I was eating some chocolate when I imagined a world where Hershey’s was widely accepted, even by elitists, as the best chocolate.

Is consumer elitism just a facade for pretentious contrarians? Or are there things where even most snobs agree with the masses?

Also, I mean that the product is intrinsically considered to be the best option. I’m not considering social products where the user network makes the experience.

Edit: I was not eating Hershey’s. Hershey’s being the best chocolate is a bizarro universe in this hypothetical.

  • jj4211@lemmy.world
    7·
    8 hours ago

    In terms of why some of the “goto” brands aren’t the best, it’s generally because they were the best, got popular on merit, and then business folk come along to suck the life out of it, spending brand goodwill while gouging customers and cutting costs.

    Some food product recipe changes to cheap, more shelf stable crap for mass production and easy logistics. Some device gets locked into a paid subscription. All the helpful service people get fired and replaced with chat bots and offshored/outsourced staff. Metal components replaced with cheap plastic that degrades. Shipping times increased so they can make everything an ocean away and give the boat time to travel. Also run big marketing pushes so it’s really hard to find the quality offerings.

    There’s just so many ways you can have big margins on big revenue by screwing customers while going they haven’t noticed the decline in quality. Very hard for investor class to leave good product alone.