It's a bit trite, but also true -- a significant portion of reddit is totally made up. It's worse than it was a few years ago, but I have no way whatsoever to measure it. Occasionally I bump into youtube videos which are just narrations of reddit posts which tell some interesting or controversial story. They all really sound fabricated. There's no way for me to know with certainty, but I think extreme skepticism is the safer assumption for any large reddit.
Everything on the internet is fake. That is as true now as it always was.
For every real post, I can make up a fake one that's more agreeable to the hivemind and therefore will be more upvoted. Since you see a limited amount of posts in a session, you will only see fake posts and the real ones will be hidden forever.
On Reddit? It should...
These were historically almost always made up after people looked into it.
To be clear, the picture is likely real. The backstory to it probably not.
The people that actually feel like they've had the episode would almost certainly not go on social media with it.
The venn diagram of people sharing such content, having the money to buy such a gigantic smart fridge and suffering from schizophrenia is miniscule
Its not minuscule at all. Some studies have employment rates for schizophrenics approaching 50%. In any case the rate is not 0%. Apparently when you look at the literature you find conclusions such as:
Very low employment rates are not intrinsic to schizophrenia, but appear to reflect an interplay between the social and economic pressures that patients face, the labour market and psychological and social barriers to working.[0]
Barriers like you believing you can generalize all schizophrenics to be poor/unemployed and unable to earn.
I did now and am even more certain it's made up now.
I'm not sure how anyone can honestly think this is a person talking about their family. This is like a textbook made believe story people have been doing since Reddit got popular in early 2010s.
For this story to be real, you'll have to add a fourth and fifth circle to the diagram with a family member being close enough to the person suffering from the illness to be confided in and being so karma hungry to utilize their personal story which is likely shameful to them for going viral on Reddit.
> the schizophrenic sister's name happens to be Carol ...
Obviously made up.
Why? because no-ones' sister is ever called "Carol" ? Or because people of that name don't get schizophrenia?
I consider myself sane, but if I saw a billboard addressing me by name, I would do a double-take at least. I can easily understand how it would have an impact and look like a schizophrenic symptom.
The TV show advert with that text actually does exist, I've seen it.
Given that, what are the odds that some day a) it is seen, b) by someone called Carol, c) who is susceptible to being affected by it. I would say substantial.
Somehow it all happened just in time to coincide with the release of this big show: Samsung rolling out ads(a big story in its own), Pluberis (or whatever the name of the show) from the creator of the Breaking Bad on Apple TV, schizophrenic sister that is named Carol.
Totally NOT made up.
Not related at all, but I have this very exciting business idea – you can make billions, can you contact me via email in my bio? Not a scam, 100%.
Name matches will happen regardless of the name chosen for a fictional person. "named Carol" specifically vs other names is an irrelevance. You put too much on it.
> Totally NOT made up.
Once more for the hard of reading, I refer you to what I said earlier, "We don't know the truth of this at all."
> but I have this very exciting business idea – you can make billions,
It looks to me like you want to rant people you have invented, who hold positions that I do not. I'm sorry that you can't parse nuance, but I think I'll keep the sceptical lack of faith in your position that I used earlier.
Assuming that it's "so unlikely because Carol" seems to be the mistake.
No matter what name is picked for a fictional protagonist, some people will match it. If it's a real name, then people have it, pretty much by definition.
But, this doesn't really reflect one way or the other on this story being true or not. The mistake is in thinking that it does.
Carol is a very uncommon name, it was last popular in the 40s and 50s so almost every Carol you find today will be in an old folk's home. The odds of two truly independent instances of somebody named Carol appearing in this manner of circumstance is extremely small.
Also, it came from reddit therefore it is fake. Reddit is a dumpster fire, if we're being generous it's a website for playing around with creative writing exercises. The not so generous interpretation is that reddit users are deranged internet point addicts who habitually lie to get their fix.
There is a pattern of Asian immigrants to the US adopting such "old-fashioned" names for themselves or their kids.
