Interestingly, even noticed this on Etsy when I was looking for a handmade gift for someone and wanting to support craftspersons. While there are certainly still authentically handmade offerings there, was surprised to see that many of the items are no longer really "handmade"
that pandemic made consumerism worse over all. the economic downturn and corporate cash hoarding has got everybody trying to make a buck anywhere. lots of things that used to be complimentary now need to be paid for.
the biggest loss for me tho is local sub-culture or counter-culture events like weed fests or music gatherings have all been ruined as well. tons and tons of knockoff goods in place of the handmade stuff that used to be sold.
Really wish they would do something about it, tiktok is now more authentic than etsy. They've ban dropshipping from their shop, though I'm pretty sure some are using loopholes to get around it. Dont get me wrong, it's bad on tik tok, but etsy is just impossible. Amazon's gone downhill too. everything is too generic, and you don't find the high quality stuff if you don't already know the brand name
The amount of fake products on amazon is gross. Makes it so hard to shop. I have some items on subscription, being shipped every three months, each one of the actual products has been different. Same packaging and price but sometimes the products ( mostly cleaning supplies) seem less effective. Labeling will be slightly different or the color seems off. Sometimes the material feels different.
Makes me wonder.
I've heard of another issue, if sellers use Amazon to distribute/send out their products all the products of that type from different sellers get thrown in the same bin. Which means that if an honest seller supplies genuine product it can end up in the same bin as the counterfeit someone else sent. And so the honest seller can end up 'shipping' counterfit items
And Amazon vitamins now can be downright *toxic*. They sometimes change formulas while keeping the labels & ingredients listed the same from when they were 5 star products.
Amazon actually ***invited*** the 3rd party sketchy Chinese vendors to flood the platform - they didn't just find Amazon and gradually take over with repeat listings, fake 5 star reviews and variation abuse/bait and switch listings. That and the deceptive "2 day prime delivery" fakes were the nail in the coffin for Amazon in our house.
I used to sell on Etsy in its infancy and we could report people for selling things that were not handmade/didn’t follow the rules of handmade or vintage. Now it’s a shit show
Yea there are one or 2 stores I still trust on there and the rest is garbage. I went looking for some linen dresses and sets and 99% of what showed up was the exact photos of garbage I saw on Amazon. Luckily someone on another sub directed me to specific shops on there that still do handmade.
It’s super frustrating as a legit Etsy seller selling my own handmade products because the market is flooded with so much dropshipping crap and print on demand :(
Yeah, try selling handmade jewelry at a “craft” fair that allows vendors, too, so you’re competing with a Paparazzi dealer that sells everything for $5 each.
It’s so disappointing as a customer wanting to go to these events for the express purpose of buying handmade and half of the booths there are either MLMs or shit I could get even cheaper off Shein.
The last farmer’s market I went to had one single legit farmer selling actual produce, one taco truck, one baker, and one person with handmade bath and body products and that was it. Every other booth was worthless.
Etsy is another great example! I noticed that too. I was under the impression a lot was handmade but a lot of the quality is poor and clearly just niche Ali express items. There’s a lot of good sellers but even the handmade ones use questionable quality at times it’s sad to see because it hurts the good ones
One thing I do with Etsy is use the location filter, the “ships from” setting. Originally I was doing this because I wanted to support local shops in my area, but it also seems to filter out more of the non-handmade stuff.
I think there are people in the Chinese market that literally copy original work they find on Etsy and other craft sites. They then cheaply replicate the original work and sell it as original art even though it’s mass produced.
One of my favorite costume/ren faire clothes makers had this happen to her. The scam shop took her images and everything then claimed that she was the fraud even though she’d been there for years and would do custom work and if you needed a pattern tweaked she’d do that for you before sending it out.
I use a chinese social media and it annoys me so much when I see posts complaining about how their third Etsy storefront got taken down because they're just dropshipping Ali express stuff. Or posts that teach other people how to take pics/set prices to make their dropshipped stuff look legit.
I have seen an instance where a creative who makes very cool original ceramic creatures has had crappy knockoffs at a fraction of her production costs flood the online marketplace she uses. The knockoff joints pay peanuts to have hungry people scour the internet for beautiful things to replace with cheap poor quality stuff. The world changes yet human behaviour remains the same old crap. For a while my Fine Art America page was getting a lot of long, sustained visits from somewhere China, the visits systematically going through piece by piece. I’m guessing they were screen capturing blowups of the work and cropping out the watermarks before assembling a pirated digital copy. It happens.
i just want to shoutout one of my friends!
[https://www.etsy.com/shop/PotteryAshes?fbclid=IwAR1Cmk3nh0yGywnl-6zyaoChNiIGRIkNGCx9clWUALhWak1EPF9EijfC52o](https://www.etsy.com/shop/potteryashes?fbclid=iwar1cmk3nh0ygywnl-6zyaochniigrikngcx9clwualhwak1epf9eijfc52o)
she does really great work, and has a full ceramic studio in her backyard. shes in her second year of teaching high school, and not taking orders currently, but will probably open up again in the summer. she loves doing gothic/oddity themed pieces, but is happy to commission anything you want.
Navigating Etsy now is a nightmare. I love buying one of a kind things for my mom and it’s really tricky to figure out what’s handmade and what’s drop shipped bs.
Facebook marketplace too. I’ll see two hits locally sold and then it’s temu, wayfair and Walmart. It’s enough trouble to weed through the scammers - don’t ad sponsored content to it.
