In the beginning, it was just me. When I joined Lemmy what I really missed about reddit was the ‘curated twitter’ subs where every post was just a nice little thought someone had had. There were meme communities already but nothing quite right, it was mostly deep-fried shitposting. I think this was even before the new WhitePeopleTwitter started on sh.itjust.works but I’m not sure.

I didn’t want to start a new WhitePeopleTwitter, for three reasons - it wasn’t my sub on reddit so it didn’t feel appropriate to stage a “take over” of that name here; I didn’t want to specify “white people” in the title, and I also didn’t want to reference “twitter” because microblogging is bigger than twitter now and I didn’t want to contribute at all (even if a little bit) to the idea that twitter is the default option for microblogging.

So MicroblogMemes was born! In the early days it was just me posting a bunch of screenshots every day and we didn’t need any rules. I didn’t want to act like this was some big formal endevour and add a ton of detailed rules for everyone to follow, and since then I’ve only added rules when I’ve had to moderate something and someone complained.

The reason I’m making this post is because we have a new rule - no advertising. I personally am not interested in seeing posts from brands pretending to be people. The likes of Wendy’s, KFC, Microsoft, etc have advertising budgets that run collectively into the billions and I just don’t want adverts disguised as content here.

Yesterday someone posted this:

To me this is pretty much just advertising. A member of the community reported it, and I removed the post with the comment ‘hail corporate’.

For fully transparency this exchange then occured (read from the bottom):

I’ve basically explained my reasoning for this approach already but, in short, I have tiny, tiny amount of power on the internet to create a space with fewer adverts and that’s what I’m going to do. Be the change and all that.

I often think about this quote from Banksy:

Not really sure why I felt the need to post all this but there you go. If anyone disagrees with any of this please let me know in the comments and we can work it out :)

  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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    9 months ago

    We did a bunch of research into alternative toilet paper when we leaned about how it’s usually cut from old-growth trees. Looked at a bunch of brands, compared recycled benefits to bamboo, and price compared to find one that was actually cheaper than the Charmin at Walmart if bought in bulk.

    I posted my resulting find in TIL on Lemmy.world, and it was deleted as an ad. I only ask you be careful with this one.

    • Ready! Player 31@lemmy.worldOPM
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      9 months ago

      You can let us all know the results of your TP research here in this thread but please don’t post any tweets from the brand :) that is the line!

    • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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      9 months ago

      I’m legitimately interested. Some time ago my wife started buying Plant Paper (I think that’s the name), and like… it’s whatever. I think it’s a bit scratchy, but our water is too cold to install an unheated bidet, and our house is too old to make doing electrical work worth it.
      An alternative would be rad.

      • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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        9 months ago

        Cloud Paper. Feels a lot like Charmin Extra Strong but a bit more stretchy and durable. When bought in counts of 80 it came out cheaper.

        Unfortunately I put all the content directly into a post instead of an MD like an idiot, so I don’t have all the details with me.

        • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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          9 months ago

          I thought I had responded to this, but that’s great info!
          I’ll submit it to the committee for consideration.