I think it comes from Depression era kids who found a brand that didn’t create cheap junk and so they spread the word. But of course, that has been co-opted by capitalist pirates who buy a brand famous for quality, gut expensive manufacturing with the cheap alternatives and then count on making a profit before word-of-mouth catches up to them.

Sears retailer. Gibson guitars. Off the top of my head. Thousands more examples over the years.

My guess as for why people do it today was because their grandparents or previous generations did that as a survival necessity but now we are seeing the behavior warped from its original purpose. Like opening and raising your right hand to show you had no weapon became a friendly wave hello nowadays. Maybe that’s not an analogous example but you should get the idea.

Good! I’m a US citizen who was raised in US military bases in foreign countries. Allies of the USA need to spend a lot more on their military.

USA people don’t realize that military spending doubly impacts society. Not only did your tax money go to getting a new bomber airplane that a civilian has no use for but the energy and effort that might have been used to create improved railway infrastructure (for example) never happened. After enough generations in relative isolation from other global societies, the populace doesn’t even realize what they are missing out on.

A 20% reduction is a double decimation.

Depends on the region. In economically vibrant areas I have seen lots of weird local shops take over the old malls. In slow economy areas, yeah, except for like early voting stations and other rare things it’s all vacant spaces.

You mean stuff like:

Feels So Good released in 1978 reached number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Lost Highway with lots of tracks from Angelo Badalamenti.

See, I was thinking that, even in the context of a group of threads about real life headlines that are so absurd that they sound satirical, this person was letting us know they don’t want to read about celebrity gossip.