Good insights, and not just software developers, really. We don’t like ads, sensationalism, or anything reeking of bullshit. If we have to talk to someone to find out the price, the product may as well not exist.
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we are not immune, we are just able to install a fuckin adblocker. noone is immune to propaganda.
And every public service app and webshop should have a “developer” section where you can report bugs. I’ll do it even for free you fucking morons!
That’s why just about every technology forum ends up being a consumer board.
Clearly the author have never seen the audiophile community. $100 cable, anyone?
$100? On the very low end of audiophile cables. No joke, I have seen cables with the prices climbing towards five figures. There’s a set right now on US audio mart going for over $6000USD. For a set of RCA cables.
Sometimes I think I’m in the wrong business.
Ooooh! Gold plated cables! That’ll reduce the resistance by several milliohms!
once weere told that increases the quality of digitally encoded audio signals!!
AUDIO GOES BRRRRRRR
Are nerds all audiophiles tho? 320kbps is usually fine. $300 speakers are usually fine. Nerds do the research, audiophiles are seeking unobtanium.
What about gamers? What do you think all those cool designs are for?
Nerds are some of the biggest consumers of stupid pointless bullshit on the planet.
Yes, but only if it is not marketed to us.
A lot of shit is marketed through forums like this; you just don’t notice it.
I block people if they needlesly use a brand name isntead of saying the group name. Do I probably have some false positives? Probably.
As a former developer with probably 40 games under my belt, I’m gonna say this is a highly specious article designed to stroke egos. Yes there are very valid points being made that I can personally identify with, but they come from a one-dimensional perspective that also manages to leave out data, and conspicuously lacks basic understanding of the efficacy of ‘general’ sales/marketing, instead filling in with presumptions of comparative efficacy.
Have you ever heard of HeroEngine? It’s no longer around but the developer that was contracted to make it is working on Apex Engine at https://www.apexengine.com/
A long time I haven’t heard that name. It was over hyped at the time IIRC.
If you’re not a studio (Hero engine wasn’t free or cheap), go with Godot.
the rampant consumerism in nerd spaces seems to disprove the Lemmy title in the large, even if this specific example indicates the opposite wrt marketing by software firms aimed at developers.
The irony is that this very post is literally every pillar of marketing in one place.
Identify a specific demographic that may be under-served or for whom you have an attractive product, deliver said product to that demographic.
Here we are in a Technology community gobbling down the product (site/article) and talking all about it. Many will “share” it to various friends. Some will bookmark it, for others viewing the logo impression builds the overall consumer trust score of the brand.
We’re all too smart for it though because I said so.
They tend not to work on neurodivergent people and there is a huge overlap between NDs and “nerds.”
Guess that’s why the big guys want people to be neurotypical.
To make it easier to sell them stuff.To advertisers, humans are just slabs of meat with eyes.
To advertising companies, maybe yes.
But to the ones making the advertisement, we are the wall between them and their money, which just needs to be gotten out of the way.
Plot twist: this is an ad campaign
This… strikes me more as self-aggrandizing than informative.
Yes, many technical folks are put off by certain marketing tricks. Good marketers just use different techniques when targeting people in this market, when they bother to at all.
We’re not immune to manipulation; and thinking that we are makes us more susceptible to it.
Agreed, it’s tooting his own cohort’s horn without acknowledging he is, inf act, susceptible to marketing. The actual topic at hand is marketing for software tools to software devs. Of course hand-waving marketing doesn’t work, it’s a technical field with technical products. The marketing he’s blasting is emotion-based marketing. Guess what, there’s plenty of other emotional decisions that will be affected by marketing in his life. Vacation destinations, artistic exhibitions, restaraunts, games, whatever. This article screams like it’s from someone who loudly proclaims marketing is dumb because they weren’t swayed to by women’s deodorant because of a YouTube ad.
You are not immune to marketing.
But you need to remember that those targeted practices are very few in comparison to the volume of neuro-regular/non-technical folks.
So we arent peone to the same bullshit in regards to volume.Maybe - but the marketing that won’t affect you isn’t what you need to worry about. It’s the parts that do still work on you need to be careful of - and if you assume nothing will ever work on you, you won’t even notice when something does take. Whether that’s buying a trinket that doesn’t actually make you happy, or joining a group that turns out to be a cult.
