• 0 Posts
  • 24 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
Cake day: October 23rd, 2023
  • Shandriel@alien.topBtoHeadphones•How do you guys get to try so many headphones?English
    1·
    10 months ago

    I totally share that mindset!

    I guess, this is a generational and cultural thing, though.

    Wasteful consumerism is something that was born in the United States (watch my comment disappear in downvotes) and chinese manufacturers quickly latched on to that to maximise profits. (Wish, Shein, etc.)

    In Europe, free returns haven’t been a thing for most of my life. You ordered clothes, you better hope they’d fit, because sending them back was 10-20 bucks. That was fine, because driving to a store and standing in line in front of the changing rooms took time, too. (and time and gas is money!)

    Then, certain brands came on to the market and offered free returns. People started to go crazy, because receiving parcels somehow releases endorphins (they reported about a woman ordering a 500kg europalette full of Zalando boxes!). These stores only wrote red numbers at first, because the cost of taking back opened boxes, folding clothes and wrapping them up again, was so high. But in the end, they all but completely eradicated all the “traditional” online stores that refused to implement the same “free returns” strategy. And they started making money. A saddening number of those clothes end up being incinerated, because it’s just too expensive to pack them up again for re-sale…

    consumers? ignorant… don’t care… don’t know?

    ​

    This sickening behaviour has spread across Europe like a plague in the last 10 years. Of all the things, I’ve ever ordered, I maybe returned 0.01% (unless it was a warranty case, of course), but that’s my upbringing, my culture… and my awareness for the ecological impact of returning goods that don’t stand a chance of being re-sold.

    When I buy electronics, I want to test them, hands-on… I travel to a city where I can do so… I meet with people that own them, so I can try it for myself, etc.

    Maybe this is the time where Millennials are “the boomers”… but the hypocrisy of Gen Z people pointing fingers at big companies for damaging the environment, polluting the oceans, etc. all the while enabling them through their consumerism… it annoys me like hell!

  • Shandriel@alien.topBtoHeadphones•How do you guys get to try so many headphones?English
    1·
    10 months ago

    You could always… you know… see if there’s a group of hifi afficionados in your state… meet and talk, discuss music, exchange headphones, chill, drink beer…

    I prefer going to a store (even if it means I have to turn it into a day-trip) because I don’t like strangers too much.

    ​

    Social media allows you to find like-minded people more easily than ever before. Go and find them. Discord, instagram, tik tok… whatever!

    ​

    Return policies are fun, so long as you refuse to see the truth behind returned goods! Gen Z pretends to be all about “responsibility, sustainability, equality”, etc. But the wasteful consumerism has reached a level like never before in the past century! (Shein, Wish, Amazon, etc.)

    Most people refuse to accept that big retailers such as Amazon will quickly scan your returned goods and VERY likely BIN them if they are not 100% mint anymore. Some might end up as “open box”, but the majority, unfortunately, ends up on landfills. If you want to blame Amazon for that, fine by me. But don’t pretend you’re free of guilt. You enable that behaviour with your own consumer decisions!

  • Shandriel@alien.topBtoHeadphones•For you what’s the best headphone/IEM and what genre you listen with them?English
    1·
    10 months ago

    I love my Grados at my desk… listening to tons of trash (aka pop), some latin (Shakira, Camila Cabello), electric pop nu-metal stoof (30 seconds to mars, linkin park), singer songwriter (sade, norah jones, etc.) and even some soul (joss stone)

    I guess I like them with any genre of music that’s not too bass-reliant (some music just sucks without bass) the DT990 Edition are more “immersive” to listen to, with loads more bass, but they don’t feel as light on your head.

  • Shandriel@alien.topBtoHeadphones•STOP ASKING FOR PURCHASE ADVICE OUTSIDE THE STICKIED THREAD FOR IT.English
    1·
    10 months ago

    the mobile app should get reworked, then!

    bc it’s really hard to even find the sticky posts when on mobile!

    1. they should be at the top, no matter how you filter and sort… always

    2. on mobile, you should not be allowed to post to a sub without first going to that sub’s starting page (where the stickies should be at the top!)

    maybe I’m just too old and too used to Web 1.0, but making everything easier to use does not mean people will get smarter at using it.

    If someone cares about a topic, we can expect them to take a couple of hurdles…