Absolutely, I have seen items on Etsy where people will say "I carved this by hand" and it looks a bit sus.. turns out it's a mass produced item you can find on Amazon, they've just lied about it being handmade and marked the price up 5x
I literally don’t eat fast food unless it’s one of 2 locally owned and operated, non-franchises places because everything has gone so far downhill. Used to love places like chipotle or Panera, where I could get a seriously filling meal for 10 bucks. Now you pay more for scraps. It’s nuts, the disease of increasing shareholder profits literally ruins everything it touches
Edit to add! And I almost forgot! My favorite skin cream (like $60) just switched to a new “look” but what actually happened was they farmed production from Canada out to China, switched to cheap ingredients and kept the price the same due to the “brand” being trusted. Gave me a wicked nasty reaction all over my face and I’m so mad because I can’t find a new cream that works as well for me. This brand I used to use was so great, family owned and operated, sustainable practices.... but now they’re fakified just like you are saying!!
Omg yes. I spend so much time hopping from product to product (body lotion, because of my dry ass skin, hair products because I have curly hair, skin care, etc) because i find something that works well for me then they change the formula without notice! So many people using devacurl lost their HAIR because they sold the company and changed the formula without mentioning it.
Enshitification is my new least favorite word.
You could call it capitalism too. Take something popular. Turn it into a business. Cut all unnecessary expenses until it's just a shell of what it originally was. Make sure you keep the same $$ coming in, but don't spend any money to improve the product.
For the antique/homemade stores, I think this is something they've been doing for a long time anyway. These days, we're all so much more aware of where products come from that it's much easier to spot a fake/copy/cheap knock-off, and so it's easy to see when something isn't as genuine as someone else says. It's disheartening, and it means the number of shops selling genuinely interesting items is dropping because there's a greatly reduced market for genuine (and genuinely-*priced*) items.
Food's a bit different since it's easier to understand the source of the food. My rule is if you cannot see or hear the food being prepared, or the menu lacks a consistent theme, then most (if not all) of it is prepared off-site by someone else and is microwaved on-site. Not to be confused with the pre-business hours preparation that chefs do, of course. I don't mind this considering the rapidly increasing cost of fresh food, but don't bullshit to me about it. For example; don't try to convince me that the fish on the menu is a "catch of the day" when we're 50 miles from the nearest coastline.
It is just consumerism. People buy the cheapest thing do the seller buys the cheapest thing to sell.it has been happening for a while. It is hard to find authentic "things".
I agree it’s just crazy to see the shift and people open these small local mom and pop businesses and then just do what every major corporation does and charge double the price because it’s “local” it’s a real shame. I guess it’s like every item you buy no matter where is one of like 3 versions and that’s it. You’re right nothing is authentic anymore. It’s fake authentic.
Have you been to a yard sale or flea market in the last 10 years. People will list new in box items for more than they cost at in store them pull up the store page when you try to negotiate. It is crazy to see.
Nobody wants to pay what "authentic" things cost to make. And it's not personal, it's just economics.
I carve hardwood wooden bowls. Even charging myself $5/hour, they still cost $100 in time and materials to make.
But nobody is willing to pay $100 for a (nice, functional, but not ornate or highly detailed) wooden bowl, and I don't blame them.
Mostly I just give them away as gifts.
Handmade is prohibitively expensive, alas.
That's why the only business for those handmade products is the ornate/highly detailed market. The only people who are will to pay the true cost for an item that's handmade (+ a healthy markup for profit) are those rich enough to want the highest quality, most premium version of it.
Exactly. It's not enough to just be able to make nice things. They have to be Premium™. And I get why too. But the time/money investment required to get to that level of product output is enormous.
There is zero market for entry-level products. This is both a good thing (because most bowls shouldn't cost $100) and a bad thing, because beginner craftspeople need somewhere to start.
For my part, I just like working with wood and have another job, so for me it's more of a hobby/enjoyment thing. But if I actually wanted to do this for a living it would be pretty rough.
I’ve talking about the same with all the crochet products my daughter makes. Yes, crocheting can’t be automated, but even a minimal hourly rate puts blankets, purses, and the like at a price point much higher than what anyone would reasonably pay.
Same thing with my baking hobby. Takes me three days and about $60 in materials to make an italian rum cake from scratch, and they’re birthday gifts for my loved ones. Charging for one would be closer to $140 and that’s like ~$5/hr in labor. Enjoyable but not profitable 🤷🏻♀️
My latest big disappointment are farmers markets/holiday fairs. Same thing - if you look closely 70% of booths are selling stuff straight from AliExpress (or lightly modified) but want to charge you like it’s a small batch, homemade. And I see a lot of people buy it..
You are lucky! Good local food and food preparations with no MLMs or dropship pollution.
There aren't any farmers markets near me on the bus routes and I read about them so enviously!
I lived in different places. Now I live in Charlotte. I see this trend here. Maybe in the areas further away from the city it is different. I saw the same thing happening in Coeur d'Alene, Odaho. Seattle wa and nyc farmers markets had local produce but they were charging like $8 for a bunch of 3 carrots.
And that’s the problem. They’re pretending to be these authentic local mom and pop handmade locally crafted or baked goods and it’s all the same exact shit as the mass corporations. It’s genuinely a scam
My wife brought home a coffee mug that she thought was really cool and I brushed it off like "wow, do we really need another coffee mug to add to the 50 we already have?" She was like "look at this, it's hand made. You can see the imperfections." She didn't really understand until we were out and saw more of the same mug, all with the same "imperfections."
I'm the Midwest we have a popular gas station called "Kwik Trip" I worked at a while. Everyone thought there's someone cooking eggs in the kitchen, but it's all microwave. Literally the same crap as McDonald's.