Always better to assume you can be manipulated, and check in with yourself periodically.
Programmer YouTubers is a good example.
We just get sold on opensource js framework with a sprinkle of SaaS (no rug pull I swear) to keep the investors happy.
developers want to read documentation
they won’t look at any white papers
?!?!?!?!!
White papers are shit written by marketing people who try to make their little ad sound like something academic. In truth these white papers are in equal parts misunderstandings, wrong and full of useless fluff. They are AI slop, often completely without any AI involvement.
If someone is serious about the content, they call it a documentation, reference or datasheet.
Those aren’t white papers. They are scientific papers.
White papers are written by companies as a marketing tool. The first two papers you linked above are written by universities and the last one by a research-focussed non-profit.
As per Wikipedia:
Since the 1990s, this type of document has proliferated in business. Today, a business-to-business (B2B) white paper falls under grey literature, more akin to a marketing presentation meant to persuade customers and partners, and promote a certain product or viewpoint.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_paper
It’s a marketing presentation masquerading as a fake scientific paper.
While I’m not saying they don’t both exist, there are plenty of people writing the original definition for tech products, too.
And I’d argue that purely scientific papers are often written to promote products and viewpoints, too.
There are both
But product whitepapers are ads
Yeah, when I first got a link to a whitepaper in the newsletter, I expected it to be a… a whitepaper (I read the meaning it had back then).
After reading it properly, as if I would an academic paper, I thought it was weird that I didn’t feel like I learnt anything useful.It would take a while (and a few other whitepapers) for me to realise what it had become.
Here’s the thing… I want to be sold something. Not anything, but certain somethings. There was a brief time when Google AdSense was new that I was excited for the experience. (I now know how fucking stupid I was, but hey, I was young).
The idea that a new product aligned to my interests and designed with me in mind would be advertised to me instead of feminine hygiene products or mesothelioma lawsuit ads seemed awesome.
I do not want your bullshit hype machine alpha male inside club cool kid image peddled as the reason I should hand you my money. You’ve got the wrong guy. Tell me what it does with a side of what I can do with it. And the “what I can do with it” shouldn’t be “get laid”.
AdSense could have been amazing if it was used to find good ads for the user instead of finding good users for the ad.
Bring back catalogs.
Who here remembers Computer Shopper?
When I want something, I’ll come to you. Don’t come to me.
I think McMaster still has a catalogue…
A-fucking-men
The idea that a new product aligned to my interests and designed with me in mind would be advertised to me instead of feminine hygiene products or mesothelioma lawsuit ads seemed awesome.
Broadly speaking, the problem with modern American advertisement isn’t the content so much as the volume. Tried to watch a football game a few weeks back and I barely saw any football being played. Every millisecond of screen time and every pixel of screen space that wasn’t a moving football was consumed by ads.
I was at an actual game a year ago, foolishly thinking being there was going to be a better experience. NOPE. Ads on the announcements. Ads at the endzones. Ads painted into the turf. I got solicited to buy shit as I was loading up my ticket and right inside the gate once I was scanned in. The whole interior of the stadium was a mall full of overpriced crap. Seats were branded. The food was branded. I was buying something and I was drowning in people trying to sell me more shit.
I don’t care if every single item on offer is something I might actually want. I can’t fucking breath for it all.
Oh, yes. Watched a UK cooking show lately, the experience was alien; every 10 minutes a 5 minute ad window. Local channels are regulated to no more than 5 minutes per half hour or so. Luckily, smart TV lets you jump over it.
Volume is the biggest problem, sure. Content is a close second. I was flabbergasted last time I was in the USA. Ads have barely any relation to what they’re selling.
A poster for shoes features a full-body shot of a half-naked model, the shoes barely visible with the whole poster within your visual field at once.
Ads for beer, travel agencies, clothes and antidepressant medicine, which should be illegal to advertise, by the way, are indistinguishable from each other: just a few happy 20-somethings in a nonspecific late afternoon outdoors setting.
