What are you surprised that people pay for, when there are free alternatives in existence?
What are you surprised that people pay for, when there are free alternatives in existence?
I was going through my Wal-Mart+ subscription plan that I got for free and I saw their offers. One of which was EMeals, that was a 60-day trial. I thought that this was like Blue Apron or other meal delivery services so I thought I'd take a crack at it and hope that it would get me on a path to eat better.
Turns out, it's just a meal planner. And it's absurd to me why and how would anyone pay for something when there are countless and countless recipes and meal planners readily available for free. Who'd the fuck would want to pay for a planner? That's like paying for a calendar app.
- Books
- Porn
- Streaming Services
- Bottled Water (if you have access/the means of purchasing a filter)
- "Buy now, play later." Just buy it later and avoid the fees.
- A lot of "Courses." There are so many free resources online.
Ad-free internet stuff.
Computer Operating Systems
A lot of Software actually
Antiviruses
Adobe. Someone said they pay $60 a month for it, and are locked in for the year, which they didn’t even know about! All for editing photos. Just editing photos.
Holdup. It's $60 a month for the adobe suite, which give you access to like 30 aps, including a video editor, DreamWorks, illustrator and a whole bunch more. It's only $20 a month for thw photo suite, which gives you lightroom, photoshop, and bridge. The $60, a month for the suite is absolutely worth it depending on what you are doing.
It amazes me the amount of people that think theres no alternative to adobe, just for their casual use. I know that for professional it has some features that no other has.
I recently purchased Affinity photo, which did most of what I used to use Adobe for. No subscription, one time purchase, and I'll likely never need to worry about that again.
I tried gimp a few times and found it frustrating to use.
Streaming. OS's, disposable shavers/ head, prime. Very few subscriptions are a good deal and if they are a good deal thats just them cornering the market to eventually close in.
Social media.
Windows
Streaming services. I've been balls deep into piracy since I was a kid but I remember once I was house sitting and my friend had netflix and I Was drunk and wanted to watch He-man. I turned on their netflix and it didn't have it. I was like, why even pay for this shit whats it good for? I have been morally opposed to paying for streaming ever since. Ive been taking some classes recently and some of the Gen Z kids are like, baffled I don't have spotify. I am baffled they can't pirate songs. My friends, you dont have to pay for that single. I can download it during the span of this conversation with my phone.
Also on that note, any of WotC's D&D tools. I remember the D&Dinsider debacle. 4e was a cool game but basically unplayable without some automation. They tried downloadable software but found people had way too easy a time hacking it. So they launched a constantly crashing version behind a paywall that ran on silverlight (so it couldn't run on Mac. As a webapp.) And hackers still kept up the downloadable character builder with updates. It was more consistent, didn't crash, and is still functional to this day. I ban D&Dbeyond from my games. I encourage everyone to use 5e.tools (if they must play 5e).
I default to piracy too, but I'm guessing you don't listen to a lot of new music. The thing a music service offers isn't just access, it's discoverability. It didn't replace my FLAC collection, it expanded it. What it replaced was listening to the radio to find new stuff.
For video I'm more with you. I'm happy to rely on word of mouth. Especially since the streaming services drop movies all the time and discriminate against watching in a browser. Getting a good rip means you can watch it anywhere, anytime, and not have to worry about it disappearing.
I recommend Spotube. It uses Spotify's data API and YouTube, Piped.video or JioSaavn as an audio source so no ads or paying for premium.
While this might have been true for a while, but payola is alive and well. My spouse has Spotify and still has to listen to music podcasts for real discovery. Otherwise she's one more person swatting down Espresso playing over and over.
For dnd, so you have a character creator that is as easy as dnd beyond? I've looked at some open source versions, but nothing come as close for ease of use. Thanks!
Have you tried dungeonmastersvault? It is really easy to use and with like half an hour on searching you can get all the source material in there
Just do it manually?
I was surprised to hear that a coworker suscribes to one of the streaming services to stream shows from PBS. First of all, it's free OTA. Second, I think they have an app.
The app is paid. It's absurd to me that one would need to pay for a pbs subscription since the you're paying for the original funding in the first place.
Operating systems and porn.
Free porn tends to be full of abuse towards its actors. Not that paid porn is automatically ethical but there are definitely indie options where no one is being coerced into performing sexual acts they're not comfortable with. Also if you have a niche fetish sometimes the only options are paywalled.
How is it surprising people pay for operating systems? The vast majority of computers sold are bundled with an operating system license, and most people just use what came with the computer.
I'm currently on Emporium. But I have paid for more porn than I've stolen. And porn is cheap.
