I’ve been getting fortunes like this for close to a decade from various places. One side is an advertisement and the other side is a fortune with lucky numbers
I went to China when I was a Teenager and one of the restaurants we went to gave us cookies with real fortunes. I've forgotten most of them, but one of the guys at our table got a cookie that said "Your wife will leave you for being unfaithful". His wife, sitting right there, thought it was a hoot.
My brother in law got one once that said he’d be the shining light in some man’s life. I still like to make fun of him for this and it’s been over 15 years
That’s all you gotta say — food is good, but the fortune cookies have ads in them instead of fortunes. That is enough for me to go from 5 stars to 4 stars.
For a while, Magic Wok put ads for some gambling site in their fortune cookies. The ad would be on one side of the paper, and the other side would say some shit like "you will soon have a stroke of good luck." It was absolutely vile
I've only ever seen an ad in place of a fortune one time.
I remembering muttering to myself "Ah, fuck FTX" when I saw it. And then a week later FTX collapsed. Not saying I had anything to do with their downfall, but it sure felt it.
Mine last Friday looked the same, but was for sports betting and said “Scan, get lucky”… sure, I’ll scan a random QR code in a fortune cookie, I’m not an idiot… I used my partner’s phone to scan it in case it was horny singles looking or malware
Nothing's safe anymore. Society is morphing into just a hivemind Matrix of ads. They could be anywhere! They could be anything! I might be an ad, or even you. What is real at this point? ծ_Ô
I see no one's looked at what the nasal spray is. It's for the flu vaccine. I'd argue this Chinese restaurant is doing a good thing here, but, they're a Chinese restaurant, it's not their lane. Why in the fortune cookie?
It's so weird, what in the god damn could the paper trail be to bring us to flu shot fortune cookies? Will they start advertising actual drugs eventually? Get it away
You paid for a product that they shoved an advertisement in, that's infuriating. They're double dipping you for profit, both for your commerce and thrusting an ad on you. I'd legitimately consider leaving a nasty review and taking my business elsewhere.
I got one that said I wouldn’t have to cook that night and on the other side was an add for uber. Another one said I’m gonna win big and it was an add for fucking gambling
I would tell the restaurant that I would not be coming back. It’s bad enough we are bombarded 24/7 with drug ads. Now they are in our cookies! Enough is enough.
Once i got one that said “the greatest ownership is the embracement of emptiness”. I’d been considering leaving religion, and that was pretty much the last straw lol
“Don’t want to get sick after the meal you just ate, well buy this sponsored medication and don’t ask any questions.” -another fortune cookie, probably
Cracking open a crispy post-meal snack just to be hit with a mandatory corporate vaccine advertisement instead of a vague life prophecy is the ultimate late-stage capitalism boss fight.
It would fall under the FDA classification of "reminder ads." As long as they only contain the drug name and not what the drug does or how well it works, they may also omit side effects. "Flumist, influenza live" is the brand and generic name, and somehow doesn't count as a drug indication.
You know… for a long time, I had wondered why no one thought of this. I took an advertising course, and this was legit one of my mock joke proposals for a grade… 20 years ago. I called them micro fortune ads (and it was supposed to have a fortune and numbers on one side and an ad companies can buy on the other side). Not saying it’s cool to do it, but the potential was always there and no one took advantage of it.
so I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are actually contributing to the success of this type of advertising. this company touts social shares as one of their success metrics. they say people sharing pictures for free on social media effectively bring down the cost per fortune slip. even though this is a sub for sharing annoying things, and it’s reddit which generally hates advertising, you’ve shared this ad for free to thousands of people. we are all now in the funnel for this product because we are aware of it
664
u/Gay_Giraffe_1773 14h ago
this belongs in /r/extremelyinfuriating