You’re going to be increasingly bothered by everything going forward. Best to just let it go
And their prices are 15-30% higher than any place else. And their customer service sucks. And the only employees are high school kids because they only pay minimum wage. And their hours are 8:30 am - 4:30 pm, Mon-Fri, so you have to take time off work just to go there.
At least that’s how it is for me where I live. It’s a wonder any of them are still in business. The saddest part is, most of them say shit like, “Well at least we don’t have Bidenomics to worry about anymore. Things were way worse then.”
And the checkout system is an iPad. With tip prompt, even if it’s just a store.
I expect higher prices when I’m trying to shop local. I know they can’t compete on price. I’m willing to pay the premium specifically to support small business.
Sure, restricted hours kind of suck, but like…I’m not going to hold wanting to find work/life balance against them.
Customer service is hit or miss anywhere. Really, I think the idea of customer service has mostly gone out the window everywhere. It sucks because HS kids (and anyone else working these jobs) aren’t being taught these skills. With a small business, at least I can have a nice little conversation with the owner even if they’re socially awkward. People skills are hard. Obviously there is a line in there somewhere that goes into shitty service or bad attitude.
I do plenty of shopping at chains, but it’s important to me to throw money at small businesses. I’ve watched my city grow a lot in the last 30 years and the only thing keeping it interesting are the local businesses.
I mean, I still shop those places when I can. But it’s usually extra effort for a worse experience.
You’re not the only one bothered by this. But I’m having a hard time drawing a line in the sand for some of my favorite places.
If you’re a regular there, I think it’s reasonable to contact them and say that you go there often and are bothered by the AI. “I started coming here regularly because it felt authentic”. “You guys don’t feel authentic anymore, and I’m disappointed” or more strongly “and I’m thinking of taking my business someplace that cares enough about their customers to put in the effort.” “I wish you’d go back to the way you used to do things.” Etc.
Assuming we’re really talking about a small business, it’s very possible someone will listen.
I reach out to small businesses all the time working on OpenStreetMap, and (obviously with selection bias for the ones who respond) they’re usually just pretty nice-seeming people trying their best with what they have.
Edit: One thing I think I should’ve emphasized isn’t just to say “please stop using AI” but that specifically “I liked it better the way you used to do it.” or outright, with no comparison, “I liked the way you used to do it”. “It made you unique.” That is, give them a concrete alternative. For a lot of people, AI, like plagiarism (because it is), is a tool used when someone thinks their voice isn’t good enough. It helps to try to convince them that it is enough and that they not only don’t need it but that it’s harming the unique identity you enjoyed by making them blend in with everyone else.
I’m mostly bothered that they for some reason always have that unsettling trypophobia filter.
This is just another thing on the list of thigs that I dont like business doing.
Slop advertising itself is not enough to stop me supporting local business, but it is a mark against them should competition ever arrive.
I’m not bothered. They are small local shops. The owners are shopkeepers and not graphic designers. Graphic design is hard, not everybody can do that on their own. Many of them have trouble maintaining even a basic website with their opening hours. Many shops do not have the budget to hire a graphic designer for every task.
There now is a tech that allows them to create reasonably good looking signs. And that is fine.
There now is a tech that allows them to create reasonably good looking signs
There already was
Yeah and people have always bitched about handwritten signs. Signs made with a typewriter. Signs made with MS Publisher or Word Art and Comic Sans.
Not sure why you were downvoted, when what you said is true.
Many small businesses ride the razor’s edge in finances, and if AI can help even just a little, I see nothing wrong with it.
ohnoaihowterrible
get over yourself
Im with you! Unfortunately, a lot of small business owners are the most capitalist minded people around. That was a very sad revelation for me in my earlier adulthood. Just gotta keep searching for the good ones because they are around.
Eh. They think it’s much better than what they had, and probably can’t tell it’s AI generated. They paid a local “graphic designer” or even had their kid do it.
The more “mom and pop” they are, the more I forgive them.
Local chain restaurants should know better than to use AI images on their menu, though. Not that I eat out anymore.
It would bother me too.
But not to the point of withdrawing my support, assuming their business has nothing to do with IT and AI otherwise.
Doing your posters with AI nowadays is the same as using ClipArt+ComicSans in days of yore.
OK, it’s not exactly the same. So then I’d have explain it to them. “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”That said, I rarely support business just because it’s local and small. There needs to be at least one more reason. I have seen too many local & small businesses & owners that exploit and pollute and corrupt just like their big counterparts.
If we talk about groceries - from my experience there’s no reason to shop at big chains if there is a farmers market nearby. I bring my own reusable packaging for solid stuff and bottles for milk and juice. And people who run it are usually chill and just doing their thing.
But as we venture into tech territory - it becomes really muddy, many of people running small IT businesses in here are pompous arses. Like dude runs some musty basement and thinks of himself a Bill Gates.