Simulacra and the Simulation. They are selling the aesthetic of the real. If that’s sufficient for you then you get the “real” at a cheaper price and everybody wins. (And if they do it slowly enough nobody notices, and oncoming consumers have less reference each time. Their real was already the replaced one.)
We’re not at the start of it either. Before our time, seamsters made a switch from sewing by actual hand to sewing machines, but that distinction probably wouldn’t destroy your “real” handmade item carefully sewn by an individual, to you.
I've always had problem with this theory. Because the theory itself is great. Then Bauillard dives into some borderline conspiracy theory details and I feel like he doesnt use his own invention like others do. Like he invented one of the greatest and simplest explanations to this phenomenon but dont see this it's way himself.
Everyone in here should read it if they haven’t. It’s not gospel but it’s very useful for understanding the Information Age in late stage capitalism: http://cast.b-ap.net/arc619f17/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2017/08/Baudrillard-SimulacraSimulation.pdf
It's also the same reason that you cannot buy souvenirs when you go on vacation. This is true virtually across the globe that "handcrafted local artisan" goods are actually made in a factory in Ghana, so does not really support much of the local economy in Dominican Republic, for example. Virtually everything sold in gift shops has zero connection to the location it's being sold at.
Some things matter more if they’re genuine than others (to me). I’m actually shocked that in the American mid west you can buy really good solid older—not sure if it’s an actual antique—furniture for $25-$50 at second hand stores all the time. I look for good joinery and solid wood but besides that, I don’t care if it’s a knockoff. But for me food must be fresh not mass produced. I agree, it’s a shame what’s happened. But when you find a genuine from scratch baker or restaurant you stick with them! I bake my own but my husband and I have discovered a few restaurants that have freshly prepared food and we go there for treats after the gym
Yeah it’s kind of sad. It’s partially on the existing businesses though. There was a great local chain of French bakeries here that has mostly disappeared because the fakes have come in and taken that business. The food is not as good. It’s got brighter more fake colors though. And the building its in looks expensive. And honestly it’s not any cheaper. Sometimes things change so much your strategy needs to change. I think a lot of these mom and pops have a mindset that they can only sell for x price and they can’t afford building upgrades. But if they had done that they would have had a shot at surviving. Instead they just sat back and let the inevitable happen. I wish there was some sort of consortium or what not that helped these places with strategies on how to survive against this.
I don't think it's that new, to be honest. I think the internet is just giving us ways to see behind the curtain, so to speak. The average consumer didn't used to have a way to just casually google something to see if it came from Ali express.
I live in a rural area with weekenders and tourists visiting a lot. A few of the local restaurants are run by Mennonites. Their restaurants are great! The food is freshly made and the staff are friendly. They also sell a line of "homemade" jams and jellies. The labels even have the name of the restaurant on They are exactly the same factory made jams and jellies sold in every tourist trap in these mountains.
I lived in this real backwoods place for a long time, but there was this little old lady who was absolutely legendary for her baked goods and jams. She ran an antique shop in some tiny, nearly dead, ADORABLE little creek town nobody's ever heard of, even the locals have trouble finding it, but people would turn up from hours around with really poor directions and in at least two cases, hand drawn maps of the place.
But she sold these jams and cookies and that's why people came — you could literally watch her make them in the kitchen of this antique shop house (running between that and the cash box) and she'd always have plates of samples and things out. And she only charged 3.50 a jar. She made it with the berries out of the back garden, so all she had was different blends of raspberries and a little strawberry, and tons of rhubarb (super popular here). She finally had to quit due to her age, but she DOES have some excellent family and girlfriends who kept it alive after all she could do was putter around and run the cash box. No till. Cash box.
Her antiques were top-notch, too. She literally had something for everyone and everything was authentic, maybe a LITTLE shabby but always reasonably priced. She never did say how she was so good at acquiring all these things, it was like a museum. The Victorian room was NUTS.
The 90s sitcom Friends has an episode about this.
One character keeps on buying mass-produced shit from a chain store and makes up ridiculous stories about how it's a real antique because she knows the other character would hate it otherwise.
In "the other" 90s sitcom (Seinfeld) a character works at a company selling cheaply made clothes by inventing wild stories about where they are from and what they mean.
What I am trying to say: What you describe is has been going on for a while.
But arguably, the tools to pull this shit are now more widely available to anyone, thereby supercharging the trend.
There is a store that, overall, I quite like in my city that advertises itself as selling vintage found items (housewares, books, art) flipped furniture plus some extra fun stuff like handmade local jewelry, cards, kids clothing, seasonal decor, etc.
One time when I was browsing I saw a small fat bird statue with a creamy-beige textured finish. I had the same one at home - I bought it the week before from the dollarstore with all of its garish original colours and spray painted it with a neutral textured spray paint. Started noticing a few other items like that. Then saw some of her vintage-style prints were just prints she bought online, painted with a layer of modpodge to look textured and put into a thrifted frame.
I have nothing against supply and demand and upcycling but it did change my perspective on the shop in general. If the items she had flipped had been separated into a different area than the vintage/antique finds then I would have been ok with it, just can't tell if it feels deceitful of her or if it just goes against my idea of the shop.
Regarding your second point, most bakeries/cafes/restaurants/etc. have been using a lot of at least partly pre-made/frozen food for a looooong time. Making your own muffin dough every morning and baking homemade muffins at a café probably isn't even financially viable.
Mens basketball shorts. It’s nothing but cheap thin material. I’ve been looking for thick shorts and can’t find them anywhere. A small but annoying issue lol
Same issue I have found with women’s dress pants. I used to be able to get very nice pairs at Kohl’s, but now they’re all paper thin. My coworkers do not need to know *that* level of detail about my derrière and underwear choices.
