Dollar Tree.

It used to have been an unreal experience witnessing the existence of these stores when they came out. Everything for a $1. No joke. The quality of some things have had corners cut and the quantity might’ve been laughable, but there was a good solid purpose for these stores.

And then I started seeing the signs after a few good solid years of shopping there. The first sign was how they stopped selling eggs. This was before the Bird Flu. They stopped selling eggs because they simply couldn’t afford to buy stock and then the price hike to $1.25 happened.

And now they’ve hiked the prices again to $1.50 for some products in a handful of stores. Additionally, they’ve incorporated items going from $2 ~ $15 so they have long lost the role and title of being the most affordable places to shop.

Gone were the days.

  • Tehdastehdas@lemmy.worldEnglish
    792·
    5 months ago

    OkCupid used to be the best for finding matching people: they crowdsourced thousands of relevant multiple choice questions from which you built your search filter: which answers you accept, how important each is to you, and a voluntary explanation. The questions and match results were factored into friendship, dating, and sex.

    Then Match Group bought it. First they let it be, but then they:

    • removed the factoring - no more looking for friends or sex, only complete packages
    • removed search - no more finding the best matches anywhere on the planet, now you just swipe like Tinder
    • removed keyword search - no more finding rare interests not included in the questions, like “furry”
    • removed the search filter - now everything has to be the same to match: both of you must have or not have tattoos for example, never mind what you like - one of my likes went from 95% to 50% match
    • deleted the voluntary explanations without warning, so no one could back theirs up
    • deleted ~95% of the match questions without warning
    • deleted all accumulated likes, which were my best matching people around the world with the maximum couple/friend/sex partner potential except location for now. I had the links saved, but they broke all of them.
    • they delete matches (mutual likes) if they haven’t been messaging in a while, as if that meant they’re not a match - no, we’re just distant for now
    • they police inconvenient statements in the users’ introductions as the political situation evolves - the day after the mass murderer CEO got shot, the section in my profile containing “fuck the healthcare system - make a better one” was deleted without sending me a copy to edit

    Avoid the whole Match Group.

    Now that I think of it, the destruction of OkCupid looks like a politically motivated attack against the minorities and intellectual power users who used to flock there.

    • MacAttak8@lemmy.world
      19·
      5 months ago

      Oh snap, I met my wife on OKC before these changes. I believe Match had already bought them out but it was before the changes like you mentioned.

      I remember it being the superior online matchmaking service at the time.

      RIP

    • SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.world
      17·
      5 months ago

      Since I started using Lemmy, I’ve wondered if a federated dating platform could ever work. Obviously you would have to solve the problem of low user numbers though…

      • Vanth@reddthat.comEnglish
        20·
        5 months ago

        Unless it is a dating platform for tech savvy gay/bi men specifically, it would also have to solve the problem of even lower numbers of women who are users. Even non-fed dating platforms struggle to reach a 10:1, men:women ratio of active, non-bot users.

        As a woman (just have to phrase it that way), good luck to any who try. Personally, I can’t think of anything that would entice me to sign up for a federated dating platform.

          • Vanth@reddthat.comEnglish
            9·
            5 months ago

            You have way more faith in humanity than I do. I think after 1-2 and the novelty wears off, a lot of people would just thumbs up without reading.

            And even if people stay diligent in rating first comments, it will take 0.2 seconds for bad actors to realize they can just save their bullshit for message #2.

            • bishbosh@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              5 months ago

              What do you think about vetting to make a profile, or having a chat that exists for the folks that have matched or spoken with a guy in the past?

              • Vanth@reddthat.comEnglish
                1·
                5 months ago

                Peer vetting? So one has to take on an unpaid part time job to get on the dating platform?

                And men vetted by peer men? The ones who are a sampling that will absolutely include some of the toxic online variety we are all trying to avoid?

                I simply think initial vetting will never be enough. People aren’t dumb, they are able to behave until they have someone alone before showing their true colors. My real skepticism is that any Fediverse platform would have strong controls to identify and actually block bad people. Mainstream dating platforms have processes to deal with stalkers and sexual assaulters, they permanently block people from the platform and contact local law enforcement at times. A federated dating platform would have none of those things, unless they’re attached to a major corporation like Threads is to Facebook, which would defeat the purpose.

      • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        21·
        5 months ago

        There’s an open source one called Alovoa. I haven’t tried it yet myself, but it’s there.

        I know it’s on FDroid, though I haven’t checked any other app store for it yet