Same, although I'm starting to suspect that companies have started to catch on to this trick over the last few months, sadly

It says a lot that so much of the "genuine" opinions on products are all siloed in Reddit. They call themselves "the front page of the Internet", which speaks of arrogance to me, but it might slowly be starting to come true. But if it works, I don't see it as a completely bad thing, I guess.

Same here. Seems like there's a subreddit for just about everything (for instance, I consulted r/backpacks recently). Good advice, but unreliable in terms of finding an active community.

you want to look at /r/onebag

Now that has some potential to cause pain to my wallet. Gonna have to force myself to forget about it now...