What popular trends/fads have turned you into a total acritical mark?

Like I'm pretty resistant to most flash-in-the-pan marketing gimmicks but for some reason I cannot resist the sickly sweet allure of pumpkin spice anything. And this is in full acknowledgment that probably at least 90% of this stuff is pure garbage and often barely edible/imbibable. And yet I eagerly and predictably rush to the trough every fall for my vaguely cinnamon-y, indiscernibly nutmeg-y fix.

What trash trends have you under their unbreakable spell?

Don't touch those but I do drink a big chai latte from a chain cafe every few days, so cannot claim any moral purity here

I was under the PSL spell for years but it suddenly broke a couple years ago. I will never turn down a chai tea

My family plays German-style board games with enthusiasm over Christmas, but my hopes at starting something regularly with local friends has come to naught, and I have ten board games on my shelf that I've never even unwrapped, including two extra-expensive D&D ones

I like to keep up with the advances in Reese's technology

(or at least I'm always tempted to)

yeah i'm a sucker for always trying every new junk food flavor/combination once. seltzer flavors as well but at least that's just seltzer

I don't like candy or dessert, generally, but I can't go more than three days without buying and eating some manner of Nerds

That is shocking behavior!

My family plays German-style board games with enthusiasm over Christmas, but my hopes at starting something regularly with local friends has come to naught, and I have ten board games on my shelf that I've never even unwrapped, including two extra-expensive D&D ones

― Preach The Crapen (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, October 26, 2023 3:39 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh my gawwwwd, yes. Except the big board expensive games I regularly bought for a while have basically gone unplayed by everyone including my family. I put a lot of thought into finding stuff that would hopefully have some broad appeal but apparently didn't consider the 'we just don't want to play any of your stupid board games at all ever' factor.

oh yeah i own at least 5 completely unplayed eurogames. but some of the others i have get played a lot so i think i'm fine on averages, you just never know what other people will be hooked by

okay, I may have watched a couple BlackPink tour videos on youtube

outside of them flying between every show, they're kinda like any band's tours.. waiting around, walking around the strange town, inside jokes, etc., just waiting for the show that night

Watching Marvel movies / shows is just a culturally acceptable outlet for the part of my brain that still wants to play with action figures

does fast fashion count? like actual fashion isn't something i'd get into, but sometimes i wanna go beyond my target mom aesthetic and i find fast fashion really appealing when it comes to that sort of thing. (am i even using that term right? wearing clothes that i like what i look in is a relatively new thing for me)

I don't know if I was uncritical but when raw denim was big I liked buying jeans from Japan and wearing them until they faded uniquely blah blah blah. Now I'm lazy and just buy regular dark jeans and don't care if they fade.

I drew the line at buying the William Gibson no logo collaboration jackets and stuff.

Most of the raw denim guys I know are now expensive athleisure guys

the 'we just don't want to play any of your stupid board games at all ever' factor.

Yeah my family thinks they’re into EuroGames but after a brief flash of Catan-interest it’s been basically just Ticket To Ride for over a decade now

Also it has recently come to my attention that I may have a Le Creuset problem

ah ha I don't own any Le Creuset, but I have one nice Staub dutch oven and would happily waste $$$ on a full set in different colours

I bought metal knobs to replace the plastic ones that came on my Le Creuset Dutch ovens.

Would play euro’s with everyone here. The better half and I get on them pretty frequently, but finding friends that want to do the same is haaaaard.

Someone give me new recommendations too. We love viticulture (everyone should own this) and castles of burgundy and orleans and etc. etc. etc.

ASMR

i don't actually get asmr from the videos much, it's very rare, but i got it all the time when i was a little kid. the feeling of euphoria was so intense that i thought love meant asmr. i felt bad that i "loved" random old persian ladies with gentle voices but not, like, my parents.

