I now throw public festivals and it happens in meatspace too if you don’t actively prevent it. One minute that brand new themed festival is all vendors making cool clocks out of old vinyl, local glassblowers, local apiarists.
Three years later there are 18 guys selling the same glass bongs from Temu.
I see the same thing from "handmade trinkets" in tourist areas when I travel. All drop-shipped crap that you see multiple times, especially if you go to multiple cities.
Now I just find a fridge magnet and not care where it's made.
Funny enough I’ve actually just started ordering those on Amazon or AliExpress. What’s the difference if I get the Florida keys magnet actually in the Florida Keys or online if either way it’s coming to me from China?
(I mostly try to get something handmade or locally made if possible, in the rare instances, I buy trinkets, which is pretty much just that I buy a refrigerator magnet from every city I take my RV to. But every now and then yeah there was nothing but the Alibaba stuff.)
Isn't that just the nature of capitalism? When a need is identified people rush to fill it as cheaply as possible.
It sucks that it drains the soul out of things, and that mass produced cheap variants can crush anyone trying to make quality things by hand.
On the upside I can get shitty custom art (If I need a victorian painting of my dog or something) for like $20. That would have been hundreds a few years ago, and maybe thousands 20+ years ago.
I was told that this was what happened to Etsy.
When it first came out, people with real skills, sold real, handmade goods, at fairly high prices.
Then, the mass-produced knockoffs flooded the site, priced way-lo.
The legit stuff couldn't keep up; in price or in scale.
I see this happening everywhere.