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Comment by reactordev | Hacker News Reader

My elderly mother is aware of AI yet she falls victim to it every time. I point out the obvious, the AI voice, the mouth not matching the words, etc and she just stares at me with disbelief that she was fooled (yet again) by AI. An hour later, she’s fooled again.

She also buys random stuff online because it’s on sale. Only because it’s on sale. She has no use for a home trampoline, a portable air conditioner, a men’s suit rack, or the dozens of Asian plates still in bubble wrap from a decade ago.

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My mom does the same thing regarding “sales”, even after explaining to her the marketing/reasoning aspects of them. If she sees something on sale that was “originally $900” but on sale for $80, shes excited to buy it. It quite literally doesn't matter what it is. It’s nice to see I’m not alone in this situation with her. I can’t wrap my head around it!

Here's an idea. Print out a list of charities that you think she might give to, like a big glossy page with 5 choices, and throw in a few "Limited time double your contribution" type marketing slogans. Tell her next time she is going to buy something because it is on sale, she could consider the joy of giving to those in need.

I work in marketing and I beg my father not to buy anything he sees in digital ads, especially not the garbage promoted in the word game app he likes. I tell him if he sees a product he wants in an ad to track down something similar himself from a store he already knows and trusts.

I also beg my girlfriend not to shop based on ads or TikTok. But she still does buy things off ads. On the rare occasion I see an ad, I assume it's a scam.

Once she showed me this video of a woman claiming she invented a new travel bag and had it "on sale" on her site for $150 instead of like, $250. So I tell my girlfriend I bet the full price has never been that high, and internet archive showed the bag has always been on sale, but the sale and full price have gone up 1.5x since inception.

Then I look up that type of bag and find the exact same thing in a different color for half the TikTokker price, same design and everything, been available for years. Then I look more and find the same bag elsewhere for about $50.

At least that experience mostly taught her to not buy things from TikTokers.

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but embrace and enjoy your elderly mother buying random, useless crap. My mother has Alzheimer's; she's not the same person she was just 2 or 3 years ago. She frequently doesn't even remember who I am. And honestly, I would give anything to have another Black Friday with her, waking me up at 5AM to go to Walmart so she can buy a $15 DVD player.

No, because she’s taking it from accounts she shouldn’t be. Her fixed income living expenses account. Her trust her husband left her to manage for the kids. She’s a shop-a-holic and my sister and I are wrestling power of attorney to make the bleeding stop. It’s a mess.

(author here) we hope to have results for ai voice in months

Thank you for your important work. This is such a maddening and frustrating state of the world.

I would also like to point out the correlation between elderly phone addiction (screen time) and also being mentally unable to distinguish between obviously fake, enhanced fake, misinformation fake, or down right “because I said so” fake. The generation that holds the most wealth.

Thank you for writing this.

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