I'm Gen-X, born and raised in California. I have a coworker whose Taiwanese American wife is Carol. And I've seen my fair share of people in my age cohort or their offspring with names like Ann, Karen, Katherine/Catherin, Susan, Mary, Lillian, etc.
Yes, these were the names of my grandparents' generation, but they didn't go away in my experience. They just branched out from their original userbase.
I asked some coworkers about this and they had all adopted names that sounded like their Chinese names. Except Xiaofong who didn't have anything to match. It was mid 90's so we gifted him Ronaldo (Brazilian version, best and full sized Ronaldo) and he loved it.
This level of simple assurance is for simpletons. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't be sure based on "it's from reddit". I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you.
> The odds of two truly independent instances of somebody named Carol appearing in this manner of circumstance
What on earth are you talking about? There there are not "two people named Carol appearing in this manner." The first is the protagonist of a sci-fi show. You know, a fictional person. There is 1 - count them, one, supposed victim appearing in this manner. Which is possible regardless of the name chosen for the show and ad.
> "This level of simple assurance is for simpletons. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't be sure based on "it's from reddit". I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you."
I respectfully disagree with your dismissal. Reasonable heuristics are necessary to get through life without getting lost in hours of deep dives into any random shit you hear. Anyway, the mere fact that the fridges have ads of any sort at all is reason enough to never buy one, I don't need to also believe some redditor's karma seeking tall tale.
> Reasonable heuristics are necessary to get through life without getting lost in hours of deep dives into any random shit you hear.
And I respectfully disagree with that.
Firstly, I have my own opinions on reddit and I don't find your simplistic ones persuasive. It's not monolithic.
But more importantly, you make a leap from "We don't know the truth of it and can't be sure" to "getting lost in hours of deep dives" (to establish certainty) which IMHO just does not follow.
You can decide that you don't know, that you do not need to have an authoritative opinion on the topic, and leave it at that. There are a lots of things that you and I don't have certainty on, and never will. Most of them are not important to us.
Deep dives might or might not be worth it, but you present choosing a side as the only alternative and it is not.
Again, I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you. But it's a useful thing to do. It's a useful heuristic to me, better than false certainty.
> I don't need to also believe some redditor's karma seeking tall tale.
I don't think I ever said that I believe it as certainty. But if the only options that you understand are binary, then not picking one as a certainty seems to be misread as picking the other one. Which it is not.
The amount of "black or white", all or nothing, no-nuance, no doubt, no open mind, "if you say you're not convinced of x, then you must be trying to convince everyone of not-x" thinking here is frankly pathological.
FYI, I find the arguments that have come up that "Ads on Samsung fridges don't look like that" more substantive than "no one has that name" or "reddit always lies". Those last are opinions masquerading as information.
To go full schizo conspiracy theory: It may also not be a coincidence. There may be someone that dislikes that one Carol, knows she has schizophrenia and a smart fridge. They design this ad, or perhaps just plant the idea of it at the company they are working for with the intention of harming her.
If there really was a Carol I think police should look into this theory just to rule it out.
Nope, for the simple and trivial to check reason that it's not just an ad, or even just a whole ad campaign. It's the name of a protagonist of a drama, that the ad promotes, using a phrase that is said to that fictional character.
Honestly some of the posts defending "it could be true!!" when nearly any rational reading of it would deem it "fake beyond a reasonable doubt" are just tiresome at this point.
Like you say, it's easy to have a rational discussion that these adverts are dumb and annoying, and purporting this fan fiction as truth just weakens the case.
Yeah so this hypothetical sister doesn’t work, lives by themself, is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge. That’s a crazy amount of money to splash for someone who doesn’t work. Especially as amazing fridges are sold for £600-800. Oh, on top of all that, the persons name is Carol. It wouldn’t have worked with any other name.
I don’t think the story is real. But people who want it to be true are easily convinced.
