How do people get over enshittification?
Enshittificiation, or in my own words, "how everything starts to suck on purpose", has somewhat come to rule my life, and thus, ruin my life.
An example I'm thinking about right now is socks. I bought a certain pair of socks probably ten years ago now. I liked them and took for granted that I would be able to purchase this sock or type of sock at any given time. Fast-forward ten years, and the sock is gone. And it feels like no other sock compares.
What's really going on in my mind is, "I know there is better out there, and this is just a choice of the manufacturer to be greedy". Except in this circumstance, the "there" is my fantasy land of the past.
So I ask you all, how do you move on from this? Because what happens for me is I just don't buy new socks, and instead hold on to my tatters (most of them still work decently, but nowhere near as well as they used to). I have tried randomly buying socks to get over my fear of failure (choosing the wrong socks and wasting money and contributing to global waste and contributing to materialism and general clutter in my house, etc.); But this just furthers the issue because I confirm that the other socks are shit and this seems like a fruitless endeavor, as such, in addition to going against my morals and values I listed above.
Thank you for any advice or help!
*EDIT
Thank you all for a rousing discussion, as usual.
Here are some of my Major Takeaways:
- Mend and Repair
- Buy local/artisinal
- Research new brands and check my assumptions since the last time I checked on something.
- Fight it - buy vintage, see also: repair and mend.
- Custom/Bespoke
- Be thankful for the things that I do find that fit my criteria, and buy multiples of those.
- Carpe diem - when I find something good really seize the moment and indulge. (This is to combat over analysis paralysis that others shared).
- Accept that some of this is the "New Normal" (This is to reduce my distress over the situation).
Lastly, one clarification, I'd like to add that on the subject of clothing or other comforts in particular, it is extra painful to lose something you love, like a clothing item, when you are not an "average" person. Sensory issues, body shapes, and fashion tastes can be so limiting when you are not within the bell curve, and so it is not a trivial subject to mourn the loss of something you once had, and fear that you will never find something like it again.
I spend way more time than I'd like looking for the quality I expect. It takes longer to find what I need, and I may pay more than I want to. I buy a lot less. I hate shopping so it is hard to fight the urge to just get whatever. The extra time and money will pay themselves off in satisfaction and longevity, at least so I hope.
I don't know your age, but if you grew up before fast fashion and Amazon like I did, it's easy to see how quality has deteriorated, and like you, I find it pretty frustrating. Buying less and making what you have go longer also have benefits for the environment, and (for me) the pleasure of bucking the consumption culture.
Edit: I guess to be clear, I don't get over it, I try to fight it.
Are you me? I could have written your first paragraph word for word, especially for clothing. I hate shopping for clothes with the fire of a thousand dying suns. Add on top of that sensory issues related to certain fabrics and forms of clothing, it gets exhausting having to buy new clothes. It's come to the point where when I find something I like, of the right size/texture/quality, I buy two or three of the same, even if it only comes in one colour.
I've also started looking on sites like Vinted for the old clothes I own now. I have this dress I love that is super comfortable and though it's lasted a long time, I know one day I'd have to say goodbye as it'll be impossible to repair. So I trawled Vinted for a while and found the exact same dress, in the exact same colour and size, barely worn and at a fraction of the cost. I bought it in a heartbeat and I swear if I find another example I will buy it again. I pretty much do most of my shopping for clothes on there now and just buy the same things I have now but barely worn and nearly new.
Thanks for the tip on Vinted!
Reeee, you speak my soul.
At times it seems the whole mainstream market is centered around fashion, outward appearance and the experience of shopping itself. But what matters most to me is how clothing feels on the skin, how comfortable it is to wear. Furthermore how durable it is and how easy to maintain. I feel in the absolute minority.
I know there's stores, brands, manufacturers out there that cater to these sensibilities but they tend to be in the uptown/luxury segment and I can't or don't want to spend that much. Plus just because something is expensive doesn't mean it's necessarily good. You still have to do your diligence.
Can’t have your cake and eat it too. Back in the “old days”, things were expensive. The original Levi’s $6 jeans would be almost $200 today - coincidentally about what Japanese selvedge costs. The difference was that if you didn’t have the money, you were just out of luck - there wasn’t this downscale market.
People made their own clothes - and if you want to do that today, it’s never been easier or cheaper.
I have to hard disagree about the cheaper side of making your own clothes.
Just as an example, if you were to just walk into your local fabric store (Joann):
Yes, you can just sew by hand, but you need needles (multiple because they dull, and you need different sizes for different fabrics), thread, fabric, which depending on the quality will be much more expensive as well (see mood fabrics for examples of high-quality fabrics that are "reasonably" priced. Then you will also need a pattern in your size, and vintage patterns are expensive, just like modern ones, even online if you want to buy from Joann or any other hobby store without coupons. You also need sewing scissors that are generally much sharper than standard scissors. You CANNOT use them on paper (as that will dull the blade and will destroy your fabrics), so you need regular scissors too. You also generally should not use them on thread, so you need thread snips as well. And if you have fabric that frays easily, the best thing you can do is buy special scissors for that too: pinking shears. Another thing that isn't just a nice to have is an iron. Irons are important to flatten the fabrics so your pattern cutting is accurate. They can also flatten folded patterns, and press seams to make them neater, which will help them last longer. You might also want to invest in chalk or heat-erasable ink, or something else to mark your patterns onto your fabrics, you will likely want pins to pin fabrics together so they don't move, a measuring tape to measure and see what size clothing you need because streetwear sizes and pattern sizes are not the same, nor are they even close. that's not discounting any notions like buttons or zippers or clasps you may need for a piece as well.