So many people I know complain about windows having ads, that it's auto installing bloatware, has annoying checks, forces you to login...
I paid the full price about a decade ago and haven't been bothered by any of that. And yes, I've upgraded to windows 11
Online subscription models, gacha and AAAA price tag games.
Not everyone wants to be a cybercriminal, god knows I'm one of them, but almost every person already has a backlog of games, an old classic that they want to experience again or community favourite that has gotten a lot of mods. Those are all free. And even if you want to spend money on something, why would you spend it on this year's hyped up game when last year's is still just as playable and at a discount?
That being said, I did buy Balatro full price, so I ought to know the answer.
Oh man. In-game currency and gacha stuff can get fucked.
I'm not a big gamer but I like having something on my phone to pass the time.
Happy to pay to install or for expansions or to remove advertising or whatever but paying for finite in-game stuff is just shit.
My problem is that I wait 20 years to late to play games and they cost more second hand than they originally did. GameCube fan problem
The Youtube channel "answer in progress" made a video about gacha and I still don't get it. I hate collecting junk, even more when I can't choose which junk I get.
I've never played any of those games myself, but here's what I have gathered from a video essay:
You just begin to play it somehow, you get introduced to the Gacha mechanics, and then it's one of 2 ways: Either you spend a lot of money in the game because they are literally designed like Casinos to fuel your gambling addiction, like clouding your judgement how much a round of gambling is actually worth with many in game currencies.
Or you spend time in the game to grind premium resources, and your brain rewards you for it with the thought "at least I'm not spending money", not realizing that the
housedeveloper also wins if you do that. An example i giving rewards for players who write strategy guides, something they otherwise would have to pay real money to a developer for.We really have to hate more on those regulators who failed to protect gambling addicts from candy crush on crack.
As an American, Turbo Tax. I've been using FreeTaxUSA for almost 20 years with no problems, without paying for filing software.
But if I weren't American, my answer would probably be: tax software.
Most countries don't have tax software.
They have a website usually. A free one, from the government. That calculates their taxes for them. You just have to check if it is correct from your side.
Right, that's what I was getting at with my second part hah
It's funny that the IRS has now been offering their own tax-free service. Intuit thought they could strong-arm people but even the IRS thought "no bruh, you're crazy".
I just never saw the appeal of paying for tax software/services, well maybe I can see it in services because there's still a lot of people that have trouble with filing taxes and they may be in unique tax situations that they don't understand.
But Tax Software makes it stupid easy to understand so it should not be something we pay for.
In many other countries (such as mine) you dont use tax software. The government figures out what you owe or overpaid. Because they have all the info they need to know that.
How are they at dealing with investments?
For my simple needs (mortgage, 401k, couple different IRAs, and a managed investment account) it did great.
Do they do imports from like betterment and vanguard?
Books.
Most librarians are knowledgeable and love helping you find something, or getting it in from another library.
As a library assistant, I second that message
Not everyone has access to libraries. However anyone with internet access and a device capable of reading ebooks can read for free with libgen, zlib, and sci hub.
Every book I try to check out has a 3 month to 3 year wait-list. Not exactly a convenient way to read.
I like owning my own stuff.
By that proxy you could also just rent your home instead of owning a living space.Books, though? If I had to buy every book I've read, I would be destitute and need a hundred storage units. Even with a converted effort not to buy books I have a whole shelf of them.
Also quite a few great books in the public domain. Here is a website that curates, fixes up, and publishes free copies of classic public domain literature: https://standardebooks.org/
Water
Yeah ok.
In my 20's I over-enjoyed a great many things.
Now in my 40's I don't drink booze, do drugs, smoke cigarettes, and also try to avoid sugar and caffeine. I also have kids now so I sold my motorbikes because that seemed irresponsible.
So yeah, I do purchase poncy imported italian sparkling mineral water because... it's a nice indulgence.
As somebody who grew up with perfect tap water and then moved to Detroit, I used to think this.
Edit: I guess I should say I still think this for a lot of places. When I go to my parents house the first thing I do is drink a big cup of their amazing tap water.
Hear hear. When I rented the water was great, didn’t use a filter. Out where my parents live, their water is brown occasionally.
Where can you get free water? Unless you have a well or something.
Where I am the cost of water is rolled into the local authority tax. It's not metered, so it feels free. It's pretty good water too.
I think this persons means bottled water.
My coworkers will walk into work with Dunkin or Starbucks lattes... we have not only free coffee at work, but access to an espresso machine with milk steamer.
