Fuck Oatly | Hacker News Reader

Fuck Oatly

fckoatly.com

47 pointsm4tthumphrey28 comments

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A few years ago I had a strange experience of sitting through a gig in an East London pub while a hipster "sang" a spoken word song about Deptford (where he had moved to) and how the pre-existing community there has been ravaged by an influx of hipsters pricing locals out and replacing their community hubs with coffee shops. Notable in this lament was that he included himself as part of the problem. It was a paean of self-hatred which of course elevated him above the rest of the people in his category - he saw himself as implicitly superior since he was the one calling himself out.

The mainly young, white, middle class, female audience was wrapt in his performance. I couldn't stand more than a few minutes of it and left soon after arriving. I hadn't given it a second thought until seeing this shameless post-modern PR campaign on Hacker News.

So this is a PRopaganda piece by Oatly that collects controversies surrounding them and tries to downplay them. I can't say it worked for me.

Huh. This is definitely… a bold strategy.

The PR folks behind this have a future in politics, for sure.

I think it's good marketing, even though it probably won't make me personally buy their products anytime soon. But having a platform to respond to (preselected) criticism in a humorous way seems to be a good fit for the target audience.

Loved the cascade of fck-sites in the footer: fckoatly.com, fckfckoatly.com, fckfckfckoatly.com, fckfckfckfckoatly.com, ...

Any idea where the phone number at the end goes?

Just from a design / information dissemination perspective, I honestly feel like this website falls flat. I scrolled through and still don’t know what’s really wrong about Oatly nor was my interest really piqued to find out more. The "next scandal coming soon" also feels off to me like it's more of a smear campaign.

Of course, ymmv and Oatly might definitely have big issues but I didn't get it from this site.

They made a site for you too :D

https://fckfckoatly.com

Sounds like they succeeded then considering this page is created by Oatley themselves so the purpose is obviously not to make you actually learn about the wrongdoings.

The information about Glebe Gate is contradictory.

> This was a lawsuit about copyright infringement

and then their replies mention that they were defending their trademark.

It appears that it was trademark related and not about copyright infringement which to my mind is far more acceptable. Companies have to defend their trademarks to keep them "active", but copyright infringement can be ignored by the owners if they wish.

I'm from the home of Oatly and almost all my friends are vegan, but apparently Oatly has a really bad rep now. I don't follow that stuff because I will literally eat anything, but I trust my friends who are very conscious and aware of those things.

I think the biggest issue is their ties to the Chinese government.

There are already alternatives to Oatly so no need to buy them anymore.

Even as a vegetarian, I don't understand the appeal of milk substitutes.

I use cow's milk for one thing: I put it in my coffee because it is a buffer solution which lowers the perceived acidity of the coffee and therefore gives it a milder taste. I've seen Oatly as an option at vegetarian coffee shops, but it does not have that chemical property of cow's milk, and adding it to coffee just makes it taste worse.

I eat anything, but even I can recognize the cruelty of milk production. A cow won't produce milk unless it has had a calf, so cows need to be kept in near-perpetual state of pregnancy in order to keep producing milk.

I’m not lactose intolerant (I think) but milk in my coffee often does make me feel… bleh. I switched to oat milk (Oatly), didn’t mind the minor difference in taste, and I don’t get that feeling that milk gave me.

A lot of people are lactose intolerant

This reminds me of the Patagonia marketing "You don't need this jacket". Great stuff, love Oatly.

This surely is an effective strategy - have I had read about Oatly + Blackstone elsewhere, I might have raised an eyebrow.

Simply the fact that they own it makes it look less problematic.

Note taken, this is how you handle controversies.

It is bold. But being bold doesn't make you right, it just makes you bold.

Important to remember that just owning it doesn't make the problems less real. They grow on Blackstone money. They market themselves to vegans and feed farm pigs on residue.

Don't forget that this site also allows them to cheekily lay down their side of the conflict, and what their reasonings were.

Eh so they are making fun of their own customers because of their opinions regarding the "oaty" copyright case? Very weird PR campaign.

Before this, I had never heard of Oatly. Now that I have, I think they're obnoxious and annoying.

Charging at their controversies head on, brutal.

I'm not sure what this is...but I like it.

Drink actual milk it's better

Some people actually can't, or are simply better off without. And many don't realise they're in that group. One part of the reason is the unavoidable fact that "milk" is not a singular, definable substance. It varies wildly, depending on locality.

Eg look up permissible faecal, urine and pus levels where you are, versus other areas. Also, check out differences in store and hold requirements. Finally look at what substances cattle are allowed to be injected, or fed with. Each varies greatly.

Not an option for lactose-intolerant people

How does this hit the top 5 of the front page with no comments and 4 points?

Regarding the link, quite a good PR strategy, but not sure it's very interesting discussion for a tech site?

> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

So if someone has four sock-puppet accounts they can get in the top 5?

For an extremely short period of time so it's pretty meaningless.

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