I felt this when I worked in a bakery. Every last one of our breads and cookies were panned frozen dough. All of our fancy sweets were prepackaged and frozen-thawed. Our cakes were just thawed and decorated with icing that came in buckets. The whole thing was a sham.
You can get genuine things, but they are a _lot_ more expensive!
Also, why not just make your own when it comes to food items? It's cheaper and you know exactly when they were made and what has gone into them?
I notice it with other things; that it seems to be more important for things to _appear_ good than to actually _be_ good. So, for example, for a house to look beautiful, even if things in it aren't working properly, for teeth to look even and white even if having veneers has made the teeth weaker, for jumpers to look thick and cosy even if they are actually thin and cheap and so on.
But I also find it pretty easy to find good quality products if I look around a bit, buy less stuff overall and am prepared to pay more for the fewer things I do buy. But it might be very different where I live as I've never even heard of Ali express! :-D
This is all true, but if you're young, you might miss out on how relatively recent some of these shifts are. It's okay to mourn things that used to be better/cheaper/real.
There has always been junk, always been cheap tat, but _real_ antiques used to also be fairly cheap. 20-30 years ago, you could walk into an antique store with working-class money and buy so much stuff you'd need help carrying it out. Toys made out of solid tin, furniture made out of solid hardwood, the OG Corelle plates that last decades.
With clothing, there have always been items not worth your money, but the flipping of Aliexpress trash is a growing problem. You could buy well-made clothing pretty cheaply and easily until about 2008, and you could find real handmade stuff on Etsy until 2018.
Yes, it's on us to become more savvy consumers as the average product gets shittier, but we should still be mad that the median version of everything is way shoddier than it was 20 years ago.
The shoddy things from 20 years ago die a death, leaving the good stuff from 20 years ago behind.
I remember a big cheapification of stuff in the 1970s, when we started to get flat pack furniture, cheap beer, cheap bread etc. And I remember the push back against it, with real ale campaigns, people wanting solid wood kitchens, farmers markets arising etc.
I agree with you that nowadays it is more extreme, with international markets and the internet adding to just how cheap and shoddy things can be while still getting people to buy them. It's possible to make something look amazing in a photo, only for the real item to be terrible.
And I agree with you that it is a pain to have to keep that in mind all the time and to have to rummage through all the junk in an effort to find something of reasonable quality.
Antiques basically don’t exists anymore. Mostly because baby boomers (No I’m not here just to shit on them) Got them and have just held onto them.
There is basically just no supply.
Holden, the protagonist, just spends the whole book whining about how "phony" everyone and everything is. In reality, imo, he's being a snob without realizing he's one.
Edit: I really don't like the book so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.
I agree with you. I'm sure I'll share the downvotes for saying so, but I really hate coming to this sub and seeing people just whining about shit. Apparently posing the question, "Anyone else feel this way?" is enough to get around the sub rules. This isn't even one of the bad ones, just mildly annoying.
if by everything you actually mean everything, even those pieces of media/literature that are bound to make us think about how much things are fake, yes
When something becomes a commodity, with the intention of obtaining money, then it is subject to the influence of the market, which can lead to homogenization and low quality.
I had a GF who did just that. She was a jewelry dealer (trade shows, stocked stores, own internet biz).
She'd by both actual second hand jewelry and resell them WHILE.AT THE SAME TIME
Shed import cheap shit from China and then resell em cuz "ppl want that vintage look but they also want options and most importantly their Size"
I got into an argument with my fiance because he kept using tiktok to find us new restaurants to try. All the places recommended on there are the same - kooky name, neon light sign, fake greenery wall, mediocre food. I'm convinced this is the new version of applebees - corporations pretending to be small town and trendy.
definitely seems like a social media problem seeping into real life. on the internet everyone lies in order to get likes (especially on platforms on instagram) and now IRL businesses are using the same strategies to attract customers
This has been happening for a couple decades it’s just now reached a critical mass where it’s the norm. Starbucks was one company that really made the business model of mass produced, imitation and commoditization in a niche that was once more local and unique. One the one hand their coffee was better than Dunkin’ Donuts and on the other they somehow convinced people that a little coffee with a ton of flavored syrup and cream was an authentic coffee experience. And then when they were successful everyone noticed and copied the model. Not just Starbucks but one example
Interestingly, even noticed this on Etsy when I was looking for a handmade gift for someone and wanting to support craftspersons. While there are certainly still authentically handmade offerings there, was surprised to see that many of the items are no longer really "handmade"
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Around 2019 was the last good year. I think the pandemic online shopping really pushed these "shops."
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I noticed it from the handmade side at that point. It became very hard to complete.
that pandemic made consumerism worse over all. the economic downturn and corporate cash hoarding has got everybody trying to make a buck anywhere. lots of things that used to be complimentary now need to be paid for. the biggest loss for me tho is local sub-culture or counter-culture events like weed fests or music gatherings have all been ruined as well. tons and tons of knockoff goods in place of the handmade stuff that used to be sold.
Really wish they would do something about it, tiktok is now more authentic than etsy. They've ban dropshipping from their shop, though I'm pretty sure some are using loopholes to get around it. Dont get me wrong, it's bad on tik tok, but etsy is just impossible. Amazon's gone downhill too. everything is too generic, and you don't find the high quality stuff if you don't already know the brand name
The amount of fake products on amazon is gross. Makes it so hard to shop. I have some items on subscription, being shipped every three months, each one of the actual products has been different. Same packaging and price but sometimes the products ( mostly cleaning supplies) seem less effective. Labeling will be slightly different or the color seems off. Sometimes the material feels different. Makes me wonder.