Really depends on the workplace. I will not drink coffee and I'm no longer drinking hot chocolate even from my work. Mainly because a lot of my co-workers are slobs and everything is unsanitized. I had just witnessed last night, someone from day maintenance, had their gloves still on (presumably from touch dirty trash bins, scrubbing toilets .etc) just go about touching some things before realizing he needed them off.
And I ended up vomiting last sunday because nobody checks expiration dates on what we have and I ended up drinking hot chocolate that might've been expired. So, it depends on the workplace.
It's not that odd that they have a preference, even if it costs them. My work provides tea bags and milk, but I bring my own because I like them more.
If I worked at a restaurant I would take advantage of free espresso.
So at my work the coffee is shit because it’s a fully automatic coffee machine and it is also not properly cleaned. I usually make my own at home and bring a thermos.
Yes, but I work at a restaurant.
The meal subscription services strike me as premade salads on steroids. You're paying a premium for all the labor, ingredients, (excessive) packaging, shipping, their profit, etc and you still have to put it together and cook it. It really isn't that hard to look up a couple of recipes, buy the ingredients (you'd probably be going to the store anyway) and prep for 30 or so minutes a night. If you make full recipes you'll probably have leftovers so you won't even have to cook the next day.
I was actually enjoying Blue Apron for a while, mainly because it was stuff that I'd never thought to try making before, but the amount of trash generated from each box delivered was too much for my conscience. I wish they didn't use so many plastic wrappers and had some way of returning the boxes with the insulation.
And it's way too much charge for the quality of the meat and produce. They give ground pork at beef steak prices and the produce isn't as carefully selected as I would have picked.
The insulation alone with them and Hello Fresh had me hang them up for good after a couple tries. It was nice to try recipes I wouldn’t think to search online for but yeah, that packaging situation was god-awful.
Did one for a while. It cut down on grocery store trips and meal planning so it gave some peace of mind, but I prefer either cooking simple meals or large meals (for leftovers) and they were neither. Most were delicious but took anywhere from 30-60 minutes. Most sea portioned for two so I ended up cooking nearly every single night and I hit a wall with it.
I can definitely see why people do it, sometimes the cost is worth the convenience.
I agree for the big ones, but we have a local one I've subscribed to a few times, for a couple months at a time.
They pull all the ingredients from local farms, do local delivery or pickup at farmer's markets, and they're minimal on packaging, and they reuse the bags and ice packs. I haven't done it in a while but it was pretty nice and it was helpful to break out of the routine of the same meals week in and out.
I do not get people who still pay for cable tv. My dad pays like 120 dollars a month for it and the programming is horrible, the ads are insane, all the best sports shit is on streaming services now, I do not understand it at all.
How technical is your dad?
Also honestly. Sometimes it's a lot nicer to just push a button and have something come on.
One of the main reasons I use Plex is their random feature. "Wanna watch a syndicated episodic show and don't care which ep? Press random" vs other streaming services you have to actually choose an episode.
I’d like to see a clever implementation of one-button “channel surfing” in an app like Plex.
Not very at all
Inertia?
Or is there some local channel that they like that doesn't have a youtube presence?No. And they also have Netflix. So they understand streaming shit. It boggles my mind
Gray market license keys for software. The money you're paying for these will never make it to the developer, so you might as well pirate.
A lot of them don't even lie about it as much if you read between the lines. GreenManGaming, HumbleBundle are the exceptions to that.
But places like CDKeys, G2A .etc yeah you can't be assured that anything you buy from them is going back to the developer. If the developers so much even hears the existence of these kinds of sites, they'd be protesting to have them shut down.
Then there's people paying for pirated software in CDs/DVDs
On that same idea, camrips sold out of the back of a car. I knew someone who bragged about being able to get them and I always thought they looked like ass. They just liked acting like they had hood connections.
It's more convenient to have a license. I only buy those when the developer is being scummy
Microsoft Office and satellite radio.
You still listen to the radio?
Rarely, yes. Mostly I listen to free podcasts and music that I've paid for or otherwise acquired once. I don't understand paying a subscription for a lower quality version of that. Maybe there are a few live programs that are only available on SiriusXM, but that's a tenuous value proposition.
Bottled water to drink at home.
In my area in Greece, the water is not safe, my brother who used to work in the water containers says it's full of rats. We all buy bottles. It would be nice to be environmentally conscious about it, but there's no choice about it.