A bunch of ads I saw I don’t even know what they were for, they just had hot young people and logos for companies I never heard of. No text, no nothing.
Several ads purporting to sell an “experience” when they were for the most mundane, use-it-on-autopilot products you’ve ever heard of. The products were so forgettable I can’t remember an actual example, but picture an ad selling you on the wonderful experience of using the new ad-supported monthly coat hanger subscription service and you’ve got it.
Ads for lawyers (something else that should be illegal) were on point though: “hey, do you want money you know you don’t deserve at all but can be argued in bad faith that you do? Hit me up”.
Oh, and everything is perpetually half-off, because the American consumer is apparently too stupid to realize that just means they’re lying about the price.
Ad placement is not only bought for the purpose to introduce you to their product for you to buy. Sadly most ad placement is bought for brand re-enforcement (Coca-Cola purchases a magnitude more ads even though everyone knows the company and the product, but sells many more bottles than Pepsi)
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And the gratuitous association between random brand X and random hot person Y surely also serves a purpose, like subliminally telling your lizard brain that you’ll become like hot person Y, or succeed in mating with them, if you buy brand X. That explains the problem, but does nothing to make it less of a problem.
I think a slightly more insidious side to targeting ads is that even when they have the “right” product for you, it’s the shitier and overpriced one. The one that spent money on marketing instead of quality.
Has anyone been to any kind of convention for nerdy things. Nerds are so captured by the marketing and products being sold that they let it take over their personality and they can’t stop buying junk.
I would call my brother a geek, a collector of shit, expensive cards, moulded plastics, I love him for it but I see it as vapid. Whereas I am a nerd, I research and act with caution when it comes to spending, I own a mechanical watch which I can repair myself, I buy leather shoes with soles that can be replaced at a cobblers, run Linux on my desktop, custom ROM on my phone.
Geeks are nerds who enjoy gimmicky things, nerds are geeks seeking purpose.
Yeah, this is self-aggrandizement from a group of people who consistently believe they’re smarter than everybody else, when in reality they just lack self-awareness. Nerds will smugly post in this thread using their overpriced mechanical keyboard as a wall of Funko pops and Star Wars slop looms behind them. I worked in marketing for a long time and I know damn well I’m not immune to it.
I believe that thinking you’re immune to something makes you even more vulnerable, because it creates a cognitive blind spot. If you think you can’t make mistakes, you don’t stop to wonder if you are making one.
Pretty much, yeah.
The article points out how a bunch of specific techniques don’t work on programmers. That’s because they’re aimed at project managers, not programmers. And yeah, they work. Hardly any programmers willingly chose Jira for their ticketing system, but project managers love that shit, and it’s everywhere.
All it really means is that it takes a different set of marketing techniques to reach programmers. They generally don’t bother, because programmers don’t typically control the budget directly.
You just described Geeks. Geek and Nerd group labels can sometimes apply to the same people, but they are not synonymous, and a person can be one without the other.
Geeks are enthusiasts who collect and engage with specific topics, often focusing on trends and memorabilia, while nerds are more academically inclined, concentrating on mastering knowledge and skills in their areas of interest. Both terms can overlap, but they emphasize different aspects of passion and expertise.
https://laist.com/shows/take-two/whats-the-difference-between-a-geek-and-a-nerd
I knew somebody would try to play that card. People who insist on that distinction are the least self-aware of all.
You’re resorting to personal attacks without knowing who I am, what I do, what I do or don’t have on the wall behind me. You apply a blanket label on all people who you class a certain way, and when I disagree with your label and its implications, and recommend nuance, you class me further.
It sounds like you think very highly of yourself, or lowly of everyone else, or both.
What makes your opinions here worthwhile?
You are not immune to marketing (or to propaganda in general). The more you become at ease with that fact, the better equipped you will be to deal with the deluge of shit that is coming for all of us.
What makes your opinions here worthwhile?
As I said in another reply, I worked in marketing for a long time, so I have first-hand experience that most others here don’t. Many have a rather narrow definition of what they’re willing to label “advertising” and don’t realize how much is actually happening all around them. I’m applying a blanket label because the blanket is covering all of us, even those who fervently deny it and insist that it’s simply warm and cozy wherever they are.