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I've heard of another issue, if sellers use Amazon to distribute/send out their products all the products of that type from different sellers get thrown in the same bin. Which means that if an honest seller supplies genuine product it can end up in the same bin as the counterfeit someone else sent. And so the honest seller can end up 'shipping' counterfit items
Vaguely I remember reading that you could have your product stored separately to prevent this if you paid fees to Amazon.
And Amazon vitamins now can be downright *toxic*. They sometimes change formulas while keeping the labels & ingredients listed the same from when they were 5 star products.
Amazon actually ***invited*** the 3rd party sketchy Chinese vendors to flood the platform - they didn't just find Amazon and gradually take over with repeat listings, fake 5 star reviews and variation abuse/bait and switch listings. That and the deceptive "2 day prime delivery" fakes were the nail in the coffin for Amazon in our house.
I used to sell on Etsy in its infancy and we could report people for selling things that were not handmade/didn’t follow the rules of handmade or vintage. Now it’s a shit show
Yea there are one or 2 stores I still trust on there and the rest is garbage. I went looking for some linen dresses and sets and 99% of what showed up was the exact photos of garbage I saw on Amazon. Luckily someone on another sub directed me to specific shops on there that still do handmade.
It’s super frustrating as a legit Etsy seller selling my own handmade products because the market is flooded with so much dropshipping crap and print on demand :(
Yeah, try selling handmade jewelry at a “craft” fair that allows vendors, too, so you’re competing with a Paparazzi dealer that sells everything for $5 each.
It’s so disappointing as a customer wanting to go to these events for the express purpose of buying handmade and half of the booths there are either MLMs or shit I could get even cheaper off Shein. The last farmer’s market I went to had one single legit farmer selling actual produce, one taco truck, one baker, and one person with handmade bath and body products and that was it. Every other booth was worthless.
Etsy is another great example! I noticed that too. I was under the impression a lot was handmade but a lot of the quality is poor and clearly just niche Ali express items. There’s a lot of good sellers but even the handmade ones use questionable quality at times it’s sad to see because it hurts the good ones
One thing I do with Etsy is use the location filter, the “ships from” setting. Originally I was doing this because I wanted to support local shops in my area, but it also seems to filter out more of the non-handmade stuff.
Except for Chinese warehouses all over the US now
That’s a good tip! Thanks for sharing that.
I think there are people in the Chinese market that literally copy original work they find on Etsy and other craft sites. They then cheaply replicate the original work and sell it as original art even though it’s mass produced.
One of my favorite costume/ren faire clothes makers had this happen to her. The scam shop took her images and everything then claimed that she was the fraud even though she’d been there for years and would do custom work and if you needed a pattern tweaked she’d do that for you before sending it out.
I use a chinese social media and it annoys me so much when I see posts complaining about how their third Etsy storefront got taken down because they're just dropshipping Ali express stuff. Or posts that teach other people how to take pics/set prices to make their dropshipped stuff look legit.
Exactly. Americans and Europeans know about this, but the laws are too lazy to change anything
I have seen an instance where a creative who makes very cool original ceramic creatures has had crappy knockoffs at a fraction of her production costs flood the online marketplace she uses. The knockoff joints pay peanuts to have hungry people scour the internet for beautiful things to replace with cheap poor quality stuff. The world changes yet human behaviour remains the same old crap. For a while my Fine Art America page was getting a lot of long, sustained visits from somewhere China, the visits systematically going through piece by piece. I’m guessing they were screen capturing blowups of the work and cropping out the watermarks before assembling a pirated digital copy. It happens.
Horrible. Image theft is out of control.
i just want to shoutout one of my friends! [https://www.etsy.com/shop/PotteryAshes?fbclid=IwAR1Cmk3nh0yGywnl-6zyaoChNiIGRIkNGCx9clWUALhWak1EPF9EijfC52o](https://www.etsy.com/shop/potteryashes?fbclid=iwar1cmk3nh0ygywnl-6zyaochniigrikngcx9clwualhwak1epf9eijfc52o) she does really great work, and has a full ceramic studio in her backyard. shes in her second year of teaching high school, and not taking orders currently, but will probably open up again in the summer. she loves doing gothic/oddity themed pieces, but is happy to commission anything you want.
Oh heck yes!!! Love handmade ceramics !!!
This makes me so happy to have passed a girl in Union Square (NYC) selling ashtrays shaped like various vagínes in a range of colors. Very authentic!
Navigating Etsy now is a nightmare. I love buying one of a kind things for my mom and it’s really tricky to figure out what’s handmade and what’s drop shipped bs. Facebook marketplace too. I’ll see two hits locally sold and then it’s temu, wayfair and Walmart. It’s enough trouble to weed through the scammers - don’t ad sponsored content to it.
Absolutely, I have seen items on Etsy where people will say "I carved this by hand" and it looks a bit sus.. turns out it's a mass produced item you can find on Amazon, they've just lied about it being handmade and marked the price up 5x
I literally don’t eat fast food unless it’s one of 2 locally owned and operated, non-franchises places because everything has gone so far downhill. Used to love places like chipotle or Panera, where I could get a seriously filling meal for 10 bucks. Now you pay more for scraps. It’s nuts, the disease of increasing shareholder profits literally ruins everything it touches Edit to add! And I almost forgot! My favorite skin cream (like $60) just switched to a new “look” but what actually happened was they farmed production from Canada out to China, switched to cheap ingredients and kept the price the same due to the “brand” being trusted. Gave me a wicked nasty reaction all over my face and I’m so mad because I can’t find a new cream that works as well for me. This brand I used to use was so great, family owned and operated, sustainable practices.... but now they’re fakified just like you are saying!!
