That time I paid $50 for a phrase trend tracker and got nothing useful

I saw a lot of younger folks online talking about a tool that supposedly tracks how fast slang spreads. So I signed up for a month at $50 to try it out. It kept feeding me these fancy graphs about words like "slay" and "rizz" but none of it was new information. I could have just looked at Twitter for free. The whole thing felt like it was made for marketing people, not a curious old guy like me. Did anyone else fall for one of these paid trend analysis sites?

3 comments

3 Comments

margaret_gonzalez2519d ago

Are people really paying that much just to be disappointed?

the_nina19d ago

My cousin spent $75 on a meme calendar last year that was supposed to predict which jokes would go viral each month. He showed me the January page and it had a picture of a cat yelling at a salad, which I guess was funny in 2018. The funny thing is these companies are just selling us our own confusion back to us in a prettier package, aren't they? I learned my lesson with a stock tip newsletter that turned out to be run by a guy who got all his advice from Reddit.

the_piper19d ago

Funny you mention that @the_nina, because a buddy of mine actually paid $40 for a "viral meme subscription" that promised weekly memes that were guaranteed to hit big. He got a folder with a picture of a dog staring at a ceiling fan and a caption about "deep thoughts" that was already dead on Twitter by the time he opened it. Guess these trend trackers are just selling us fancy versions of stuff we can spot for free if we just scroll a little more.