experience” explain that only 4% of members of the community support the term “latinx,” and then the whole thing continues to use it regardless?
Did you guys know about all this weird shit? I literally am having to pull myself away because I keep finding more.
What the fuck, I keep finding more.
Is this a guide to how to get hold of people’s tax refunds? They thoroughly confused me by calling tax refunds “tax returns” in the short description, but regardless of that, it sure looks like a guide specifically and only on how to motivate people to spend their tax refunds on your stuff.
This one is fascinating. It is either a fairly genuine guidebook on how as a company to engage and be a productive member of a community to communicate authentically with your customers… or else a guide for how to infiltrate a community anonymously and subtly insert little recommendations for your products in a way where they won’t be detected. Or maybe it is both, depending on who is reading it.
The shill bit is probably the single worst thing. If there is one reason to go to reddit when looking for opinions on something, it is to get genuine opinions from users or customers. Thinking that part of the business model is to infiltrate communities and nudge, despite how obvious it might be, it is completely crazy and potentially counterproductive. The moment the trust is broken, I will ignore reddit as I ignore the first 80% of a google search page…
Enshitification. Step 2 specifically.
Redditors don’t doom-scroll—they engage with intent.
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
It’s not though. The front page is PR bullshit. Once you go beyond the first layer, it’s an extremely thorough guide, written by dishonest people, for dishonest people, on how to manipulate the reddit userbase into buying your shitty products.
I’m actually not sure that most big companies do have pages like this. I think their marketing teams probably look at the general public in exactly this way, but they mostly have more sense than to say it out loud. Do you think you can find a page hosted by Google Ads, or Fox News, that explains the breakdown of their different user segments and how to successfully manipulate each one of them by targeting their anxiety or their mental health issues?
written by dishonest people, for dishonest people, on how to manipulate the reddit userbase into buying your shitty products
Isn’t that what every profit-driven company does? I mean, it’s shitty, but I don’t think it’s something exclusive to reddit.
But… the computer or phone you’re using to post this was made by a profit-driven company, as was the internet service you’re using, as was the electricity that powers that thing, etc etc. I actually don’t think there’s anything wrong with running a business or trying to make a profit, or running ads to promote your business. You can do it honestly or dishonestly, and one is fine and one is not.
So to expand on my other post: Compare this site with Vox’s advertisers site or Fox News’s hilariously boomer-y advertisers page. I see a lot of things but I don’t see anywhere on either of these where they’re advising their clients on how to get hold of people’s tax refunds (although I’m sure that Fox’s marketing team says that and worse behind closed doors).
marketing team says that and worse behind closed doors
That’s my point, all companies driven by profit do that, we just don’t know.
Key word is “driven by profit”, not all companies are like that, there are also smaller companies that do care about their customers, but if they get big enough, or they get investors involved, they change for the worse.
And among the worse, some companies are smart and don’t disclose what they really think to the public, other are stupid like reddit and totally lose trust by showing their true colors.
That last one is hilariously bad. “We know so much about our communities that we know they would hate how we speak about them here, anyway want to buy ads?”
Mask: off