If we talk about groceries - from my experience there’s no reason to shop at big chains if there is a farmers market nearby. I bring my own reusable packaging for solid stuff and bottles for milk and juice. And people who run it are usually chill and just doing their thing.
That sounds nice.
But it could also be like this:
- the big food store sells eggs from not-so-far-away, say a 200km radius. They are safe & fresh and don’t break on the way home. They might even have some fairly worthless guarantees on ethical farming.
- the local farmer uses more pesticide/antibiotics than is legal because they think they can get away with it, because who’s going to check on such a small business. They exploit young workers to work below minimum wage because of some diffuse notion of local = ethical. Their hens live in horrifying conditions. And you actually pay more for the eggs despite all that, them being unwashed, and you bringing your own packaging.
Maybe I didn’t phrase it correctly, but what I meant is this: local and small is better, but only after everything else is at least as good as the non-local and big alternative.
Well, we here have a situation, where giving soapy baths to pigs (yes, that’s the job) at local farm may earn one 3 times the salary of entry IT job. Simply because it’s that hard to find workers these days, and don’t get me started on actual technical jobs - it’s near impossible to find a lathe machinist today.
So yeah, it all… depends… And yeah, there is one local business that I avoid, because it’s run by a guy associated with local conspiracy theorist clown. So yeah, I do little investigations to make sure I don’t give money to people who will then use it to make world a worse place.
milk seems to be much cheaper and available in skim varieties from the big chains as opposed to smaller stores, I still mostly shop at the smaller store though because it has cheaper vegetables and better meat
They never built a clip art data center in my backyard.
Plus you still had to creative use the clip art. So there was human assembly there. Plus a human most definitely created the clip art in the first place.
So overall, not really the same
There needs to be some respectful images that you can reply with on social media when you see local businesses using AI images just to make the point that if they wont hire local for their advertising why should I shop local to keep them in business.
Seeing as you didn’t make the meme and it’s been around for a while, obviously not
Life is binary there can be no nuance
Yeah, using AI art for advertisements etc is lower bar than amateur throwing stuff together in paint, gimp, inkscape or some random office software.
Local is still better than giving your money to evil corp. And honestly, local shops struggle against bigger corps. They don’t have graphic design artists on hand to make posters. What are you expecting them to do. The shops that don’t have AI generated posters usually have menus and posters that are years out of date because it costs too much to update them.
Couldn’t they simply take some pictures of the items/services they provide? Then PowerPoint all that shit together in a pleasing format? You dont need to hire Picasso for fucks sake.
Powerpoint isn’t free. And using it is not simple. Small busniess owners often work substantially more than 40 hours a week. Looking down on them because they didn’t want to spend another 5 or more hours learning powerpoint seems pretty entitled.
I honestly had no idea apparently some people pay for PowerPoint. 🤣
I’m sure there is an open source equivalent.
Right, but asking a local business owner, like a mom and popwho run a restaurant to even know what powerpoint is… is pushing it. Expecting them to know there is a free alternative is very unlikely.
You’re coming up with bullshit excuses for peoples failings now.
Have you ever met someone who doesn’t work on a computer all day?
Here is a link to the us census data showing that 1 in 7, or over 18 million people don’t have a laptop or pc in their house. Not everyone lives and breathes by computers.
How many of those people are business owners who can’t design a fucking menu?
asking a local business owner, like a mom and popwho run a restaurant to even know what powerpoint is… is pushing it.
Maybe they should ask ChatGPT what powerpoint is.
Hey, that actually was funny.
Instant walkout. If they’ve already started a dialogue, I (respectfully) let them know why I’m not buying—otherwise I don’t bother. I’d literally rather see a shitty MS Paint drawing than an AI generated picture.
Are you using ai to write this??
No wtf?
I’m using i to write this.
FN A BROTHER
Just checking because of the emdash 🤣
Dude… alt-gr+dash, or cmd+dash or alt+dash depending on your flavor of OS/keyboard layout. The whole em-dash = ai is so annoying to me cause I’ve been using em-dashes way before LLMs came to spoil the fun.
Or on the X Window System:
⇧ Shift+AltGr(aka. multi key), then--.Back before llms poisoned it (and I still used Windows), I had the alt code for em dash memorized (prob still have the muscle memory to do it, but not currently at a numpad) because I really liked using them in papers I had to write for school. I read lots of books back then, and recognized how much I preferred using em dashes to commas in specific cases.
I hate that I can’t use them anymore lest I be mistaken for someone who uses llms
forreal, it’s one of my favorite ways to break up a sentence. it’s also stupid to accuse of Ai for one piece of grammar, when there’s typically multiple tells to pay attention to when it comes to Ai.
let’s not forget that llms were originally trained on human-made text too. we are the ones who made the patterns first. llms simply regurgitate it
That’s why I ask! I respect that real people use it. It’s a valid punctuation
I’m on an iPhone, which autocorrects two dashes (- -) to an emdash.
My bad! I learned something today
