• Treczoks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    6 hours ago

    And you need a phone to view them. It would be quite shitty if you don’t have one, or the battery just decided to die on you.

  • shirro@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    22 hours ago

    So late stage communism is the same as late stage capitalism. Toilet paper for me but not for thee.

  • mrmule@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    42
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    Funny, everyone perceives China to be some socialist giant. I just spent a week there and it’s more capitalist and consumer centric than anything I’ve ever seen. Certainly more than Singapore, USA, UK. All the brands x all the shopping. It’s not a tourist spot, it’s a shopping experience.

  • caboose2006@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 day ago

    You’ve always paid for TP in China. At least now there’s a way to get it for free. I see this as an improvement.

    • notgold@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Yeah i came to say this. There’s no toilet paper in most of China. Some fancier shops may have it but most don’t. Even McDonald’s in China doesn’t have toilet paper most of the time.

    • Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      23 hours ago

      On one hand, the government can absolutely afford to piss money away on stolen toilet rolls or whatever. On the other hand, this locking-down only happened because some people couldn’t be trusted and did the stealing in the first place. If everyone had respect for public amenities this likely wouldn’t have happened

      • caboose2006@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        22 hours ago

        It’s the old people. They still remember famine and live like they’re going to go without any day now. Honestly how randomly china manages stuff the old people are probably right.

  • GreenShimada@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    45
    ·
    2 days ago

    When will people learn that any advertising that occurs during extortion like this is the focal point of hate and fear?

    This is like anti-advertising.

      • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        2 days ago

        In store:

        Clerk: "Well, then… I’d guide you to ShinyBrand. They tick all the marks for what you’re looking for and…

        Customer: aren’t those the guys that made me watch a 7 minute unskippable ad, when I was in town on a public toilet suffering a spontaneous and explosive diarrhea, while waiting for a new piece of toilet paper to wipe my sore ass from all that shit?!

        • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 day ago

          There’s been countless studies on this. That’s not how our brains work. After the short term, or a scant few outstanding ones that stay with you, the only thing left long term is the brand recognition. That steers your choices when you buy things.

          Put simply, people don’t have the mental capacity to keep a full list of every company that advertised to them in a shitty way in the front of their minds constantly, beside everything else required for daily life.

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        2 days ago

        It’s not “they count”, it’s a working conversion. Which is why it’s being stuffed everywhere.

        Recognition absolutely trumps everything. You’ll be more suspicious of a noname good thing looking good and cheap than of recognizable bad thing looking bad and expensive.

  • Akasazh@feddit.nl
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    If only we had something shitty and easily spreadable at hand that could be applied to the screen on order to inconvenience the operator of the extortion device.

  • iopq@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    2 days ago

    This is an improvement. A lot just don’t have any paper at all because they are afraid people will steal it and bring it home

  • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    2 days ago

    It’s been a while since I’ve been to China. But even in the 2000s it was not uncommon to have to pay for toilet paper at a vending machine. Not at all public facilities but the more local you went, the fewer tourists would be there, the more this happens. So getting roll for watching an ad is an improvement.

    And as the article points out, they cannot have nice things, i.e. free sandpaper toilet roll, because people will just steal it. I feel like this becomes exponentially less dystopian when you frame it as you can either have no paper at all or watch the ad/pay for it.

    And there is another cultural difference. The Chinese are more like the Romans when it comes to these bodily functions. Much more willing to take care of it communally or at a hole in the ground surrounded by a thigh high “modesty” barrier. So asking an attendant for extra roll is something that the majority of Chinese would have less of a problem with, I think.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      i.e. free sandpaper toilet roll, because people will just steal it.

      So they call it socialism but have no working social safety net?

      • caboose2006@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        22 hours ago

        Not necessarily true. You’re guaranteed work and a minimum wage and if you’re disabled government will take care of you. Also basic healthcare is basically free. Things like electricity and telecom are subsidized too. But no, it’s definitely not a socialist utopia. It’s oppressive and censored and restrictive. Hyper consumerism is the norm.

      • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 day ago

        You have inadvertently hit the nail on the head. They just call it socialism. There are several shades of poverty, for different reasons. One shade is due to the fact that a lot of services, like welfare, education, and medical, are only available to you in your hometown, probably the one you were born in. But if you have migrated from bf nowhere Gansu province to a big city where the jobs are, you rid yourself of that safety net. It’s hard/costly to change this hometown registration so most don’t and become quasi undocumented workers in their own country. And they are the ones who work insane hours in shitty and dangerous work conditions and it’s then who will look for anything to save a yuan.

        • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 day ago

          I had a rural hukou so I couldn’t go to public school in a city. There was like this “private” school which mean money out of pocket and is supposedly worse than the public schools (its opposite of the US, where private schools are better), and thats where I went to school for the grade 1 and 2.

    • DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 day ago

      And there is another cultural difference. The Chinese are more like the Romans when it comes to these bodily functions. Much more willing to take care of it communally or at a hole in the ground surrounded by a thigh high “modesty” barrier.

      What lol?

      I don’t think so?

    • caboose2006@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      22 hours ago

      My sweet summer child. Oh how green you are. You put the poopy paper in the poopy paper bucket next to the hole in the floor that you squat over and pray you hit the hole. You also put the poopy paper in the poopy paper bucket next to your toilet at home.

  • nuggie_ss@lemmings.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 day ago

    The solution to putting ads in bathrooms is that they can be easily defaced.

    Unless China is crazy enough to record their people in the bathroom, which I wouldn’t put past them.