this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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No Stupid Questions

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I’m in recovery and ever commercial is “the bold refreshing taste of uncle berry lemon twist vodka. Having a bad day? Drink this. You know you want to. Drink it Michael! please drink responably

Every ad portrays drinking as a party, and your in a pool throwing a beach ball with your friends, and your ex Chrissy finally admits she was wrong. It’s an unrealistically positive. If you drink Tito’s your father in law will finally grow close to you. It’s not Christmas without even Williams egg nog!

There is no safe amount of alcohol to drink. It is like cigarettes, entirely bad for you.

I’m not saying don’t sell it but why is every add for booze being blasted every. Especially to me because the algorithm knows I’m an alcoholic.

How is that legal?

Please drink responsibly? You’re aiming your ads at alcoholics primarily.

It’s like advertising morphine on skid row. You know what you’re doing.

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[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 1 points 28 minutes ago

How do you think I feel when I see the guys in these ads surrounded by beautiful women? It's like the opposite feeling for me, you're showing me something that can not happen.

[–] bridgeburner@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago

r/USdefaultism

is what I'd say if this were reddit lol

[–] SchwertImStein@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 hours ago

who tf is we?

all advertisement is bad. best to avoid all of it. use the fediverse, don't use commercial internet platforms.

[–] TheLugal@lemmy.world 19 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

We don't, alcohol adverts are just as illegal as tobacco. Of course; that might not be the case everywhere on the planet :P

[–] quips@slrpnk.net 6 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

OP is talking about the US

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 0 points 20 minutes ago

US allows all drugs to be advertised. So your doctor if Martinis are right for you.

[–] Undvik@fedia.io 12 points 4 hours ago

Weird, I see no mention of this "US", how are we supposed to know?

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 11 points 4 hours ago

Aka "the default place".

[–] PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social 10 points 10 hours ago

Advertising is weaponized pollution. All of it. In any shape or form. It is littering and spreading garbage for profit.

Bill Hicks had an excellent suggestion for those in that industry.

[–] MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 10 points 13 hours ago

You know when you see an advertisement for a casino, and they have a picture of a guy winning money? That's false advertising, because that happens the least. That's like if you're advertising a hamburger, they could show a guy choking. "This is what happened once."

Mitch Hedberg

[–] disregardable@lemmy.zip 93 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It took decades of fighting to get smoking banned, and if everyone and their uncle didn't have a parent dying of lung cancer, it probably wouldn't have happened.

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol -2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

People have smoked for pretty much all of human history and I don't think it's going to stop anytime soon.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 37 points 18 hours ago (12 children)

basically alcohol gets a pass because its a drug that has been in use since the stone age. Im a big "victimless" crimes person and I would like to see much legalized but I would like them all put into a category where its allowed at home or at licensed establishments and advertising is limited to private residences or at businesses that are in the category. I would restrict the signage for the businesses to. So the brothel, race track, casino, dispensiary, liquor store would look rather non descript from the outside but all would have controlled entry to only allow adults and inside it would likely be filled with ads for other establishments.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I agree with everything. I want to add, a lot of drugs have been used since the stone ages. Animals, not just humans, tend to use drugs fairly commonly. It's only a modern thing to think they're purely bad.

With that said, modern drugs often remove them from their cultural context, and are in higher purities and larger quantities than are naturally available. Chewing on a coca leaf is a lot different than doing cocaine, even though they're largely the same thing (though the coca leaf has a lot of stuff that's removed in processing to make cocaine). Cultures where it's common, it doesn't cause nearly the same issues as cocaine does in other places, because they don't have the same culture around it and are sometimes getting a lot more.

I agree though; people should be allowed to do what they want. The government shouldn't be deciding it for them, and neither should advertising. They should be free from pressure either way to decide what they want to put into their body.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 1 points 42 minutes ago

yeah its kinda wild that cocaine was in coke but and there is nothing about mass withdrawls when it was taken out. It was a small amount and ingested though and who knows how it was obtained form the leaf at that time. I had a convo with an indian coworker around this topic and they mentioned their grandma chewing something that was like the basis of opium and it was just normal back then.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

There's a whole lot of victims of alcohol tho

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 3 points 2 hours ago

yeah and a whole lot of casual users. kinda the same with it all but it does vary and obvious some are so powerful they have been used to make slaves. its like any self destructive behaviour though. hard to draw the line for other people without taking away self determination.

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[–] schwim@piefed.zip 17 points 17 hours ago

They have better ~~bribers~~ lobbyists

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 3 points 12 hours ago
[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 45 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)
[–] myrmidex@belgae.social 12 points 20 hours ago
[–] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 31 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

Bit of a shot in the dark, but seems like cigarette companies have lied in front of congress / courts saying cigarettes are healthy / not bad for you and have been caught red handed in their lies.

Big alcohol hasn't ever done anything that egregious. Everyone knows its not exactly healthy to drink, and Big Alcohol doesn't seem to have ever argued that. I know there's the occasional "a glass of red wine is good for your heart" stuff, but they're also not making any attempt to deny a gallon of wine per day will probably cause cirrhosis, ya know?

