logoalt Hacker News

guhcampostoday at 2:31 PM2 repliesview on HN

I have another weak correlation to TEMU to add.

I have never, ever, bought anything on TEMU, because anytime I open the website it gives me a gambling roulette for some supposed discount thing. I hate gambling, so everytime I see the roulette I just close the webpage and go do something else.

Well, the whole cheap-generated content craze feels basically like gambling to me to this point, too. Folks are just randomly generating content: books, videos, articles, even applications, and gambling that something will pay for itself.

So now we have Enshitification, Eemufication and Gamblification of the Human Society. Damn I might write something on Substack about that.


Replies

epiccolemantoday at 2:38 PM

The gambling roulette is triply annoying because it will inevitably start walking you through some flow where you're supposedly ending up with a big discount or free items or whatever-the-fuck. And if you're encountering it for the first time, you'll think "ah cool, i can get some cheap chinese gewgaws for free with the thing I actually wanted to buy." And then 10 minutes has gone by and 5 roulette spins and there's $400 worth of bullshit in your cart.

And the thing is, Temu - I was going to buy something from you. I saw an ad or whatever and thought "sure, I'll pay $13 for that keyboard." But then you get pulled into the dopamine labyrinth hell-realm and by the time you're out they've wasted 15 minutes of your time and you don't even remember what you came in for.

show 1 reply
andaitoday at 3:05 PM

They appear to be targeting users with underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. I wonder what the intention behind that might be.