This drives me insane. The 5 gal jugs are so cheap to refill and keep using. I used one of those with a hand pump and a thin 1.5 gal jugs for my fridge for constant cold water when I lived where tap water wasn't doable. It was like 10¢ a gallon to refill the jugs and I always had delicious cold water at the ready. There is absolutely no need to create so much waste
When you put tap water in a bottle and put it in the freezer, so you'd have a cold bottle of water for an entire summer day, the water from the tap tastes "saltier" for some reason, while bottled "spring" water doesn't. The "saltier" taste is kinda unpleasant 🤷♂️
Also my city has some chemical spill into the river where the city gets the water supply from, they gave out a emergency alert very late, and the city wasn't really transparent about that whole ordeal, some people in my city are already doubting the safety of the tap water, reminds me of Flint, Michigan, so I kinda just don't like the tap water 😖
Reverse osmosis filter, you can just get an under the sink one of you don't plan on drinking your shower water. Kind of pricey up front, and you have to replace the filters every so often, but it gives good taste and peace of mind for filtering.
I am telling you from first hand viewing that bottled water plants use the same kind of filtering.
Undersink filter with a dedicated drinking water tap. Removes the chlorine taste that is probably what makes you think salty. You can get the whole setup for $75 and install it yourself. The filters are $40ish and last 6-12 months.
Some fridges have cold filtered water taps built in.
YouTube premium.
Just get uBlock or revanced.
Okay, to preface I really hate giving Google money, but I hate ads more, and paying for Premium also removes ads on YouTube apps across platforms. It also in some minuscule way rewards the creators I watch, but real support comes from Patreon.
It also gives a "free" music service, and while it's not excellent by any means, that keeps me from spending MORE money on another music service.
I just like that I can log in on my AppleTV and it works immediately with no ads or bullshit.
I'm at a point in my life where I'll pay for the media I'll watch. If I'm not willing to pay for it, I won't watch it. I also don't want to watch ads.
"Ah, yes I see I see, and that's very understandable. Thank you for paying us by the way.
Now, since you've been so loyal for all these years...what about [slides agreement across the table] you pay for it...AND you watch ads?"
-- Basically every streaming service hopping on the bandwagon at this point
I have lots of ad blockers. But my father watches YouTube on the LG TV app. I don't live there anymore and hearing the ads from the other room became offensive to the family.
It was easier to just buy a premium family plan and call it a day.
YouTube + HDMI Cable from PC to TV + UBlock/Firefox = win.
Operating systems
Small bits of code can be made and maintained as a hobby or a passion project, but larger things begin to require money. Although a lot of FOSS is maintained by volunteers, money still has its role in the equation.
Most big FOSS projects are done by developers who get paid for that.
They work at Red Hat, Canonical, SUSE, Google or Microsoft and write FOSS while on the clock.
I know this sub, and basically most of Lemmy, are pro Linux. But honestly? It's not as good as Windows and macos for everyday folk. We are kidding ourselves.
It CAN do anything they can, but it's way too hard, and you might have to code your own drivers for some of it.
You pay for it to just work, and that's why I 100% get why you pay for an OS.
Note: I don't think anyone feel like they even pay for their OS, if it's not enterprise. It's preinstalled, nobody thinks further than that.
Generally I agree, but
you might have to code your own drivers for some of it
is a bit hyperbolic. Most of the time, most users will be using pretty standard hardware to do pretty standard things. They won't need fancy drivers to do it.
This is the main reason I still keep Windows around. The majority of my stuff "just works" much better on Linux, but every once in a while, you need to interact with someone else via some weird proprietary software and it's not really reasonable to go "sorry, can't do it because Linux", nor is it reasonable to spend several hours figuring out for Linux when I'm likely only using it once.
Windows is completely free though. I don't even bother to remove the watermark.
Over 3 different computers, I have never not had some bug on windows after a clean install.
Stuff like, text inputs not working on sticky notes, screenshots not working, now I’m having driver issues where some windows flicker black rapidly. I need to do another fresh install to fix it.
I can’t even think of a single bug I’ve had using Linux. If it were not for a single piece of software not working on Linux by any means, I’d be using that.
The only games I’ve not had work on Linux straight away are games with anti-cheat, so I understand windows gamers using windows to play them, but otherwise Linux gaming has been basically flawless.
You wont win this one. If you think of the number of internet users in the world once you eliminate apple users, people who do everything on their phone or a tablet, people who use chromebooks but have no idea that its linux, people who "just buy a new one" whenever their laptop/desktop acts up and people who will never touch anything that isnt a prebuilt with a warranty you are left with an abysmally small number of people in the grand scheme. Thats the filters you have to apply before you get to people who might run Linux... and they are all on Lemmy.
Depends. My mother's computer didn't have the hardware necessary to drive Win11, so I explained the options, and she said she'd try Linux.
She's on Fedora Workstation on both her Desktop and Laptop now, both relatively standard HP Computers (the Desktop being very, very old, however).