But if you want to do things faster, you need to invest in a machine. Then there's the time and research needed to buy a machine that fits in your budget and will work - any experienced sewist will tell you never to touch a modern Singer machine because their quality is crap. So you need to think of something else. Ideally a second hand one, so you will trawl eBay and local thrift stores. Once you find one, you need to make sure it's in good working order, and buy plenty of needles for it as well, because needles have a shelf-life of one project or around 8 hours of sewing, depending on what you're doing. Then you need bobbins, and something to clean out the underside of the bobbin case.
Sewing can absolutely be done cheaply if you want to, but you need to understand that the modern idea of sewing with a pattern on a machine with quality fabric will be expensive. Just as expensive as buying good quality clothes, if not more so, but you will get the satisfaction of knowing you have a perfectly custom/bespoke clothing piece. It will fit you perfectly, and it will last longer because you know all the seams, and you now have all the tools you need to mend your piece.
The better recommendation is to buy well-made thrifted clothes and learn how to mend your own clothes that you already have if you don't need them, if you don't plan on making sewing a hobby.
That's not to say I don't love my sewing hobby, I really do. I just also now understand what goes into it and how expensive it can be, from experience and I don't want to give anyone else the impression that it's cheaper to learn to sew and make your own clothes than it is to buy clothing at the store, because more often than not, it's not, especially when you count the hours spent working on a project as well (since time is, after all, money).
But if anyone wants to get into sewing, some good places to start are Bernadette Banner, Sew Sew Lounge, Closet Historian, Tasha could make that, and Stephanie Canada on YouTube, and sewing_for_beginners on Instagram. There is also the r/sewing discord server which is full of amazing people who are welcoming and kind, and happy to help with any questions people may have about sewing, mending, and anything else you can think of in the fiber arts/crafting world. I'm also happy to help in any way I can!
My DMs are always open, and you can find me in the r/sewing server or on discord, too. I would love to see more people learn to sew and mend their own clothes, so any support I can give is something I'm genuinely happy to!
EX: quick pricing on what you will need (and want) for hand sewing and for machine sewing using the cheapest prices on Joann.com (during a pre-black Friday sales event):
*Spool of white thread: $0.59
*Measuring Tape: $0.89
*Erasable Marking Pen $1.00
*28 Ball Head Pins: $1.19
*3" folding scissors (good for thread): $2.79
*8" Scissors (For fabric cutting): $32.99
*Second pair 8" Scissors (for pattern cutting): $4.19
*9" Pinking Shears: $21.69
*Know Me ME2073 size 8-26 pattern: $11.16
*Assorted Needle Pack: $1.19
*Cotton Fabric (4 yards to make a pair of pants and a shirt for a small size): $4.79X4: $19.16
Total before even looking at the cheapest cotton fabric: $107.67
Total with Fabric: $126.83 just to start hand sewing.
*Spool of white thread: $0.59
*Measuring Tape: $0.89
*Erasable Marking Pen $1.00
*28 Ball Head Pins: $1.19
*3" folding scissors (good for thread): $2.79
*8" Scissors (For fabric cutting): $32.99
*Second pair 8" Scissors (for pattern cutting): $4.19
*9" Pinking Shears: $21.69
*Know Me ME2073 size 8-26 pattern: $11.16
*Cotton Fabric (4 yards to make a pair of pants and a shirt for a small size): $4.79X4: $19.16
*Brother 17 stitch: $89.99
*Bobbins: $1.67
Total: $223.29 if you want to buy everything all at once from Joann with no coupons and just buying the cheapest machine and supplies, before getting into all the time it takes to practice and get things correct, and learn how to make your own clothes.
Yes, there are ways to make this cost go down, but I still really want to drive in that it's not cheap to start sewing.
I think you misunderstood what I said. I said it’s never been cheaper to sew your own clothes - as in, it’s a comparison to the past that people want so much.
Fabric is much cheaper in the industrial era than before. Needles use to be extremely valuable before industrialization meant you could buy them for less than a dollar in today’s currency. Sewing machines didn’t exist.
No doubt that buying premade today is more economical, the point is that the good old days were worse.
On rereading, I think I did misunderstand, but it's important to dispel the idea that it's cheap in general, which is what I worry other people might also read into what you're saying.
I love sewing and other crafts and fiber arts, and would love to have more friends and in general people picking these up, not just as hobbies, but as something to help them spend less money overall. It's just important to point out that it's not a cheap one-off purchase, but an investment up front, and maintenance costs as well.
