cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/38101225
Imagine this: you walk into a public restroom in China, but instead of just grabbing toilet paper… you have to scan a QR code and watch an ad first 😅. Only then will the machine dispense a tiny sheet of tissue. Don’t feel like watching? You can also pay 0.5 RMB (about $0.07) for a bit more paper 💸. This system is designed to cut down waste — some people would abuse free paper before. Now, it’s all about “watch an ad or pay a coin.” Would you sit through an ad for free toilet paper, or just drop the 0.5 yuan? 👀 . . .
Source: China Insider on Instagram.
Comments
I do NOT touch my phone after I start wiping.
I guess there would just be shit smeared on the walls of that stall.
Waiting for .ml to tell me how this was all part of Mao’s plan.
As someone who lived in China for 7 years, the alternative is that the next best person who enters the bathroom takes all available paper home.
In my entire time there, I can count the number of times where paper was available on a single hand, with spare fingers.
Naturally, everybody carries a box of tissues at all times.
I’ve been told that China is so prosperous, why would there be no toilet paper‽
China is prosperous, don’t let anybody fool you. But people are deeply, inherently selfish and love money more than everything (yay, communism!), so if they can save 30 cents by taking a roll of toilet paper home, they will.
Yes, certain people in China are prosperous no doubt
This is a whole new level of enshitification.
Yeah, I’d be carrying some kind of tool to rip that fucker open.
lemmy feature request please - lemmy gold.
Awards made Reddit so much shittier, that would be a nightmare.
disagree, they are entirely different operating models. reddit was privately funded and eventually snehittified to become profitable. Lemmy is free, but still needs funds to operate. Might as well make it fun and rewaring to participation rather than just annoying banners whenever things get tight.
I will very happily never read “Thanks for the award, kind stranger!” or a string of cringy award speech edits again. I’m so happy they don’t exist here.
Alternatively there is !bestoflemmy@lemmy.world
🥇
Lmao if someone tried this shit in the US all the dispensors would be kicked off the walls by the end of the day.
Either that, or I will find something else to wipe my ass on. It’s lose-lose for everybody really.
China is a whole other world than western countries. Having access to toilet paper, even paid access, in a public restroom is not common.
Boring dystopia
If their goal is to convince people to not wipe at all, this method will have some non-zero percent of success.
You’ve never been to China, have you?
Correct, but I think what I said would be true in any country.
Not in China.
Because 100% of the population would never stoop to going unwiped?
Or because those who would already do so?
Or scrape my ass across their damned dispenser.
Fuck that noise.
How is this any different than Germany where oftentimes the entrance itself is behind a paywall?
Dropping in a coin vs what seems to be downloading some sort of an app or at least opening some shady websites on your fucking phone over your fucking mobile data is where I see it. Even if you used the payment option, you’d have to disclose your online payment information to the provider. Privacy nightmare.
Or simply imagine you just took your most violent shit of the century and then have an ad for hot mexican food or something.
The entrance being behind a paywall is bad, but if you’re not aware of it before using the toilet this holds you hostage unable to get clean until you pay up, with either your money or your attention. I’d say this is a more evil design, even though both are evil.
Ain’t nobody stopping you from having dirty cheeks
You took the words right out of my mouth
Put them back in please
Germany doesn’t get everything right.
Berlin Hbf. They have a single set of toilets about half the size of what you’d get in a shopping center which cost €2 with turnstyle access for a station the size of a cathedral with something like 20 platforms. 🙈
And Austria
In Germany you’re paying to access the bathroom, not the “privilege” of wiping your ass
Then I’m shitting on the door.
If you’re not fat you can just go through the side of the turn thingy sanifair uses for free
I guess you could also just go underneath but that seems even less dignified
Hop it like the NYC subway.
It sets precedent. You could extend that on anything. Doesn’t make the German pay or piss yourself thing any better though.
They tried pay toilets in the states but people vandalized the shit out of them until they were gone. These days it can be hard to find public restrooms in places though.
Bring your own toilet paper?