Everyone arguing with this account needs to realize that they might as well be talking to an LLM. Look at how advertisers think:
https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell-021109.pdf
Just like an LLM can’t distinguish between truth and fiction they can’t distinguish between meaningful information and advertising BS. The people here will never win their argument against them because they classify all human communication as an act of manipulation, so the definition of advertising will be made more and more broad until they say “look, you were swayed”.
Excuse me but “it” is not my preferred pronoun. That’s pretty disrespectful.
I got a curved, split, tented ortholinear monstrosity with a built in trackball and I’m finally done. I get that it’s stupid and a waste of money but my hands feel so good typing all day on it
They’re not nerds. They’re posers.
I don’t have a single funko pop or Star Wars toy or whatever. I have a Keychron keyboard that cost me $70, while it is more costly than the average membrane I like mechanical ones. I never buy new if I can (usually this is a time constraint, I.e I broke my phone and I need to replace it quick one because my job relies it). I Adblock everywhere I possibly can to not see the ads but I genuinely believe I’m immune to advertising.
I genuinely believe I’m immune to advertising.
You are not - you just don’t see it as such. Even if you didn’t use the internet at all (which we can see is not the case) you would still fall victim to its network effects.
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Then they ain’t nerds, sorry.
Yeah, I think scottsman are the ones that are actually immune to marketing.
I disagree, I don’t fall into the category you stated. My walls are lined with 80s memorabilia and 3d printed things I have created. I reject anything advertised to me and will only purchase tech that I have sought out that meets my needs.
If this irony, good job because I think most people will fall for it.
I don’t think it is. I know a few people like this, and im heading in that direction myself. The only kinds of “ads” that work on me are when a number of equally nerdy people I know find a new thing, and they’ve demonstrated that it has helped them with something or they are genuinely enjoying using it. Like 3D printing. Its semi-pointless most of the time but it is a genuinely fun hobby, which when combined with 3D modeling and post-processing skills becomes an actual craft. I didn’t get into it until a good number of people around me did.
80s memorabilia and 3D printers are not exempt form marketing. They are products just like anything else.
3D printers are not exempt form marketing
Case in point: Bambu and Autodesk sponsoring every maker Youtuber. (Fuck both Bambu and Autodesk, BTW.)
Wait. I thought bambu made good printers? Why fuck them?
*I ask because I want a 3d printer for christmas and don’t know which to get. The bambu seems great.
Right? I’ve seen the walls of Funko Pops… nerds definitely are not immune to marketing.
do people actually buy those? I honestly thought they were some kind of money laundering thing. I’ve never once saw one sell.
I’ve seen maybe 3 passable figures by them. Mind boggling that they actually sell.
Maybe it’s a whale thing, most people don’t give a shit but the people who do have to buy all of them to sate their neurosis
They aren’t fucking nerds then. Nerds don’t buy Funko Pops.
I can name 3 or 4 people who own walls of Funko pops and I can tell you they wouldn’t know an IDE from MS Word. None of them went to college either.
They’re posers.
If you say so… but some of the Funko collectors I know are definitely die-hard nerds. Having bad taste doesn’t exclude you from nerddom.
Nerds in arrested development over a franchize is not the same as seeing any ad and then that makes them want to buy a product.
Yeah but I don’t think that’s marketing, if you’re going to a con for something, you’re likely very passionate about it and passionate people love to scoop up everything they can that relates to their beloved hobby or franchise.
Also, nerds tend to have a good amount of disposable income on that stuff
The cons themselves are marketing. Heavy marketing. If you can’t see that, I don’t know what to say. Vendors (and even artists for crying out loud) are willing to pay top dollar for booths to sell stuff. On the surface, they are their namesake - conventions. Dig any deeper, and they are giant pop-up malls.
Is that marketing or is it just finding stuff they want to own?
It’s marketing making them think they want to own that stuff.
How do you think you “found” it? A whole supply chain of people, from branding to packaging to advertising, made it so that you can “find” things on websites that are themselves outright advertisements or at least funded by them.
