• Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    Is this some marketing campaign or something.

    Why am I suddenly seeing so many posts mentioning some cheap American junk food I’ve never even heard of before?

    • booly@sh.itjust.works
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      22 hours ago

      It’s a couple of different factors at play:

      • Sales of this particular product are up and Fox News, the largest and most influential conservative media source, ran a story about it as if it’s a sign of the nostalgic return of something today’s old people remember from their youth.
      • Most younger people correctly recognize that this trash is actually a bad sign for the economy, because it reflects a shift down market where people are opting to make this stuff instead of the more expensive option of restaurants or takeout.
      • Consistent with worsening economic conditions, the price of beef in the United States is skyrocketing, so that the product itself is changing the label to recommend replacing the beef (which customers would ordinarily buy separately) with something else, like cheaper hot dogs.

      The political and economic discussion is happening in the United States, and that generally means that it spills out onto the internet where national borders are less significant for where conversations might end up.

    • Gloomy@mander.xyz
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      2 days ago

      Might be that it’s because Lemmy is such a small place. We had the hamburger helper meme in all yesterday and now people are posting about the general concept.