It's also true that illness and disability can come to any of us. Carol could have been a software developer who made a good bit of money before being unable to work anymore.
> is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge.
The fridge has been on sale for a few years and schizophrenia can come on very suddenly. People's lives can change in a day because of it. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't reasonably jump to conclusions like that.
I recently had an obviously disturbed man come to the window of my Tesla asking for help. He did not specifically say money, but that's what he wanted. Long story short, he sees that the Tesla has identified a human standing next to the car, but the Tesla showed four people. The man asked how does the vehicle know there are people there, I told him that the Tesla has eight cameras around it. He then asked how does it know there were four people, I explained that the Tesla does not know there were four people, rather the Tesla has a hard time figuring out where something as small as a human is - it is designed to detect larger things like other vehicles. The man was obviously extremely affected, and walked away without another word.
Only later did I understand that the Tesla may have just confirmed what he had suspected all along - that there are in fact four people in the place where he is standing.
The ads for this TV show are real and do look like that.
Honestly, a trigger for paranoia in someone of the same name as the show's protagonist, or stealth marketing, are equally likely scenarios to me. We don't know.
I used to follow a few personal finance and FIRE subs. Pretty much all of them had surprising number of creative writing exercises too:
"I just inherited $10 million from a dead relative I never knew, what should I do?"
Or:
"I sold my online business for $37 million, is this enough to retire on?"
These daydreamers always create fresh throwaway accounts and usually never come back to answer clarifying questions. If they do, their answers are vague and unhelpful.
Because it's internet + social media. You should assume 60% of it is made up, every time. People are either saying things they know to be untrue, or things they think are true but or not.
When a million doomers post their predictions in response to something, a few are bound to be correct. Doesn't mean it's real, fake, or manifested by the hivemind. Just monkeys with typewriters.
It’s not genuine. The fridge doesn’t show full-screen ads, the original Reddit post and image of the ‘Carol’ ad is staged. At best, this is a parable about the slippery slope our ad-ridden society is sliding down.
Update 11/14: Samsung has commented on the image posted to Reddit, noting that the ad format shown on the smart fridge display is not one that would appear over the cover screen. Any ad shown would be limited to the cover screen widget, which displays news, weather, and calendar events. Those slides rotate every 10 seconds or so, and an ad is looped in around every 40 seconds.
It appears that the ad shown in the Reddit photo is of the fridge’s Samsung Internet app. Through that, an ad seems to have shown up organically through a third-party website.
Samsung notes that full-screen ads do not appear as part of these recent software updates, and users shouldn’t expect to see ads that take up the entire display.
‘Shown up organically’ seems like a very generous interpretation to me - it seems far more likely that someone viewed it deliberately for the purposes of staging the photo.
If Samsung cared about their reputation they would have stopped releasing garbage electronics a decade ago and anyone suggesting putting ads on a fridge (and a high end one at that) would have been fired the same day they suggested it.
On one hand I wouldn't cheer for spreading lies, but if this specific post got Samsung to lay down where the ads appear and at which frequency, I'd see the positive side of it. In particular they're that less likely to actually silently move to full ads in the near future even if they planned to, now that they officially commented on it.
On the other hand, this was traditionally the role of art and fiction. Black Mirror was based on the premise of getting people to react to this kind of future, and it looks like it's either not working (anymore?) or we're past the point where hypothetical situations would grab our attention and we can do something about it.
On the third hand, I have no intention to buy a fridge with a screen on it, but if it becomes the mainstream offering will I be forking 10% or 20% to not have th screen, or if those will have significantly better features (better temperature management etc.). I also wished I wasn't looking at ads, but in practice the best educational content right now is sponsored by S**space.
the most incongruous part of the story to me is the fact that someone like Carol in this post would have such an expensive fridge in the first place - aren't those relatively expensive?
the technology to directly transmit audio without the need for headphones has been around for a while , for a recent implementation one could search up soundlazer
it is interesting to consider that at any point the thoughts in one's skull are not necessarily their own