It’s a mistake to attribute purchases to marketing just because a marketer breathed the same air at some point. First-degree advertising influence and umpteenth-degree influence are very very different.
I mean, I probably wouldn’t buy a car from a company I’d never heard of, but that’s mainly because there are none. If I happened to buy a car from <insert company here> after researching what was available, I wouldn’t attribute that to <insert company here>'s marketing department. At least, not unless they bribed the independent reviewers, ratings boards, etc.
Same deal with most of my tech purchases, except that in that space there often are brands I’ve never heard of. And I’m (usually) savvy enough to tell when they’re legit and when they’re not. (I know more than I ever wanted to know about SSD controllers and I’m kind of angry about it.)
You’re right that nobody is truly “immune” to marketing, but as a matter of degrees, there’s a big difference across groups. There are people out there who look at ads and register them as useful information. There are people who intentionally click on ad banners on Instagram, rather than treating them like digital leprosy. There are people who click on the first Amazon referral listicle they find on Google and then treat it like independent journalism. There are people who use GoDaddy, when the only possible reason anyone would is because that racecar driver is hot. These are not behaviors you should expect among the kind of nerds this article is talking about.
You’re right that nobody is truly “immune” to marketing, but as a matter of degrees, there’s a big difference across groups. There are people out there who look at ads and register them as useful information. There are people who intentionally click on ad banners on Instagram, rather than treating them like digital leprosy. There are people who click on the first Amazon referral listicle they find on Google and then treat it like independent journalism.
Perhaps, but I’d argue people who click on ads knowing full well it’s an ad are more enlightened than the
nerd- sorry, “geek” - who thinks they operate on a higher plane of existence, not knowing that Youtube review was bought and paid for or that Reddit post was made by an LLM.There are people who use GoDaddy, when the only possible reason anyone would is because that racecar driver is hot. These are not behaviors you should expect among the kind of nerds this article is talking about.
You’re really dating yourself with this reference, and I am by understanding it. Incidentally, who do you think bought all that gamer girl bathwater?
Same deal with most of my tech purchases, except that in that space there often are brands I’ve never heard of. And I’m (usually) savvy enough to tell when they’re legit and when they’re not. (I know more than I ever wanted to know about SSD controllers and I’m kind of angry about it.)
This is a bit different because it isn’t really an emotional decision - they are are fungible, functionality being equal. But would you choose, say, a computer case without caring about the way it looks or makes you feel?
Incidentally, who do you think bought all that gamer girl bathwater?
Honestly, I have no idea. Did people actually buy it? I thought the whole thing was a joke.
I’m not about to no-true-scotsman nerdhood here, but I will say that I don’t relate to whatever group bought into that. I’m just not that kind of nerd, I guess.
Which raises another point: there are no monolithic demographics of any significant size. Anytime you generalize about “nerds” (or any other group), nothing you say will be 100% correct across the board. Generalizations are still useful when viewed in terms of trends and distribution curves. It’s fair to say that men are taller than women even though there are short men and tall women. It would be more precise to say that the height distribution for men skews taller than for women, but I think most people intuitively understand the truth behind the simple, plain English generalization anyway, even if they don’t think of it in precise terms.
But would you choose, say, a computer acse without caring about the way it looks or makes you feel?
The way it looks: yes, absolutely. My current box is metallic black with a window. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one with no window at the same price, I would have. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one in hot pink for cheaper, I probably would have. (There is a functional aspect to appearance as well, since it’s in my field of vision and bright colors could be distracting, so I’d have to think about the pink. “Black” and “no window” are on my wanted-features list for this reason, but other factors can override those wants.)
The way it makes me feel: well, cramped space, bad cable management options, and poor airflow will make me feel bad, so…arguably? But I’d consider that a matter of functionality more than feeling.
I feel like at this point we should talk about the oft-neglected difference between marketing and advertising. There is an aspect of marketing that directs product development down a path toward what they understand people actually want. When done well, this is good. It should be the marketing department’s job to learn what problems people have with products in the field, and make sure those problems are addressed in future products. Advertising is a subset of marketing that tries to directly influence consumer behavior to buy whatever they’re trying to sell.