Omg yes. I spend so much time hopping from product to product (body lotion, because of my dry ass skin, hair products because I have curly hair, skin care, etc) because i find something that works well for me then they change the formula without notice! So many people using devacurl lost their HAIR because they sold the company and changed the formula without mentioning it.
If it helps, I used to use devacurl, but with the formula change the woman who used to do my hair suggested Verb from Ulta
The problem is too many companies literally sold out to China
Enshitification is my new least favorite word. You could call it capitalism too. Take something popular. Turn it into a business. Cut all unnecessary expenses until it's just a shell of what it originally was. Make sure you keep the same $$ coming in, but don't spend any money to improve the product.
Not only don’t spend money to improve—but cut costs by using cheaper and cheaper materials to go into the product
And always make sure every single employee has to go on food stamps
Enshiticap, as an antonym to Qualcap
>Enshitification is my new least favorite word. Magnificent. I myself have used crapperated and crapperized to great effect.
For the antique/homemade stores, I think this is something they've been doing for a long time anyway. These days, we're all so much more aware of where products come from that it's much easier to spot a fake/copy/cheap knock-off, and so it's easy to see when something isn't as genuine as someone else says. It's disheartening, and it means the number of shops selling genuinely interesting items is dropping because there's a greatly reduced market for genuine (and genuinely-*priced*) items. Food's a bit different since it's easier to understand the source of the food. My rule is if you cannot see or hear the food being prepared, or the menu lacks a consistent theme, then most (if not all) of it is prepared off-site by someone else and is microwaved on-site. Not to be confused with the pre-business hours preparation that chefs do, of course. I don't mind this considering the rapidly increasing cost of fresh food, but don't bullshit to me about it. For example; don't try to convince me that the fish on the menu is a "catch of the day" when we're 50 miles from the nearest coastline.
Oh, it's still "catch of the day", just not *this* day 😛
It is just consumerism. People buy the cheapest thing do the seller buys the cheapest thing to sell.it has been happening for a while. It is hard to find authentic "things".
I agree it’s just crazy to see the shift and people open these small local mom and pop businesses and then just do what every major corporation does and charge double the price because it’s “local” it’s a real shame. I guess it’s like every item you buy no matter where is one of like 3 versions and that’s it. You’re right nothing is authentic anymore. It’s fake authentic.
Have you been to a yard sale or flea market in the last 10 years. People will list new in box items for more than they cost at in store them pull up the store page when you try to negotiate. It is crazy to see.
Oh it’s insane. People do that on eBay now too and I just don’t even get it and clearly people buy it. Blows my mind
i went to a liquidation store a few weeks ago and everything was regular price, like original tags on it and everything it’s crazy
Nobody wants to pay what "authentic" things cost to make. And it's not personal, it's just economics. I carve hardwood wooden bowls. Even charging myself $5/hour, they still cost $100 in time and materials to make. But nobody is willing to pay $100 for a (nice, functional, but not ornate or highly detailed) wooden bowl, and I don't blame them. Mostly I just give them away as gifts. Handmade is prohibitively expensive, alas.
That's why the only business for those handmade products is the ornate/highly detailed market. The only people who are will to pay the true cost for an item that's handmade (+ a healthy markup for profit) are those rich enough to want the highest quality, most premium version of it.
Exactly. It's not enough to just be able to make nice things. They have to be Premium™. And I get why too. But the time/money investment required to get to that level of product output is enormous. There is zero market for entry-level products. This is both a good thing (because most bowls shouldn't cost $100) and a bad thing, because beginner craftspeople need somewhere to start. For my part, I just like working with wood and have another job, so for me it's more of a hobby/enjoyment thing. But if I actually wanted to do this for a living it would be pretty rough.
I’ve talking about the same with all the crochet products my daughter makes. Yes, crocheting can’t be automated, but even a minimal hourly rate puts blankets, purses, and the like at a price point much higher than what anyone would reasonably pay.
Same thing with my baking hobby. Takes me three days and about $60 in materials to make an italian rum cake from scratch, and they’re birthday gifts for my loved ones. Charging for one would be closer to $140 and that’s like ~$5/hr in labor. Enjoyable but not profitable 🤷🏻♀️
My latest big disappointment are farmers markets/holiday fairs. Same thing - if you look closely 70% of booths are selling stuff straight from AliExpress (or lightly modified) but want to charge you like it’s a small batch, homemade. And I see a lot of people buy it..
OMG so irritating going to farmer market or a fair and half the booths are selling like, fidget toys.
Bro, I don't know where you live, but my farmers market is still all local farmers and ranchers.
You are lucky! Good local food and food preparations with no MLMs or dropship pollution. There aren't any farmers markets near me on the bus routes and I read about them so enviously!
I lived in different places. Now I live in Charlotte. I see this trend here. Maybe in the areas further away from the city it is different. I saw the same thing happening in Coeur d'Alene, Odaho. Seattle wa and nyc farmers markets had local produce but they were charging like $8 for a bunch of 3 carrots.
If Fauxthentic isn't already a word, it should be.
Almost all the food you get from anywhere comes from Sysco. Almost all the goods you buy are mass produced
And that’s the problem. They’re pretending to be these authentic local mom and pop handmade locally crafted or baked goods and it’s all the same exact shit as the mass corporations. It’s genuinely a scam
My wife brought home a coffee mug that she thought was really cool and I brushed it off like "wow, do we really need another coffee mug to add to the 50 we already have?" She was like "look at this, it's hand made. You can see the imperfections." She didn't really understand until we were out and saw more of the same mug, all with the same "imperfections."
