The Wikipedia page for Mentos says that it was first produced in the Netherlands in 1948. Learning more about the history is annoyingly hard, as is the case with several other shy and secretive European billionaires. But let's go digging and see what we can find
our story begins with the Van Melle brothers, Michael and Pierre. I think their... dad? had a candy shop in the Netherlands? And they went to Poland. TIL they also made Fruitella!! I loved Fruitella as a kid, I seldom see it around anymore
translated from a Polish page – it must be so fun, as a young person in Europe, to be able to take the train and go around to completely different places and experience totally different cultures. Travelling around Southeast Asia is a little bit more tedious, I feel
it's so interesting to contrast the english and non-english pages on wikipedia
@listmouse TIL that Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo in 1969
"Acutely aware of presentation, Dalí insisted that his design be placed on top of the lolly, rather than the side, so that it could always be viewed intact."
@listmouse I know I started out on Mentos but Chupa Chups is also fascinating. (Founded in Spain by Enric Bernat, acquired by Mentos's parent company.) Chupa Chups supposedly do their best to get their lollipops into the mouths of celebrities, here's Madonna
there's a phenomenon that everyone here must be familiar with by now, but I feel like it hasn't yet been given a really good name. it's the relegation, demotion, debasement of in-person reality in service of media/content/feeds/socials. i'll start collecting examples here
the first example that comes to mind for me is kesha being a public nuisance in japan in 2012 to promote her song, not really to the people around her, but to the people who'd watch the spectacle online
this is another good example to point at to describe the phenomenon I'm talking about– when the wrestling match itself becomes secondary to the photo opportunity. reality is relegated to a mere backdrop for content creation. all the world's a stage...
there are several interesting things to be said about the mass Ghibli event
First thing is that people don’t often know in advance what they’d want out of a tool until they see it for themselves. “generate any image you can think of!” draws a blank for lot of people
so lesson in there for anybody making things; customers/users need more guidance than you might think.
Second thing is I think this is an ongoing preference cascade and consensus cascade, at least some of the people who are adamantly anti-AI concede this is a cute/fun use case
for a lot of people this is the first time they’re like “ok fine I want one for myself and heck the whole timeline is doing it so what’s so wrong if I do it too”
I think this is probably a good thing. I think it gets more ppl interested in art and visuals etc
i haven't really bothered to make a deliberate effort to grow my twitter following or to write bangers etc in years, but i still have a clear sense of how to do it and i've advised other people who wanted to do the same, and witnessed them succeed. here are a couple of thoughts
one of the most important things you have to remember, especially if you're still a small account starting out and trying to get more attention, is that people aren't reading your tweets in isolation. your tweets are showing up as a 'beat' on a timeline
so if your tweet is something that's moderately unclear or confusing, or has too many details, or the sentiment is too complex, people's likeliest response is to scroll past it
this changes once people know you, care about you, believe that it's worth the effort to decipher you
there’s a thing I often wish I could explain to people… but hilariously, it fits the same pattern I’m trying to explain:
a lot of the most interesting, valuable things you can do are things that have very small windows of opportunity
so in the case of matchmaking, a beginner matchmaker might think it’s a matter of finding the best possible people (according to some set of metrics) for the best possible people.
but the expert matchmaker will tell you that actually timing and seasonality etc matter more
in something like football you might think that the player with the most stamina, best striking ability, etc is the strongest
but the guy that scores the most goals is typically the guy who is most sensitive to the situation. Messi famously just walks around the pitch Observing