Me suggesting I probably wouldn't care too much if I sometimes got a "frozen dairy desert" instead of "ice cream" isn't a complete reversal from me saying I usually prefer basic ice cream. If I said I usually like vanilla but later I said I wouldn't mind too much if I got chocolate also be a "complete reversal"? I still usually prefer vanilla, but hey its a sweet frozen treat, I'm still pretty happy in the end. If someone said "hey want some ice cream?" and they dished out some "frozen dairy desert" I probably would be ok with it instead of acting all disgusted and call them subhuman.

As for putting the same brand together, a lot of people like to shop by looking at the brand. Take your earlier example of crackers. There's a ton of varieties of Cheez-its and "cheese-flavored crackers". Should they break up all the different flavors of Cheez-its and have them all over the aisle, or would it kind of make sense to group all the different flavors and varieties of Cheez-its together so people shopping for Cheez-its can see the different flavors of Cheez-its? Seems like a pretty logical way to do things to me.

Going back to ice cream, should they also have a section for only vanilla, only chocolate, only strawberry, only neapolitan, only mint chocolate chip, and have all the brands placed in those groups? Whenever a company makes a new flavor, we have to shift all these groups around to make a space for that new flavor even if they're the only entrant for that flavor. One has to hunt for the spot where Moo-llennium Crunch fits in Might as well have the brands grouped together. I'd rather see all the varieties of Blue Bell in one place as it makes it easier to find the specific items.

> I probably would be ok with it instead of acting all disgusted and call them subhuman.

I never said this, i never implied this. I never even mentioned a preference for one over the other. The only things i suggested were lesser were the marketing creatures who choose to give up their humanity to lie and scam for a living instead of doing honest work and creating value.

You seem very upset that my point is this "frozen dairy desert" phenomenon trying to replace ice cream is a phenomenon like shrinkflation. They have convinced you that its just ice cream (per your words) and somehow are irrationally upset that I'm calling out that its less ingredients and product for the same price that.

Again I'm not calling for any changes, all my examples are just how the marketing things are designed to get people to not notice that they are getting less for the same price. I don't particularly care how the grocery store is arranged, just that the choice to put some things by brand and some things by type is not explainable other than by marketing/branding.

(and btw, grocery stores rearrange shelves for new products all the freaking time, your argument fails on the face of it - marketing departments come to stores and say "we want to buy a section of shelf space just for our brand", which is the real reason some things are organized by brand and others by type. You're also failing to think in 2 dimensions, because you'll often see columns of type, and rows of brand.. so all the canned stewed tomatoes are a column, then the canned diced tomatoes, then tomato paste, etc).

The mistake you are making is that you are conflating technical definitions used for regulating product labeling with the general understanding and preferences of consumers in how they relate product categories together.

Ideally, these would be closely aligned, but given that the former is a set of mutually exclusive category definitions bounded by precise quantitative variables, and the latter are overlapping clines that people make varied subjective judgments about, it's impossible to have perfect alignment, and edge cases like the ones you're discussing here will naturally proliferate.

> I don't particularly care how the grocery store is arranged

You're calling people subhuman because of the way grocery stores are arranged. That seems like the opposite of not caring.

> You seem very upset that my point is this "frozen dairy desert" phenomenon trying to replace ice cream is a phenomenon like shrinkflation. They have convinced you that its just ice cream (per your words) and somehow are irrationally upset that I'm calling out that its less ingredients and product for the same price that.

Or, in an alternative light, its the market reacting to customer preferences.

> They have convinced you that its just ice cream (per your words)

I have never said it is "just ice cream", I just said I and many other people see them as pretty similar products and can often swap them out without too much concern. I still like that there are government rules about what is legally "ice cream" so its more obvious what one is buying, but that doesn't mean I don't see the two kinds of products pretty similar. Almost always, soft serve is also not legally "ice cream", but in the end I sometimes tell the kids "if you eat more of the veggies you can get some ice cream" after and maybe that'll be a bit of soft serve. Would you expect the kids are going to complain to me about how I promised "ice cream" and instead they got soft serve? No, because generally speaking to most people in most situations they're fairly fungible. They're the same basic concept. Something sweet, creamy, kind of soft, and frozen.

Once again, if a friend offers me a bowl of it, its not exactly the end of the world. Lots of people like the highly whipped varieties because its whipped more and so is softer, less calories for the same portion size (the size of what you eat and how its arranged is often also related to satiety) and what not. I've been known to sometimes (not most of the time, not reversing my stance that I usually prefer vanilla ice cream) buy stuff like Dryers Slow Churned because its so light and airy when I was looking for something less heavy than regular ice cream. And sometimes I really like soft serve, despite that also not legally being ice cream. It wouldn't be the same product if it had to meet the government definition of "ice cream", it would probably be worse if it had to.

And for a consumer choosing a "frozen dairy desert" because its got a ton of cookies mixed in it, one can hardly claim its because they're being duped that its not "real ice cream", they want the variety with too many cookies or cake chunks or candybars or whatever to legally be called ice cream. The whole point of the product is to be loaded with non ice cream things while kind of being the same style of desert.

> I'm calling out that its less ingredients and product for the same price

And a thin crust pizza is technically less pizza for often the same price as the traditional crust. Shrinkflation! Those greedy subhuman people selling thin crust pizza, how terrible they are. Or maybe people like thin crust too. But hey, there aren't really the same government standards of "what is legally a pizza" as "what is legally ice cream", so its seen as a non-issue.