I hope that makes sense.
I don't have a problem with spending big money on clothing per se. In fact I encourage it because something in contact with my skin 24/7 merits that. My problem with the luxury segment is that I don't want to pay for brand recognition, exclusivity or celebrity endorsement. I care only about the quality of the product itself. Put differently: paying more is a prerequisite to the good stuff, but it's not a guarantee. You could end up with something shoddy that also happens to be expensive.
Now there are companies out there matching my profile but I find them very hard to find. Or rather: it's strenuous to separate the wheat from the chaff, as anyone can make promises or fake reviews but there's no substituting actual long term experience with the product. In my experience that is especially true for how well fabric quality will hold up after repeated washing. Some of my favorite shirts lasted more than a decade and still felt great to wear. For certain niches (outdoor, bed sheets, etc) I have found vendors that I trust, for others I'm still looking.
I really recommend trying second hand clothing sites like Vinted, it has saved me so much time and anguish. It helps if you have something specific you want to buy in mind. If I'm just looking for an item I already own it's pretty straightforward, just trawk and hope I find what I'm looking for. I've gone to the store to try on items I liked, taken down the reference/name and checked if the same item is available on Vinted (if not immediately then some months down the line). It seems like a lot of work, but for me it's worth it. I rarely buy clothes, I'll maybe replace some of my wardrobe every 3 or 4 years and buy almost nothing in between (except funky socks).
If you're worried about waste and materialism, you should be thankful for enshittification: There's less tempting crap to buy. :)
But seriously, it's all just stuff. Buy the best stuff you can find and if that's not good enough, don't buy it. If reddit enshittifies, spend more time on Tildes or find something else to do. That not only improves your quality of life, you are also no longer contributing to the problem by consuming shit.
If you take a step back and look at the big picture, we're all just wild apes who suddenly became self-entitled to have the best socks. Just a short while ago, there weren't any socks around, not even the worst kind you can imagine.
I guess I'm not really helping here, but that's how I see it. The world doesn't owe me socks, and I'm thankful for the socks it offers me.
I mean accepting the truth of how exceptionally good the last 69’years or so has been for those of us in the affluent west is the solution. It sucks that era has ended, but all things pass away. Sometimes psychedelics can help me remember the (way) bigger picture. Also, more recently for me and controversially around here, christianity provides a useful perspective.
As a hardcore ex-Luthern atheist who is pretty adamant and vocal about the harms of organized religion, I want you to know two things:
99.9% of religion-induced societal ills come from people presuming that their moral choices should be forced upon everyone else by either indirectly or directly influencing the law. Particularly when religious teachings buck against scientific discovery. Or things like official religious holidays which shouldn't be a thing at all due to their exclusionary nature. Instead, every employer (and school for children) should be required to give sufficient time off so that everyone can celebrate as-needed regardless of denomination.
The problem being that most subtlety of these discussions does not fare well online, especially for those whom are beginning their journies.
I understand if you don't want to expand on that at all or publicly but I'm very interested to hear about Christianity and your new perspective
Imma make a post about it over xmas.
And if you forgot we also have old calendar Christmas; I'll look forward to it :)
Xmas is pretty old calendar. It dates back to people being fluent in church Latin.
Oh! My apologies I wasn't taking issue with the spelling of Xmas -- in fact i'm wearing a pendent that says ICXC right now.
I'm meant that if @NoblePath forgets to post over Gregorian Christmas they have an additional two Julian weeks to do it...
I forgot there's a whole stupid kufuffle in America over Xmas....
Are you specifically interested in NoblePath's perspective of Christianity, or are you interested in general about people's perspective of religions where it provides them with peace and comfort?
85% the former and 15% the latter when I made the reply to them.
It's less common for people to "find" Christianity these days than to be born into it or leave it, so I'm curious. There's also a well trod Evangelicism to Agnosticism to Atheism to Eastern Spirituality track as well, and the common human experience journey seems to be about finding peace and comfort wherever life affords is of us.
What's your path? 100% interested in hearing from you specifically :)
Unfortunately the only way around enshittification is paying more. Manufacturers realized that they could cut costs on their base product until it was so flimsy that it became a non-durable disposable good. Then through a boutique brand offer up-market version. Milk the price conscious consumer through repeated purchase and the privileged consumer through crazy mark ups. Call it all "inflation."
For me, the largest problem is the analysis paralysis generated by the need to sift through the sea of low quality products in order to find the quality one. I can sort by price and try to avoid the bottom results, but that only gets you so far. Additionally, there are so many fake reviews and misinformation that it can be really hard to even know which products are good anymore. I used to use resources like Consumer Reports to help me out, but it seems even those services have become degraded over time. I expect all of this to get a lot worse going forward, and I wish I had a good solution. For now I'm choosing to avoid Amazon as much as possible and shift back to shopping locally where I can. It's not a perfect solution, though, as the crunch is happening everywhere.
Amazon really exacerbates the issue. I'm fortunately enough to live in a place where I really have no need for Amazon and I got rid of Prime back in 2018. Now my online orders are for either niche hobbyist things from small storefronts. I'm fortunate to live in a city with pretty much everything I need in very close proximity.
