Saw this at the store this morning, took a double take

Look at the text on the beer can. It’s gibberish.

Like other commenter said, its more a general vibe.

Its the blocky graphic on either side with smaller text labeled modern squared off graphics in the middle. Its the font. Its the spacing. Its got the same general flow of the dozens of AI generated websites I’ve seen.

Its too cleanly unclean.

The “emphasis whiskers” around “it’s” in the top, middle are a dead giveaway. Plus I’ve seen multiple AI generated posters with this exact color/font scheme. You’re gonna keep seeing it over and over now that you know what to look for, unfortunately.

I also think it’s AI. It’s not something in particular I can point out that makes me think that, it’s more an impression. An impression that comes from having seen a ton of slop.

The style of the text is a big giveaway to me. Generated text has gotten a lot better (ie usually legible), but it’s pretty much always that same block letters that aren’t quite perfect enough to be a typeface, but also not designed well enough to be made by hand.

The general format of this one is also fits closely to a lot of other generated posters I’ve seen (some examples: https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/2d35f3bf-bc05-4971-8c8d-9e69fe857bde.png). It’s hard to describe, but hopefully you can see what we’re talking about.

The meaningless feature section in the middle of the poster.

It doesn’t look like it was designed by hand. There’s no meaning or sense of planning in the design.

Can and box are real and sold in Canada.

Poster is AI slop. Either added into the image or made by the store. Budweiser wouldn’t be promoting Corona, a competitor.

let’s just ban all ads. That’d make me happy.

There used to be candy that looked like cigarettes and soft drinks made to look like a champagne bottles, and at some point we decided that was not a good idea.

I drink and I smoke, but I also think it’s not a good idea to get children used to those things. You can drink responsibly but there’s no quantity of alcohol that does zero damage, and the less we get young people used to them the better.

So, there are these things called candy cigarettes. They are candy shaped like cigarettes. Despite simply being things like bubble gum or chocolate, it turns out that people who ate them as kids are about twice as likely to smoke real cigarettes as adults. This has resulted in them being banned as advertising tobacco products to children in a good number of countries. This add for nonalcoholic beer specifically saying that minors can buy it can easily be argued to be the same kind of thing, with the same kind of legal response. If consuming non-alcoholic beer as a minor results in significantly higher rates of alcohol consumption as an adult, then ads for non-alcoholic beer that target children, like the one shown, might be worth a ban.

I’m also German but nobody should advertise harmful drugs to children.

What does you being German have anything to do with it? Completely ignoring that no, being able to legally advertise it as 0% doesn’t mean it has 0%, in Germany non-alcoholic beer is still beer and doesn’t get advertised to children. That would be fucking insane to do.

Absolute fringe opinion even in Germany. Most shops and bars refuse to serve 0.0 to teens below legal drinking age (which already is ridiculously low), ads also don’t target them.

Here in Estonia you have to be 18 to buy alcohol free beer and wine. The idea being “hey maybe let’s not get kids used to the flavour of drinks that are bad for them to be consuming even once they ARE 18”

Usually you’d start that joke with ‘what do x and y have in common…’

Starting with what’s the difference works when there’s a difference. Like this, ‘What’s the difference between a woman in a confessional and a woman in a bathtub? One has hope in her soul.’

In my experience it’s because they’re drinking 18 of them and don’t want to be sloppy drunk after 10-12 hours. I prefer the more direct method of hard liquor to be more efficient but I get the thought process.

It’s to beer what LaCroix is to fruit juice.

Maybe they’re keeping a better balance of hydration to alcohol for their old brain, and not having a fruity or sweet taste but not boring plain water as well. Lite beer can occasionally be refreshing. Although personally I’d rather pour half a beer into a cup of ice than drink most light beers.

Budweiser probably did it. In every grocery store I’ve seen, the beer vendors set up all the displays.

Rates of alcohol use and addiction have been decreasing.

This is just getting them started early like cigarettes always tried to do.

Ok, I did the digging on this because you asked. I actually just assumed because I was carded for NA beer that this was a law.

In the US, federally it is not illegal to sell less than 0.5% without carding. But many states treat NA beer the same as normal beer and they require the person be over 21. In the states that do not require 21 and over for NA beer many (most) stores and bars will still card because its better safe than sorry when it comes to ABC and losing your license.

So even tho it might be legal, you are probably still going to get carded, except at this place I guess.

But also I am struggling to understand why someone would choose to drink NA beer if they didn’t already know what real beer was like and was trying to avoid it by getting the NA kind (like me). Like - NA beer costs the same as real beer, just buy literally anything else to drink and its cheaper.

Eliminating reasonableness is the first step in creating an abusive legal system.