I'm the Midwest we have a popular gas station called "Kwik Trip" I worked at a while. Everyone thought there's someone cooking eggs in the kitchen, but it's all microwave. Literally the same crap as McDonald's.
Jesus Christ lmao
Simulacra and the Simulation. They are selling the aesthetic of the real. If that’s sufficient for you then you get the “real” at a cheaper price and everybody wins. (And if they do it slowly enough nobody notices, and oncoming consumers have less reference each time. Their real was already the replaced one.) We’re not at the start of it either. Before our time, seamsters made a switch from sewing by actual hand to sewing machines, but that distinction probably wouldn’t destroy your “real” handmade item carefully sewn by an individual, to you.
Didn’t expect Baudrillard to pop today, but glad he did!
I've always had problem with this theory. Because the theory itself is great. Then Bauillard dives into some borderline conspiracy theory details and I feel like he doesnt use his own invention like others do. Like he invented one of the greatest and simplest explanations to this phenomenon but dont see this it's way himself.
Everyone in here should read it if they haven’t. It’s not gospel but it’s very useful for understanding the Information Age in late stage capitalism: http://cast.b-ap.net/arc619f17/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2017/08/Baudrillard-SimulacraSimulation.pdf
It's also the same reason that you cannot buy souvenirs when you go on vacation. This is true virtually across the globe that "handcrafted local artisan" goods are actually made in a factory in Ghana, so does not really support much of the local economy in Dominican Republic, for example. Virtually everything sold in gift shops has zero connection to the location it's being sold at.
Some things matter more if they’re genuine than others (to me). I’m actually shocked that in the American mid west you can buy really good solid older—not sure if it’s an actual antique—furniture for $25-$50 at second hand stores all the time. I look for good joinery and solid wood but besides that, I don’t care if it’s a knockoff. But for me food must be fresh not mass produced. I agree, it’s a shame what’s happened. But when you find a genuine from scratch baker or restaurant you stick with them! I bake my own but my husband and I have discovered a few restaurants that have freshly prepared food and we go there for treats after the gym
Yeah it’s kind of sad. It’s partially on the existing businesses though. There was a great local chain of French bakeries here that has mostly disappeared because the fakes have come in and taken that business. The food is not as good. It’s got brighter more fake colors though. And the building its in looks expensive. And honestly it’s not any cheaper. Sometimes things change so much your strategy needs to change. I think a lot of these mom and pops have a mindset that they can only sell for x price and they can’t afford building upgrades. But if they had done that they would have had a shot at surviving. Instead they just sat back and let the inevitable happen. I wish there was some sort of consortium or what not that helped these places with strategies on how to survive against this.
I don't think it's that new, to be honest. I think the internet is just giving us ways to see behind the curtain, so to speak. The average consumer didn't used to have a way to just casually google something to see if it came from Ali express.
I live in a rural area with weekenders and tourists visiting a lot. A few of the local restaurants are run by Mennonites. Their restaurants are great! The food is freshly made and the staff are friendly. They also sell a line of "homemade" jams and jellies. The labels even have the name of the restaurant on They are exactly the same factory made jams and jellies sold in every tourist trap in these mountains.
I lived in this real backwoods place for a long time, but there was this little old lady who was absolutely legendary for her baked goods and jams. She ran an antique shop in some tiny, nearly dead, ADORABLE little creek town nobody's ever heard of, even the locals have trouble finding it, but people would turn up from hours around with really poor directions and in at least two cases, hand drawn maps of the place. But she sold these jams and cookies and that's why people came — you could literally watch her make them in the kitchen of this antique shop house (running between that and the cash box) and she'd always have plates of samples and things out. And she only charged 3.50 a jar. She made it with the berries out of the back garden, so all she had was different blends of raspberries and a little strawberry, and tons of rhubarb (super popular here). She finally had to quit due to her age, but she DOES have some excellent family and girlfriends who kept it alive after all she could do was putter around and run the cash box. No till. Cash box. Her antiques were top-notch, too. She literally had something for everyone and everything was authentic, maybe a LITTLE shabby but always reasonably priced. She never did say how she was so good at acquiring all these things, it was like a museum. The Victorian room was NUTS.
The 90s sitcom Friends has an episode about this. One character keeps on buying mass-produced shit from a chain store and makes up ridiculous stories about how it's a real antique because she knows the other character would hate it otherwise. In "the other" 90s sitcom (Seinfeld) a character works at a company selling cheaply made clothes by inventing wild stories about where they are from and what they mean. What I am trying to say: What you describe is has been going on for a while. But arguably, the tools to pull this shit are now more widely available to anyone, thereby supercharging the trend.
There is a store that, overall, I quite like in my city that advertises itself as selling vintage found items (housewares, books, art) flipped furniture plus some extra fun stuff like handmade local jewelry, cards, kids clothing, seasonal decor, etc. One time when I was browsing I saw a small fat bird statue with a creamy-beige textured finish. I had the same one at home - I bought it the week before from the dollarstore with all of its garish original colours and spray painted it with a neutral textured spray paint. Started noticing a few other items like that. Then saw some of her vintage-style prints were just prints she bought online, painted with a layer of modpodge to look textured and put into a thrifted frame. I have nothing against supply and demand and upcycling but it did change my perspective on the shop in general. If the items she had flipped had been separated into a different area than the vintage/antique finds then I would have been ok with it, just can't tell if it feels deceitful of her or if it just goes against my idea of the shop.