Computer parts are an especially sore spot for me. I used to shop at places like Fry's and CompUSA, but online retailers all but killed those businesses before proceeding to enshitify (Looking at you Amazon and Newegg). Now my only real option is to order from Best Buy if I want to avoid Amazon and still have a semi local place to shop (still about an hour away from me).
Computer parts are very sore for me as well. Sure I miss the convenience, but PC component stores fill a lot of core memories for me.
OMG, the nostalgia just hit me like a truck. I'm old enough to remember the Big Blue Disk.
Hello fellow Pacific Northwesterner! :) I used to frequent RePC when we lived near Renton. My oldest son and I bought his first PC there in fact. Unfortunately we currently live far enough away to make it inconvenient to make that trek anymore. 🫤
Long shot, but does anyone else remember Rally Racers from one of those shareware compilations? It was basically Pac-Man with little race cars, and various power ups. I spent a lot of time in that game.
And DX Ball 2, but that's one I got from a relative. The theme song still plays in my head sometimes.
Honestly unsure on Rally Racers, the thing with those shareware compilations is some stuff just didn't work. I feel like that was one that I had but wouldn't launch. Screenshots don't look familiar... but I think when we were older a friend tried to make a multiplayer version of something similar.
DX Ball 2... I think it was on the demo PCs at Costco... I didn't have it at home but man between DX Ball 2 and a cheap hotdog, Costco was 10 y/o NotCoffeeTable's idea of a good time.
DX-Ball 2 actually got re-released on Steam for anyone interested in some non-abandonware nostalgia.
cc: @redwall_hp
That's wonderful, I live in Colorado now but was raised in Federal Way/Puyallup :).
There's a part of me that really wishes I could be back in that turn of the century PNW Tech Sector vibe.
I spend a lot of time at Fry's as a kid. My Dad was always doing some tech tinkering. Looking back I honestly wonder how much he spent there when I was growing up. He'd help people he knew with computers on the side so we always had spare parts and miscellaneous computer things laying around.
I do miss going in to browse the big box games that and the few times we'd get a new one and my brother and I reading the manual on the way home. That and looking at the cool renders on GPU boxes thinking how cool it would be to play games that looked that good!
Your comment makes me want to go visit a PC parts store locally. I've been meaning to go to see if I can get my old mouse repaired and eventually I want to build a replacement mid tier desktop after my big move.
I feel the opposite way. I used to spend a lot of time at Fry's as well, mostly just for fun, but I did end up buying a ton of computer stuff. It used to take up half my day, then maybe another hour or two going back if I found out I was missing some adapter or something.
Nowadays it's easier. I can just buy everything I want online. The selection is way better, it shows up at my door, and I don't have to waste hours doing shopping anymore. It might take longer to get a replacement part, but it's not active time wasting. I can do other things while waiting for the next shipment.
IMO the selection is part of the problem. Search for USB cables on Amazon and you'll get plenty of hits, but which are going to work properly when they arrive? I've also encountered problems with Amazon returns. Depending on the seller sometimes they just won't respond to support requests. At least with Best Buy I know what I'm getting in terms of customer service.
I find that very strange. For computer parts, sure both before and after you would buy from known brands? Does it matter if you buy your AMD cpu and nvidia gpu from Fry’s or Amazon?
Both Amazon and Newegg now have problems with quality control. There are many resellers that make it more difficult to tell whether you are getting the real deal. And that's just for the parts with known brands (like CPUs and the like). For things like cabling and fans you are pretty much rolling the dice.
There's also a more philosophical argument about supporting their race to the bottom business model, and how it demolishes competition in favor of a crappier product.
I wouldn’t really buy from resellers on Amazon, and for big name pc parts brands you don’t have to. They all sell direct to begin with.
Even if you do get a counterfeit, Amazon has the best return policy in the industry.
I disagree. I have found their returns to be sometimes painless, other times maddening.
Really? I’ve probably returned 30 things this year and I’ve never even talked to a human. Three button clicks and I get a QR code to show at whole foods. 30 minutes later it’s off and later that day I get the money back.
Yeah it's been hit or miss for me. I will concede that when it works, it's super smooth.
I would say learn to darn your own socks if you like them and they work for you. Make, Do, and Mend is the answer to the enshittification and fast fashion-ification of clothing and many other things. Learn how to fix your own clothes in ways that are interesting or invisible so you can keep what you own as long as possible before it goes to the landfill.
I haven't gotten the hang of darning yet, but I do personally mend my own and Mr. Tired's clothes myself whenever I can, and I sew my own clothes when I feel like something new, aside from things you just can't make like compression socks.
I recently sat next to someone knitting socks and it looked amazing. Make do mend!
I will forever be in awe of knitters who can make socks. I am not good at short rows or gussets, so I am hopeless when it comes to sock making lol.
I don't think it can be overstated just how big a factor converging business interests have become in not just retail textile, but every single industry.
We're at the point where a considerable chunk of manufacturing, distribution and retail across most of the US and world is influenced by the half a dozen institutional investors. The biggest of them being Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street and FMR LLC.