The real reason is you don’t. Not in every state. Some defined it by a strict measurable standard. Others defined it to close off what’s depicted in this image. Others defined it to describe what was banned as oppressed to what you measure, so that if you’re selling beer you can’t sell it to kids. No checking labels, no “well, it’s my home brew so I don’t know”. Is it beer? You can’t sell it to kids.

The last one is almost funny because you can almost feel the confusion about why the concept of non-alcoholic beer even exists.

Because it’s beer. Generally the way laws are written in the us, they call out beer, wine, and spirits, or some such wording, not being available to under 21s.

Laws generally do not mention alcohol content of whatever it is you’re buying.

Vice is difficult to regulate, and laws surrounding vice are imperfect

The same reason why vapes are considered “tobacco products” despite not containing any tobacco and considered “flavored” if they contain any flavor (or no flavor) besides “tobacco” flavor (which is actually just caramel flavoring since vape juice has no flavor by default). It’s because politicians are stupid and short sighted and most of these regulations make little sense outside of government control.

Yep it always does those stupid lines on either side

I can almost taste the chalk now.

To be fair, under aged also doesnt mean child.

Fruit juice naturally has around 0.5% alcohol. It’s just a side effect of wet sugar.

There’s no legal federal limit, it’s all state law. Some states go by that 0.5%. others go by a definition that includes “things sold as beer” essentially.
"You are holding a container. It is labeled beer. Do not give it to anyone under 21.”

Other times stores just assume and card everyone because it’s waaay easier than nuance and you’re not legally required to sell non-alcoholic beverages to minors.

They say “contains less than 0.5%” because that’s the cutoff that makes something legally beer. It more than likely has none, much of the time. That’s just the law (US):

> 0.5% it’s beer and subject to alcohol laws

< 0.5% it’s not beer, technically a soda or something

So they label it as <0.5% simply to show that it’s in the latter category. This creates a lot of confusion for some reason.

Even the grocers (and even manufacturers) get it all messed up. Hell, half the brands don’t have required nutritional info (beer doesn’t need it, soda does) but the real problem is that:

The regulatory agencies are captured and don’t do shit anymore. TECHNICALLY the FDA should be stepping in and making them put full nutritional information on all the brands of NA “beer” and making sure it is labeled and sold like a soda.

But the larger companies that sell it are just misclassifying it and creating problems to be as lazy and risk avoidant as possible.

Another counter example that disproves the misunderstanding is kombucha. Kombucha has naturally occurring alcohol, but it’s not classified as some other category. The legal categories are “Alcoholic beverage” Or “Not alcoholic beverage” and it’s less than 0.5% so it’s “not alcoholic beverage” and therefore is available for anyone to buy and has nutritional information on the container.

Similarly, NA “beer” should have the full nutritional information on the can and be sold to anyone. It just “feels” like it should be different somehow, and no one is updating or enforcing policies. You might notice that none of them actually say, “beer.”

Apple juice can contain around 0.5% alcohol though?

They say “contains less than 0.5%” because that’s the cutoff that makes something legally beer. It more than likely has none, much of the time. That’s just the law (US):

0.5% it’s beer and subject to laws < 0.5% it’s not beer, technically a soda or something

So they label it as <0.5% simply to show that it’s in the latter category

But the grocers just do whatever. Hell, half the brands don’t have required nutritional info (beer doesn’t need it, soda does) but the real problem is that:

The regulatory agencies are captured and don’t do shit anymore. TECHNICALLY the FDA should be stepping in and making them put full nutritional information on all the brands of NA “beer” and making sure it is labeled and sold like a soda.

But the larger companies that sell it are just misclassifying it and creating problems to be as lazy and risk avoidant as possible.

They say “contains less than 0.5%” because that’s the cutoff that makes something legally beer. It more than likely has none, much of the time. That’s just the law (US):

0.5% it’s beer and subject to laws < 0.5% it’s not beer, technically a soda or something

So they label it as <0.5% simply to show that it’s in the latter category

But the grocers just do whatever. Hell, half the brands don’t have required nutritional info (beer doesn’t need it, soda does) but the real problem is that:

The regulatory agencies are captured and don’t do shit anymore. TECHNICALLY the FDA should be stepping in and making them put full nutritional information on all the brands of NA “beer” and making sure it is labeled and sold like a soda.

But the larger companies that sell it are just misclassifying it and creating problems to be as lazy and risk avoidant as possible.

The 0.0% on the poster must legally be without alcohol whatsoever. What you have in mind is a confusingly named non-alcoholic beer which goes under the official alcoholic beer radar.

That will have been because whoever shelved it didn’t know what it was.

We can also buy 0.5% shandy at any age.

Yup. I got carded at Home Depot when buying a saw blade because “it could be used as a weapon”.