For example, there was probably a marketer involved in the location and design of my favorite coffee shop, and if they did their job well then they deserve credit for helping make the kind of place I enjoy sitting in. Cheers to them for that.
But I’m no more likely to go into Dunkin or Starbucks just because they are advertised incessantly. You might find that hard to believe, and I wouldn’t blame you! I can’t prove it to you. And I understand that among the general population, repeated exposure affects perception, and by extension behavior, in subtle and deeply-rooted ways. I don’t imagine that I am immune to the effects that, for example, cause preschool children to prefer the same food from McDonalds bags vs unbranded bags (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17679662/). But we are more than our base nature, and these effects can be negated in practice. I suspect tech nerds in general have internalized stronger countermeasures than the general population. Not full immunity, because reality is too messy, but a notable resistance.
First off, thanks for the thoughtful and detailed reply.
Which raises another point: there are no monolithic demographics of any significant size. Anytime you generalize about “nerds” (or any other group), nothing you say will be 100% correct across the board. Generalizations are still useful when viewed in terms of trends and distribution curves. It’s fair to say that men are taller than women even though there are short men and tall women. It would be more precise to say that the height distribution for men skews taller than for women, but I think most people intuitively understand the truth behind the simple, plain English generalization anyway, even if they don’t think of it in precise terms.
Of course, and marketing itself works with generalizations about demographics and targetting etc. As in anything there are extreme outliers, but there’s definitely a bell curve, and I doubt most people are as near the poles as they think.
The way it looks: yes, absolutely. My current box is metallic black with a window. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one with no window at the same price, I would have. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one in hot pink for cheaper, I probably would have. (There is a functional aspect to appearance as well, since it’s in my field of vision and bright colors could be distracting, so I’d have to think about the pink. “Black” and “no window” are on my wanted-features list for this reason, but other factors can override those wants.)
Sounds lke you’re primarily a value shopper in this case, which is fair, but for every one of you there’s a r/battlestations poster who spent more for something aesthetic - and unlike others here I won’t start “no true nerd-ing” those people away out of convenience. I to a certain degree am one of them, and I’m definitely a nerd (as is everyone on Lemmy). I’m sure there are different things you choose to splurge on.
I feel like at this point we should talk about the oft-neglected difference between marketing and advertising. There is an aspect of marketing that directs product development down a path toward what they understand people actually want. When done well, this is good. It should be the marketing department’s job to learn what problems people have with products in the field, and make sure those problems are addressed in future products. Advertising is a subset of marketing that tries to directly influence consumer behavior to buy whatever they’re trying to sell.
In the industry we’d rarely refer to those people as marketers (more like “market research”, basically statisticians and much less cool) but you’re right that it’s on the same continuum. Focus groups fall in there too. I wouldn’t really count it in this argument though because for most of us it’s a fait accompli when we’re faced with whatever is on the store shelf. It isn’t something we can be “immune” to in any meaningful way, short of becoming a self-sufficient hermit.
But I’m no more likely to go into Dunkin or Starbucks just because they are advertised incessantly. You might find that hard to believe, and I wouldn’t blame you! I can’t prove it to you. And I understand that among the general population, repeated exposure affects perception, and by extension behavior, in subtle and deeply-rooted ways. I don’t imagine that I am immune to the effects that, for example, cause preschool children to prefer the same food from McDonalds bags vs unbranded bags (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17679662/). But we are more than our base nature, and these effects can be negated in practice. I suspect tech nerds in general have internalized stronger countermeasures than the general population. Not full immunity, because reality is too messy, but a notable resistance.
But do you have a favourite coffee place, or restaurant? How about a favourite hotel chain? We often don’t realize all the subconscious triggers we’re subjected to.
Marketing. It is very effective.
It’s marketing.
Posers. All of them.
Nerds enjoy a hobby, like tabletop games.
Posers buy Funkos and toys that they never open.
Nerds have fun. Posers try to look like they do.
Bullshit
Funko pops. Lego. Star wars. Marvel
That’s hobby space, not working tool space.
And Warhammer
This article is about software tools, not those other things.
Yeah but OP decided to completely change the title which will inevitably result in comments like this since the majority of users don’t read articles.