Hell, I just had half an hour free now and whiped up some interesting stats straight from the NASDAQ website.
As a materials supplyer, you should reserve premium prices for premium product. Manufacturing should be diversified for every market segment. You need to distribute across the most effective channels and retailers cater to their customers budget and expectations. And if you fail at any one of these areas, the supply chain should shift in favour of the competition.
But you have a reality where not just every step of the chain is owned but the same people, and not just alternative service provider, but every possible chain across every industry. Every consumer good jumped the same shrinkflation/enshittification trends to the same insane degrees with no viable alternative to compete. Every major tech company shed staff in the thousands so few competeting organizations open to absorb all that talent. Cosolodated property. Every startup funded and mentored by the same VCs. Both political parties funded by the same firms with all politicians being clients.
The reason it feels every company is the same company is because they probably are. The reason private equity is obsessed with IP and brands is because they know there is considerable lag before the dip in quality results in a dip in trust. But by then, the market is effectively cornered.
And the cherry on top is that the private equity firms are clients and shareholders of each other. Musk's everything company already exists and they own a big chunk of Tesla and probably X too.
I'm all for minimizing risk, but the reason free market economics worked so well was competition. The risk of failure, new innovations and outdated products kept industry moving forward. These companies have put themselves into a no-loose situation and that means they have no reason to change course. What are you going to do? Take your business to the same owners next door?
Myself: learning about / remember a much longer time line makes me less angry about the current bumps.
A long time ago of 100 years ago people had two or three sets of clothes forever. Fabric was expensive and clothing was expensive. What do we have these days that we can only afford two or three sets of? Maybe our electronic devices?
Even decades ago the socks lasted longer because we paid a lot more for them
So I made peace and try to find kinds of stuff that will last longer but cost more, and buy those.
For socks I've come to the conclusion that I don't like Darn Tough and future pairs will be Grip6. For less personal items I look for good quality articles from thrift. If that feels a bit icky try Patagonia Worn Wear. Quality things still exist but they feel expensive only because how insanely cheap everything else became. Example. Instead of buying new formal wear recently I've bought vintage real silk haori jackets to go with standard pieces I already own. Ditto quality leather bag I got for dirt cheap with price tag still attached.
If used still feels icky then pay full price for brands / workshops known for quality -- this strategy requires a lot more homework though and brands get bought up and enshittified all the time.
Essentially, the only winning move is not to play.
I don't have a great answer for you, in fact I've had the exact issue with Hanes socks. I can only recommend trying goldtoe brand (can find at Walmart) as that's what I've found to work.
It's hard to not be nihilistic about these issues too, it feels like everything is designed to suck as much as possible.
Or to get as much info from you as possible, case in point: trying to order from Taco Bell RN and since not on a normal device, the app doesn't allow for guest checkout so gotta go through the website because reasons. Just a ton more hoops to jump through with everything for no good public reason.
I encountered the same thing with McDonald's this week! But McDonald's is even worse because you can only order through the app, and only with an account. So now I have to worry about that app tracking all sorts of stuff. ugh.
I literally just threw out a Hanes brand sock yesterday after noticing a hole in one of the heels, which has been happening a lot lately. I usually buy about 3 weeks worth of socks at a time, let them wear out until I have about 2 weeks worth remaining, then replace them all at once. This batch has worn out noticeably faster than that last one. I'm looking to switch to a higher quality brand now.
One thing I have to remind myself is that I'm pretty sure I paid a bit less for these socks than last time. This is not even accounting for inflation, so it's quite a lot less. So if I think about it, I don't feel like I'm getting ripped off. I just don't like how wasteful it seems to have such shoddy quality clothing. So I guess I will be paying more for the next batch and hoping that results in more longevity. I don't know if I'm ready to start paying $18/pair for something like Darn Tough socks yet though.
Your take just reminded me of this video I came across last year:
Why everything you buy is worse now
It's got some good talking points that line up with what you are saying.
Edit: grammar 🤷♂️
I really like the REI wool socks. A user on here recently recommended Darn Tough socks. But neither are cheap.
Darn Tough socks are very good. And you can send them back for replacements when you manage to wear through them (I've never managed this with a Darn Tough sock yet, but at least one friend, a prolific walker, has).
I know they're expensive, but they last a very long time. Best to just wait for major holiday sales at REI etc and pick up a bunch when you can get a 20%+ discount.
They used to do a sock sale at a big tent in Vermont, years ago. You could buy their missmatched odd socks with minor cosmetic issues for one dollar per sock! That was the real way to build out a sock wardrobe!
I’ve worn through quite a few darn tough socks. It’s always at the back of my heel. I have a really bony heel, and most of my shoes end up with a large divot right there. So it also depends on your foot shape. I also recommend darn tough. I finally got rid of all the socks I owned that weren’t darn tough, and I will be buying them exclusively from now on.
Glad to know I'm not the only one :(
They’re really good but they ar not as good as the smartwool phd of yore. I had the same experience as op expressed with my phd’s and have yet to find a suitable replacement. Darn toughs are also more expensive.