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Just FYI, the 1 glass a day study didn't exclude ex alcoholics, so they polluted the zero-glass-a-day group with bad health making the 1-glass-a-day look healthier in comparison.

The study has been redone and it shows that the less alcohol you consume the better it is, no exceptions.

[–] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 3 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah, in terms of individual health, I have no doubt that avoiding alcohol all together the best bet.

Personally, I subscribe to a flavor of "social lubricant" take on alcohol. That is, being a human and managing all the required social interactions and minor slights, stressors, stigmas, etc is a lot. And alcohol works to turn off some of the parts of the brain most active in social situations. That is to say that alcohol (and/or other mood altering drugs) are bad for the individual, but good for society.

Do need to caveat that take with: there's a left and a right to what's acceptable levels of intoxication. I don't think the world would be better with everyone getting outright shit faced every night, and even a glass every night might be excessive; its easy to fall prey to addiction and that's undesirable. But also, I don't think we'd be better off without alcohol all together. I think a couple glasses per week - and not drinking those glasses alone - makes for a healthy enough middle ground.

[–] kungen@feddit.nu 10 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

alcohol .. bad for the individual, but good for society

Alcohol is ranked as society's most harmful drug, because no, for way too many people it's not just a few drinks per week in a healthy social setting. It's also one of the few drugs where you can literally die during withdrawal.

[–] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yup, and I think that's a symptom of how isolating modern society is (as opposed to the disease society suffers from).

I def do not advocate for drinking alone in any quantity, but I would also never advocate to remove alcohol from society. It feels reasonable to conclude that since every society that's ever had success at some level has had some form of mind altering substance (usually alcohol) that was consumed recreationally and regularly.

[–] Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

You can't remove it, its too easy to make. It doesnt need to be advertised though.

[–] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 1 points 2 hours ago

Well I mean, why stop at just alcohol ads? I say we ban them all.

^^ Only kinda joking there. I do hate ads, esp those that interrupt whatever content I was involved in (TV, streaming, pop-up). Ones that just kinda set on the side are mostly okay (billboards, banner ads, those pamphlets at hotels, etc).

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[–] DagwoodIII@piefed.social 26 points 20 hours ago

Just adding. The liquor industry has been pushing the 'drink responsibly' line for decades. Back in the day they tried to get an AA member to sign on as a spokesperson but AA asked the member not to do it and they agreed.

[–] Schmoo@slrpnk.net 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Alcohol has also just been more prevalent in human cultures dating back to prehistory. Some of the earliest evidence we have of permanent human settlements were breweries, theorized to have been built by people who still lived semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles. That would mean that humans first started making permanent settlements and doing large-scale agriculture only to produce alcohol, and still mainly relied on hunting and gathering for their caloric needs. Other drugs / intoxicants have been used by humans for at least as long, but none have been so central to the development of civilization and culture than alcohol.

[–] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, I could never fly an economy flight without a drink or three to lighten the spirits.

[–] W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 hours ago

… drink or three…

… lighten the spirits.

I see what you did there.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 11 points 18 hours ago

A few reasons.

First, the alcohol industry has been a lot more sensitive to being perceived as selling to kids than the tobacco industry was. Because of it, there was never the push to ban advertising and conduct a mass media effort to control teen drinking as there was teen smoking.

Second, people still remember prohibition in the USA and how it was a failure. So, you've got a lot of people worried about a slippery slope in comparison to tobacco.

Third, the alcohol industry is far better at lobbying around specific items that would actually prevent consumption. For instance, alcoholic beverages don't need to show nutritional information. It will bend in a way that keeps access open.

[–] HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social 17 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Well, there are places where it is illegal. EU for example.

But of course they get around that by advertising their "0.0%" beers etc.

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 11 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

That loophole is closed in Norway at least.

Can’t even advertise for a Heineken T-shirt if you wanted to

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[–] over_clox@lemmy.world 12 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Similarly, why are they allowed to advertise every fancy new and half untested medicine out there?

Like, take such and such drug to eliminate pimples, but possible side effects are hair loss, heart attack, brain bleeding, rectal leakage, miscarriage, loss of fingernails and toenails, blah blah...

[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Ask your doctor if Nwxalviva is right for you

"Yeah, I know you went through 8 years of med school and internships and have years and years of experience and ongoing education, but I heard part of a 30 second commercial playing in the background so I think I'm pretty well qualified to make this suggestion to you..."

[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 14 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

One thing you see in the alcohol adds, no one ever actually drinks on screen.

[–] Aeao@lemmy.world 8 points 19 hours ago

I am aware of that. I just don’t see that as “problem solved” when they show a nice bourbon being poured onto clear ice.

[–] FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I've always found it weird that alcohol doesn't have warning labels. At least not where I live. I guess the risks are common knowledge but we can say the same for cigarettes

[–] kungen@feddit.nu 9 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

And how there's no requirements to show ingredients/calories per 100ml, despite it being required on all other foodstuffs. And imagine if they had disgusting pictures on beer cans saying "don't drink and drive" or such.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 1 points 11 hours ago

Alcohol causes impotence

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