Also China public bathrooms smell like absolute crap I have no idea why. I had to pee in China and walked into a public bathroom on the side of the road. I almost puked
Yeah, most people in china already bring their own. The only time I’ve ever seen it offered for free was in a crazy high end shopping mall.
Many are just ‘squatty potties’ - is a hole in the floor and a tank below.
And yah, tourists are told to bring TP already since some bathrooms don’t have any.
😶
People kept stealing the toilet paper rolls. Poor elderly are notorious for this from what I heard
Ha! :) I never heard that before but that does make sense. I remember my American grandma hoarded supplies like this her whole life, long after the lean depression-era years she lived through. Every single pencil was used down to the nub. We got a serious talking-to if we tossed a milk bottle with more than a drop left in it.
What do you mean by a tank below? For flushing or…?
All the squatty potties I encountered in Asia were plumbed the way a toilet in the US would be plumbed so the poop gets flushed elsewhere.
I hope the ones in China weren’t basically permanent porta potties….
It really varies. I just did a big tour of China in June and we saw many fancy, futuristic toilets in malls and hotels. We saw somewhat stinky but otherwise clean public toilets at parks and such. And we came across a couple of holes in the floor with a septic tank below ground, exposed to the air - and no TP provided. Those are rare now, from what I saw. (Septic tank was the word I couldn’t think of before) I’m no plumber though so I may be getting that word wrong still.
Septic tanks are a bit more specific, you appear to be referring to a pit latrine which most commonly will have a cesspit.
This is because of people stealing toilet paper out of public restrooms
https://www.vice.com/en/article/chinas-fighting-toilet-paper-thieves-with-facial-recognition/
Yo first line of that says that many public restrooms don’t have have TP at all and you need to bring your own. What the fuck even is that system to begin with?!
It’s called a system that went fucking hard modernizing leaving large portions of people behind. All these problems are solved with a bidet imo.
This is depressing :(
Watch the black mirror episode Fifteen Million Merits. Your walls are ads unless you pay, can’t even close your eyes.
Oh I definitely know that episode! It’s one of the scariest ones for me. And here we are not that may years after it aired with this already starting to become a reality. :(
how “capitalistic” of the “communists” lol.
He who does not work, shall not wipe.
- Владимир Ленин
How do you figure? In what way does this imply concentration of wealth?
I swear some of y’all think simply selling something is capitalist. Astounding how successful they’ve been at producing undereducated people in the west.
Advertisement predominantly exists to encourage consumption, this is primarily a means to increase wealth
What is being advertised?
It’s not markets that make a country capitalist. It’s the concentration of the wealth from those markets. And China has been jailing/executing their billionaires.
Markets don’t make something capitalist but when markets drive consumption rather than consumption driving markets that’s a sign that capital is gaining power over social welfare. Ad proliferation should be seen as a warning sign towards the social ecosystem.
But you are correct if those ads are promoting socially beneficial choices they may not be a sign of capitalism. Ads that promote healthy choices or taking public transit over driving have their places in socialist societies. I just doubt that they’re the whole of what’s being advertised in exchange for toilet paper. I suspect companies are finding their way in.
And if the companies were workers cooperatives that would be a different problem but Dengist reforms ensured capitalist participation in the Chinese market so I’d believe it if I saw it but I’m not assuming it’s only coops advertising
i thought it was pretty self explanitory but having to pay to wipe your ass in a public washroom, or watch ads to fuel more consumption seems pretty capitalistic in practice.
and undereducated? ill have you know i have a university degree, where i majored in porkin’ yer mum, and i minored in holding my nose and mouth closed while i did it.
Hey, don’t be gross, OP’s mom is a classy and hygienic slut for money and that’s why I love her
The alternative that they currently have is there’s no toilet paper. Not that they’ve run out - it’s not even an option.
Would you rather have the option to get toilet paper by watching an ad/paying when you forgot to bring your own wipes, or not have that option and have no way to wipe? Pretty easy choice imo.
China is not the same as a western country.
Oh ok flushes baby wipes.
This is why I don’t eat in Restoraunts (besides the fact that I’m always broke).