Unfortunately quality has a cost. People (rightfully) complain about enshittification in tech, but in most product categories, consumers consistently choose the cheaper, lower quality good. That's part of how "value" brands proliferate.
Another vote for Darn Tough and REI in general.
I bought a pair of Darn Tough based on the internet hype and at least for me and my wife (who also has some now) they do not disappoint. I don't think we're going to buy any other sock brand for a long time. Except maybe running socks, my wife still prefers her long time favorite running sock brands (feetures and bombas).
Aside from all the quality claims etc, the lack of odor is the most surprising thing to me. I can literally wear my Darn Tough socks for an entire week. Workouts, runs, and daily life. And they do not smell. I can't explain it. That alone will extend the lifetime of any garment, not to mention the marginal reduction in energy, water use, etc from not needing to launder so frequently.
Both my wife and I wear a smaller size in their full cushion hiker socks than the rest, for some reason. I have a US size 13 shoe, which puts me right at the edge of L and XL in their sizing. I prefer the fit of the L in the full cusion hikers, even though in their other full cushion socks I have I am an XL.
Report: based on favorable reports from everyone I bought some darn tough last year for Christmas . They fit very narrow for size, and the back of heel have already worn out on my cute ones. I'll have to send them in soon and although I've been assured the process is smooth, I doubt I will get cute ones back. Quite unhappy that it's been less than a year.
You actually just get a credit for the price of the socks and can choose any new one you want in the store. It's been an absolutely painless process for me. My mom's gone one step further and sent in worn-out darn tough socks she found at Goodwill ;)
Do you wear shoes that just run rugged on the heel? In my experience, certain shoes just do that no matter the make or brands. There's a reason the heel area is so commonly darned on old socks!
It could be the darn Blundstones. I hate them and I wish I never bought them
Let me put in a good word for local and artisan makers. You won't get all of your everyday needs met, but I've found it's fun to shop at arts and crafts markets. You can meet and talk with the makers, receive their instructions for care and maintenance of the specific items for sale, enjoy having fewer things but more uniqueness and beauty, and maybe get something made exactly to your tastes and specifications. Artisan markets are chances to invest in your own community, have more awareness and confidence in the supply chain that went into your purchase, learn about the skills and labor that made the objects, and be certain that most of your payment is going directly to the income of the person who made the items you buy.
Yes, it takes a certain amount of economic privilege to buy handmade, but think of the Vimes "boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness, and spend appropriately so you don't have to pay again and again later.
I'm in a very fortunate spot - I can get locally farmed and knitted alpaca socks that are toasty warm, durable, cute if you like Scandinavian knitting patterns, comfortable, and cost less than Darn Tough or SmartWool. [Granted, they're bulkier and too warm for summer wear, but perfect for 3 seasons of Northern Michigan.]
We got a locally made live-edge hardwood coffee table that cost twice as much as a lower end IKEA/Wayfair surface area equivalent, but it's never going to chip, delaminate, break, scratch or stain in normal use (including sitting on it, spilled wine, cats with claws running around over it...) - truly a Buy-It-For-Life purchase.
Handmade pottery coffee/tea cups and serving bowls - picked up some over the years, including at garage sales, and they've never chipped, broken, or otherwise failed to work in the ways that cheap commercial ceramics would.
Hardwood cooking utensils and cutting boards - no microplastics, PFOAs, or other contaminants, decades of use with minimal care.
***Most artisans take great pride in selling their own work, but I have seen craft fair vendors trying to pass off cheap imports as local handmade. Caveat emptor, always.
And this becomes much worse if you're looking online. There's still real handmade and vintage stuff on Etsy, but you've gotta sift through a lot of mass-produced stuff.
That's one of the reasons I'm advocating for in person, face to face shopping. Web photos have come a long way, but Etsy is a true example of enshittification. The search functions haven't been improved in 10 years, which means the genuine artisan items have gotten buried in a sea of cheap crap. It's not fair either to the makers (who pay roughly 10% fees for the privilege of selling there, not counting the costs of add-ons, monthly fees, promotion, etc.) or the customers who waste time looking.
I did get a custom made-to-fit bench for an entry nook at an absurdly cheap price there, though.
For me personally, for clothes i just try not to buy too much new or online, and if i do buy new or online, i assume its gonna be dogshit quality regardless of the reviews.
I'm fairly decent at mending, so if something pops a seam or wears a hole, i can repair it (or repurpose it, if it's too damaged to be worth the repair). i also wash on cold and dry low/short, which, even if the fabric is trash, means its getting less wear-and-tear. Heat is the enemy of synthetics (and even natural fibers like cotton and linen, tbh, but they can tolerate it a bit better ime as long as the clothing article doesnt shrink so much that youre testing the seams whenever you wear the thing....which I've definitely done lol)
Would i love to have sturdy non plastic clothing? absolutely, but that basically means either making it myself or spending a ton of money that i dont have, and while I do like making my own clothes, i also have a full time job and making clothes is A Lot Of Work.