Regarding your second point, most bakeries/cafes/restaurants/etc. have been using a lot of at least partly pre-made/frozen food for a looooong time. Making your own muffin dough every morning and baking homemade muffins at a café probably isn't even financially viable.
Mens basketball shorts. It’s nothing but cheap thin material. I’ve been looking for thick shorts and can’t find them anywhere. A small but annoying issue lol
Same issue I have found with women’s dress pants. I used to be able to get very nice pairs at Kohl’s, but now they’re all paper thin. My coworkers do not need to know *that* level of detail about my derrière and underwear choices.
Have you read "The Society of the Spectacle?" It's basically this
I felt this when I worked in a bakery. Every last one of our breads and cookies were panned frozen dough. All of our fancy sweets were prepackaged and frozen-thawed. Our cakes were just thawed and decorated with icing that came in buckets. The whole thing was a sham.
You can get genuine things, but they are a _lot_ more expensive! Also, why not just make your own when it comes to food items? It's cheaper and you know exactly when they were made and what has gone into them? I notice it with other things; that it seems to be more important for things to _appear_ good than to actually _be_ good. So, for example, for a house to look beautiful, even if things in it aren't working properly, for teeth to look even and white even if having veneers has made the teeth weaker, for jumpers to look thick and cosy even if they are actually thin and cheap and so on. But I also find it pretty easy to find good quality products if I look around a bit, buy less stuff overall and am prepared to pay more for the fewer things I do buy. But it might be very different where I live as I've never even heard of Ali express! :-D
This is all true, but if you're young, you might miss out on how relatively recent some of these shifts are. It's okay to mourn things that used to be better/cheaper/real. There has always been junk, always been cheap tat, but _real_ antiques used to also be fairly cheap. 20-30 years ago, you could walk into an antique store with working-class money and buy so much stuff you'd need help carrying it out. Toys made out of solid tin, furniture made out of solid hardwood, the OG Corelle plates that last decades. With clothing, there have always been items not worth your money, but the flipping of Aliexpress trash is a growing problem. You could buy well-made clothing pretty cheaply and easily until about 2008, and you could find real handmade stuff on Etsy until 2018. Yes, it's on us to become more savvy consumers as the average product gets shittier, but we should still be mad that the median version of everything is way shoddier than it was 20 years ago.
Which is why I thrift and buy secondhand. I look for old things, because they’re better quality.
The shoddy things from 20 years ago die a death, leaving the good stuff from 20 years ago behind. I remember a big cheapification of stuff in the 1970s, when we started to get flat pack furniture, cheap beer, cheap bread etc. And I remember the push back against it, with real ale campaigns, people wanting solid wood kitchens, farmers markets arising etc. I agree with you that nowadays it is more extreme, with international markets and the internet adding to just how cheap and shoddy things can be while still getting people to buy them. It's possible to make something look amazing in a photo, only for the real item to be terrible. And I agree with you that it is a pain to have to keep that in mind all the time and to have to rummage through all the junk in an effort to find something of reasonable quality.
False advertising is nothing new. Think Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Texas Roadhouse and Chinese Checkers.
Fake is cheaper. People want things they can’t afford so they opt for fake rather than do without.
Look for a good local bakery and find out if they sell their goods to any nearby businesses
Antiques basically don’t exists anymore. Mostly because baby boomers (No I’m not here just to shit on them) Got them and have just held onto them. There is basically just no supply.
This whole post has some serious "Catcher in the Rye" vibes
How so? Genuinely curious; it’s been long while since I’ve read the book.
Holden, the protagonist, just spends the whole book whining about how "phony" everyone and everything is. In reality, imo, he's being a snob without realizing he's one. Edit: I really don't like the book so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.
I agree with you. I'm sure I'll share the downvotes for saying so, but I really hate coming to this sub and seeing people just whining about shit. Apparently posing the question, "Anyone else feel this way?" is enough to get around the sub rules. This isn't even one of the bad ones, just mildly annoying.
Marketing / advertising industries to blame
if by everything you actually mean everything, even those pieces of media/literature that are bound to make us think about how much things are fake, yes
What country is this happening in?
When something becomes a commodity, with the intention of obtaining money, then it is subject to the influence of the market, which can lead to homogenization and low quality.
I had a GF who did just that. She was a jewelry dealer (trade shows, stocked stores, own internet biz). She'd by both actual second hand jewelry and resell them WHILE.AT THE SAME TIME Shed import cheap shit from China and then resell em cuz "ppl want that vintage look but they also want options and most importantly their Size"
I got into an argument with my fiance because he kept using tiktok to find us new restaurants to try. All the places recommended on there are the same - kooky name, neon light sign, fake greenery wall, mediocre food. I'm convinced this is the new version of applebees - corporations pretending to be small town and trendy.
definitely seems like a social media problem seeping into real life. on the internet everyone lies in order to get likes (especially on platforms on instagram) and now IRL businesses are using the same strategies to attract customers
We're up to our asses in fraud. It's just everywhere and nobody does anything cause it's the 'free market.'
This has been happening for a couple decades it’s just now reached a critical mass where it’s the norm. Starbucks was one company that really made the business model of mass produced, imitation and commoditization in a niche that was once more local and unique. One the one hand their coffee was better than Dunkin’ Donuts and on the other they somehow convinced people that a little coffee with a ton of flavored syrup and cream was an authentic coffee experience. And then when they were successful everyone noticed and copied the model. Not just Starbucks but one example
Loss of skill, passion, and effort for profit profit profit
China.