She can connect to her work server via Citrix and access the software she needs. She can take work calls via MicroSIP. She can edit documents locally with onlyoffice. She can do whatever else she needs in the browser. None of this needed any non-standard drivers or packages, except for MicroSIP, for which Wine needed to be installed, though it worked without any special configuration.
So it can work perfectly well. Depending on the use case.
Yup. I work with both and I greatly prefer working with linux now but I get paid to stare at it, dig into config files, understand file systems, etc. The average consumer does not want to do this and doesn't give a shit about internals, they just want to click install and work which windows is pretty good at. If you told them they needed to edit a config file and play with services your customer support lines would be jammed.
I think the opposite. It works well for every day folks, but those of us with extra hardware, gaming peripherals, macros, etc have a real struggle getting it all to work, easily, out of the box, on the first try.
People pay for streaming and then complaining that their shows keep disappearing. Knowing full well that they are only allowed to watch the shows as long as the streaming service allows them to watch.
I truly don’t understand it. If they wanna do it go for it I’m not going to sit here and rip on them. I just don’t understand why. I say go by the disc so that way you own it. Then rip it to make your own digital file. Now with that digital file, you can do anything you want with it.
There are legit services where you can buy digital content and keep "forever." No subscriptions. That's how I prefer to consume my content. AFAIK I still have access to everything.
I get your point of view, and I personally use Jellyfin with my own library. But I have a different perspective about people complaining about shows disappearing from services.
People like complaining about things, it's cathartic, and it doesn't necessarily mean they have to do anything about it.
Imagine you have a favourite restaurant. One day you go in and that thing you really love isn't in the menu anymore. You can grumble about it to the staff, complain to your friends, but you'll just order a different item.
If next week your next favourite thing disappears from the menu, you'll complain some more, or maybe just start going to a different restaurant. Yes, there is always the option to get the ingredients and make it yourself at home, but that's a whole extra level of effort. For most people, the effort to complain a bit and choose a different thing from the menu is far less effort than making it yourself at home.
Completely agree. I'll never pay for entertainment, with the sole exception of videogames and the rare content creator I want to support. Everything else, I'll do everything in my power to have offline and backuped so I never lose access.
Tax return filings in the US. There are free options provided by the paid companies... So that they can prevent real changes.
Kinda like pharmaceutical companies when the public demands cheaper prices. The pharmaceutical companies fight back with "what if instead of that we set up some programs that people can use for cheaper medicine! Win win! Then you don't have to make any real changes that might hurt us?"
Same with taxes. The accounting software companies and advisors companies said "wait hold on, you don't need to make taxes simpler and tank our business. Keep them complicated and well offer free alternatives that are just as easy as our paid services that people can pick if they don't want to pay! Win win!"
Which obviously I think is a crap solution. However if you are paying for someone to do your taxes you should stop. There are a lot of easy free services out there that make it pretty much effortless. They are just as good as the paid services now.
This year I haven't worked any traditional employment, but have done various projects for friends in exchange for money.
When I just had a typical job, taxes were almost fire-and-forget easy...but I'm a little worried about that whole process this year to be honest.
A lot of times the free one only covers that "I have a typical job" case...but anything different and they're like "OH YOU NEED BUSINESS-OWNER PREMIUM PLUS" or something.
(I haven't started a business and earned maybe 4 figures this year...) 😅
Tax return filings in the US. There are free options provided by the paid companies… So that they can prevent real changes.
https://directfile.irs.gov/ (Or Google "IRS Direct File" if you don't trust links)
Directs File goes directly to IRS, without going through a third party company.
If your state doesn't have direct file, then you'll have to find a "IRS Partner" that gives a free option:
https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers/ (Google "IRS Free File Trusted Partners")
Remember: Government sites always ends in .gov
(Conditionally) journals, studies and some books. And, for that matter, most television, film and music.
Particularly when paying is not supporting the creator, only the publisher.
Porn
If you want to be reasonably certain it's ethically made, you kind of have to pay for porn.
Edit: also, if you want something specific that free sites don't cater to. Like lesbian porn that isn't obviously only meant to appeal to men.
If you have specific interests it’s sometimes helpful.
Vr porn makes it worth it
Streaming services esp for millennials considering most of fnem have the know how for sailing the high sees.
I agree but also you'd be surprised how many actually piggy backed off a friend. I know because in my circle of friends-acquaintances of about 60 people in high school only 1 other besides me was actually competent enough with technology to the point of trying to pirate. Everyone else just got burnt cds and usb sticks from us.
To this day when I meet other millennials there's honestly more tech illiterate than not and I think it's the small but vocal minority that exist on places like this and reddit that carry the stereotype that all millennials are good at technology.