> I hate Amazon as much as anyone
The fashionable thing to say, indeed!
Yet the anyones are all covertly buying from Amazon, working for Amazon, and investing in Amazon.
The fashionable thing to say, indeed!
Yet the anyones are all covertly buying from Amazon, working for Amazon, and investing in Amazon.
A bigger market is a good thing, and something to encourage. By supporting broken/longer IP laws, software patents, and local-favoring of distributors, Amazon encourages a smaller, more centralized, more broken market.
For example, Seattle rebuilt and renamed the old Key Arena into Climate Pledge Arena. While I am a more ardent environmentalist than most (my virtue signalling duly noted) this name is a local pinnacle of vacuous virtue signalling nonsense.
The phrase's roots come from the alt-right looking for a replacement for SJW accusations not being taken seriously:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior#.22Virt...
For example, a peacock's tail is a honest fitness signal -- it does take a lot of effort to maintain (in food and vulnerability) so it serves as a good signal for fitness.
Naming an existing place after a virtue you want to pretend to hold is an empty virtue signal.
Rezoning the city to reduce car traffic would be a honest virtue signal for the same virtue.
"Empty" is usually dropped from "empty virtue signaling", because why bother.
Alt-right association or origin don't make the phrase automatically invalid. You could even say pretending that it does is itself a virtue signaling in the derogatory sense.
Not really. I see the accusation used almost exclusively to refer to any time someone deliberately associates themselves publicly with any view that is opposed by the viewer. It's literally just a meaningless accusation thrown at someone who disagrees with you about something.
And since I pointed out my own virtue signal, have I marginalized myself with abnormal behavior?
/s, obviously.
Not really. It was called Key Arena before because Key Bank funded it. It was good advertising for them. The buildings on college campuses are also named after their donors. It acknowledges who paid for it.
Names can also just be for fun, like the Seattle Space Needle. The Emerald City is also the official nickname for Seattle.
Climate Pledge Arena is about as fun as "eat your broccoli, it's good for you."
And also, the whole reason Amazon named it that is because they are pledging to make the arena powered by renewable energy. You can certainly argue how significant that is, but it certainly doesn’t seem all that different from buying a park and naming it after climate change.
I've said my piece. It's up to the readers to make up their own minds.
There are still some obscure items that, due to the sheer spread of Amazon, are incredibly difficult to get anywhere else, online or off - but that was Amazon's original market benefit to begin with. You could always get that weird book on Amazon that you couldn't get in the book store.
Even then, I was up to 1:00am in the morning a lot of times waiting for delivery slots to open. And then Amazon began releasing delivery slots incrementally throughout the day, which probably made it more equitable but also meant I had to constantly refresh the checkout page a dozen times an hour to get one instead of being quick on the draw after midnight.
At the same time, I also realize that there are plenty of good things about their existence, as someone who grew up in an area without a good library.
Being good for a specific thing that is partially their fault (Amazon supports terrible intellectual property laws as much as any big company with their political donations, which prevents the market from being able to function efficiently; there's no reason Chinese sellers shouldn't be able to print out-of-print technical books, for example) doesn't make them good, or make me hate them any less.
I don't buy from Amazon, and I don't invest in Amazon, and I don't work for Amazon. I'm relatively consistent, but even people who aren't consistent aren't hypocrites for participating in society when they disagree with how it functions.
I think that voting isn't ideal, but I still vote, because it's available. This is pretty natural; it isn't some shocking abandonment of moral principles. Nor is using a company's services despite it being an awful actor in society because you can't afford anything else (partially because of their position and participation in society, which is worth pointing out).
I'm as capitalistic as anybody, but Amazon's a bad actor that's contributing to the destruction of capitalism by encouraging intellectual property laws and making political donations encouraging ending things that actually help the market like ePacket.
Anyway, I’m not sure what your point is. You can hate something and still use it. Especially if that something actively made it much harder to not use it. It’s the same with made in USA goods. Most people crave them. But thanks to our government and corporations, it’s difficult to do it - or at least, do it affordably. Does that mean people prefer made in China? Or that they’re just posturing when they say they don’t like made in China? No.
Unless you're getting your reviews from friends and family, you should still probably wonder if they're fake.