I was way into Pokémon Go, catching them and photographing them, for about three months in 2017, after my niece introduced me to it, just cause I was always going for pointless walks anyways

Ugh I loathe ASMR it makes me want to punch myself :|

By which I mean not to disparage those who like it! Its just some of us have that misphonic reaction. Makes watching a lot of recent YT cooking videos real hard.

Xps my husband loves those euro games and plays them solo because no one else wants to spend 5hrs reading the 120 page instruction booklet and then painstakingly setting up everything. He has maybe 60 or so games right now and has bought some simpler games to get me to play but it’s just not my jam. I’m more of a trivial pursuit person.

I will cheerfully admit to a weakness for Supreme clothing despite being about as far from their target market as it's possible to be.

Send your husband my sincere condolences lol. At least it sounds like he’s enjoying himself, I could not play a board game solo (that’s what videogames are for)

I got a bit swept up in the decluttering and sorting your life out stuff for a while. It was satisfying to do (on the rare occasions when I actually did it, as opposed to just watching videos of other people doing it), but then I saw a video where a woman spent FUCKING HOURS repackaging all her family's board games into small, uniform boxes with hand-stencilled names on them just so that they would fit in with her pale blue colour pallet and take up less space. This process even involved scoring the boards so that they fit into smaller boxes. I just thought this was the greatest load of shite I'd ever seen. Just put them in a press where you can't see them, if you find them so offensive! So I'm over that whole cult now.

(palette, not pallet, obviously)

That is an actual crime. Same as if anyone did it with records/books. The art is an essential part of euros!

lol i love how many of us are the one person in our immediate social circle who could really chow down on a Euro game

Wait, what's a euro game?

I was wondering the same thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurogame

I used to have a board game group but it’s been inactive for a year :( I have another friend and hour away who is my board game library, but driving an hour is not what one does for board games alone

It’s not a pure euro (mix of euro/war/deckbuilders), but anyone even slightly board game interested should get Dune: Imperium. It’s so good

The Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Why do I say this? Because I enjoyed Secret Invasion while thinking it made absolutely no sense whatsoever and was kind of dumb; in fact, I’m considering watching it again in between Loki episodes.

Euros: board games that are more thinky and carefully-balanced than typical American board games, but on average not as long, grind-y and offputtingly statistical as tabletop wargames. They often involve a limited number of rounds or turns, or some other mechanic making play finite (ex. the final round starts when the last land tile is placed on the board, or when three or the five railroad company stocks are sold out).

Usually, the winner is determined at the end by a tabulation of victory points earned in multiple ways (some during the game, some all at once at the end). Ex: maybe you're trying to score by being the person who built the longest roads, but also you can pick up points for digging many wells, or a few very deep ones, or trading in any case on hand at the end.

This kind of structure allows them to be both more thinky and strategic ("only two rounds left, I'm better off NOT trading all my turquoise to build a gold mine"), and more precisely play-tested and balanced. So they mostly are not games that takes multiple hours to play, with a grinding sense that the winner was really locked in very early on.

The ratio of strategy to luck elements varies; some luck is generally favored, again keeping things light, but far less than in, say, Candyland or Life.

Designers also strive (not always successfully) to avoid "multiplayer solitaire" experiences, incorporating mechanics that make your moves more or less dependent on what other players are doing, like a limited set of cards on offer that you all bid on each round, or different powers on the board that can be claimed by only so many players per turn, etc. etc.

Eurogames feature economics and the acquisition of resources rather than direct conflict

well there's a fucking mountain of irony

i will take any opportunity to share the classic "Eurogames vs. Ameritrash" video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyYexTcyY2A

haha!

i laughed and i learned

Hahahahaha wow lol

My family had a three-year Dominion phase, we got a bunch of those expansions. These days we just keep it traditional and play 9-5-2 (a mostly-Canadian trick-taking game for three people)

I like how around here ppl are getting really into decorating their front yards for Halloween now, it’s fun. And the front yards at night get bathed in this colored light that give off “front cover of warehouse songs and stories” vibes.