I guess, overall, my advice would be to either get into mending/making clothes, or find friends who are/are willing and trade them something in your domain of expertise. mending/making can definitely give you a feeling of....accomplishment? i guess? when you can look at something and go "i fixed that" or "i made that" or "my friend fixed/made that for me" and it really does counteract some of the misery about how shit-tier things are.
(apologies if this comes off as preachy, im going for neutral to excited bc i really do enjoy sewing and mending and costuming and all that lol)
Non plastic clothing: I've begun to thrift 100% cotton, linen, silk, leather etc natural materials clothing. They feel so good to wear, I never knew, and wish I had started sooner. I'm not really on board with wool yet (itchy and heavy unless extremely high quality)!
(Steam iron makes it easier to wear natural, non wrinkle resistant materials)
I’m honestly very upset that linen is not more popular. It’s a very nice material with a pleasing texture to it. But more than anything I find it annoying to see dress shirts almost exclusively made of polyester. I guess I just need to pay a lot more for silk instead.
I feel like linen has been getting a lot more popular, but maybe that's a regional thing.
FWIW, most wool is meant to be worn over a thin layer rather than directly on the skin. The exceptions are merino and /or superwash wools (but I would still recommend wearing a thin layer between to help pad and add an air layer) where the staple fiber is much longer, therefore softer (consider a short-haired dog's hair vs a dog like a Pomeranian, whose hair is long and soft).
If you find wool itchy, it could be the short staple fibers (which will eventually felt a bit and soften up), it could be the lanolin (which will wash out), or it could be an allergy/skin sensitivity. The last category is the worst, but I love wool, and wish woven wool fabric were more affordable so I could sew with it rather than knitting it up myself lol.
I'll keep that in mind for wool as a non touching layer, but I kind of even hate when I accidentally brush up against an outer layer sweater so... maybe it's just old memories of itchy wool stockings being permanently registered as NOPE in my brain :(
I get that completely! My skin is sensitive to Alpaca wool, so I understand that itchy uncomfortable feeling!
If you ever want to know more about wool/fibers, let me know! I've been a knitter, crocheter, and wool spinner for over a decade, and have been sewing for about 5 years!
Several years ago I decided I wanted to be a "sweater guy" (inspired by a photoshoot I saw of Daniel Day-Lewis). But I also had not worn a sweater since my Catholic school uniform in first grade and just equated it with awful and itchy.
I bought a couple that were pretty soft, not at all itchy, but really the best looking ones I are also quite itchy. Depending on where you are on the Neuro-spicy - Neuro-mild scale it might be unbearable but I adjusted to it pretty quickly.
I love that you tried being a sweater guy and you like it!
As an aside, I can also recommend doing some research on the type of wool you have, and to check the fabric content! If you ever find your wool sweater to be HOT rather than warming, there may be acrylic/nylon/other plastic fabric/yarn/thread woven in with the wool and that will explain it. :)
Have you looked at second-hand Eileen Fisher? All natural fabrics, timeless and flattering styles, really good quality, nice-feeling fabrics with soft tags. Haven't had a neurospicy moment with any of it.
No I didn't know of that brand!! Thank you I'll add it to my list. They look so grown up and elegant!!
Quick glance in their collection, there's a piece made with Tencel / Lyocell -- anyone know about this and stuff like Rayon? Are they better or comparable to natural fibres?
Tencel Lyocell and modal are both members of the family of rayon polymers. Rayon can be made with any cellulosic feedstock (wood pulp, cotton scraps, etc.), but the processing can involve petroleum-derived toxic chemicals, high energy/water usage, and hazardous wastes.
The Tencel Lyocell trademark product is made by Lenzing AG, which has a process that uses sustainable and biologically derived materials exclusively, recovers nearly all the solvents, and has lower water/energy usage.
More details here.
I've got a couple of second-hand Eileen Fisher Tencel garments for travel, and they launder beautifully, don't smell, and hang wrinkle-free. It's better for hot weather since it wicks moisture very well, but it provides less insulation than cotton for the same weight of fabric. It's definitely more durable and comfortable than old viscose rayon.
Some items move up market, some move downmarket. It’s not “greed”, which again makes no sense as a delta, just like with inflation, but changing dynamics in the market.
This is just life. Many things change if you live long enough. Products that you thought would always be around get discontinued.
There are likely suitable replacements, perhaps even better ones. At some point you just need to go shopping. It's not necessarily all that hard, it's just annoying to have to begin again when you think you solved that problem.
I try not to be an old fart about it. If you find something good, it might be worth stocking up.
This isn't "just life" though. Prior to about 1970 or so, furniture was built to last dozens, if not hundreds of years.
There are few ways to truely kill a 1930's wooden table short of just letting sit in the bottom of a lake or flooding basement for 20+ years. Most other problems can be fixed with a few hand-replaceable generic parts and a bit of chemicals and elbow grease. However, this became a massive problem as people started perpetually migrating from town to town seeking employment...moving antique furniture is difficult and expensive. Anyway....
I bought new La-Z-Boy furniture in 2016 and 2023. The 2023 furniture is substantially lower quality despite being more expensive after inflation adjustments. I also picked up a used La-Z-Boy recliner from the early 90s in 2002, and that chair is still in perfect working condition, now on it's 5th move after I gave it to a friend.
My real point is that this isn't some inevitability... Its because we continue to allow manufacturers to make disposable garbage in the name of perpetually lowering costs and increasing profits. We should mandate that any good which is not explicitly labeled as 'disposable' (I propose the term 'durable good') have a comprehensive and reasonable 10-year warrantee which includes parts and labor. Costs would go up dramatically, but so would the number of goods that now last 50 years by the simple accident of designing them strong enough to not fall apart after 10.
Would you be willing to pay 1930s prices? If you are, you can certainly find items for that quality at that price.
Take, for example, this sofa ad: https://www.vintageinn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/hide-a-bed-mid-century-vintage-ad-with-breeze-blocks-in-the-background-1960s-ad.jpg
$350 is about $8000 today. Could you get a well built sofa for $8000? Yeah, you can. A lot of people don't want to.
Or even better: https://www.vintageinn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/1920s-vintage-furniture-ad-for-1920s-furniture-for-a-small-apartment.jpg
An "occasional chair" for $261 = nearly $5k. Those 1930s items were luxury goods for the wealth off and rich.
It's not about "let", people want cheaper products with cheaper quality. Where a particular item lies on the price/performance scale is different for everyone. Not everyone is ready to or can drop $8k on a sofa. Now they have options all over the price range.
The problem here is that the market often bifurcates. There’s the good stuff and affordable garbage, but no mid-quality goods for mid-tier prices. At most, there’s garbage with luxury trim masquerading as the missing middle. Middle classes minmaxxing their spending habits means there’s no market for mid-quality goods, even if you personally would pay the premium and are unwilling to invest in first class quality.
Speaking of first class, airline tickets are the usual example that leads me to this complaint.
Maybe, but the miracle is that the low end exists. When people think of the “good old days”, they think of movies and books and memoirs of the rich - but who don’t seem so, because they live lives not so different from the middle class today on a superficial level.
If I were on the lower end of the income range and just moved in a new place, it’s a good thing I can pop over to ikea and get a bed frame for $100. No, it won’t last like a $10,000 bed frame from the 1920s, but the alternative is I sleep on a mattress in the floor, because I can’t spend $10,000 on a artisanal bed frame.
Flights is a good example. Oh, back in the day when the seats were huge and you were served roasted ham from the skewer… and when cross continental US flights cost the equivalent of $10,000 dollars. Flying as anything but the obscenely rich wasn’t even a thing.
I'm unfamiliar with the bed frame market: are there $1000 or $3500 bed frames that occupy a middle quality between the $100 IKEA model and hiring a woodworker for $10k [so not just the $100 frame but with gold paint and smart home integration]?
IMO, what angers people about flights is the nickel-and-diming at the low end. Even if you pay, the actual experience isn't any better. You just got to check a bag. Pay more for the same terrible experience.
IKEA's actually got some pretty decent products that are on the more expensive side of their range. The super cheap stuff is more common to come across because it's super cheap, but if you're willing to drop more money, they do often have some pretty decent quality stuff for that price point too.
I remember reading a list of IKEA's highest-quality products I saw linked on HN a while back. However, I don't remember whether or not I bookmarked it.
Mattress on bottle crates, more likely ;) Source: Relatives moving around in the 50/60s.
But yeah given the amount of people we are now sharing this planet with combined with more and more people entering middle class incomes around the globe it is amazing the lower end products have remained as cheap as they are.
The ad listed is from the 60s. That $350 would translate to about $3700 in 1960 dollars, which is less than I paid for my most recent premium garbage sofa. In 1969 dollars, that would be just under $3000.
That's the thing. There have been tangible improvements into making furniture cheaper without sacrificing quality. But since that low-hanging fruit disappeared about 40-50 years ago, cost savings have come in the form of using ever-lower quality materials in the same designs. And as I noted in a different reply: I've even come around with being OK with crap existing, and that the biggest problem is being completely unable to tell the difference anymore.
But even that 1920's ad requires more context. While minimum wage was not even a thing, and wouldn't be set until the 1930s (after the great depression), looking at wage data from 1929 suggests that blue-collar tradespeople were making on the order of $1 to $2 an hour, with longer weeks translating to about $40 to $70 per week. If we take a $60/week wage, that $261 chair costs 4.35 weeks of work. Which is honestly, not that bad when you consider that there were considerably fewer consumer goods to purchase... electricity in homes wasn't even all that common yet, let alone a landline phone in a home. And housing was typically only around 20% of wage expenditure, instead of the 30-40% that we're seeing today. Even then, as you note, that was an ad for luxury products.
For more realistic look at what most Americans were buying, you turn to the Sears Robuck catalog. They've got 14k gold rings for $3, $55 in today's money. A 3-piece parlor suite for $27, or $450. My wife's recently deceased 95 yr old grandmother had something similar in her basement we cleaned out. The thing will outlive us all if it avoids the landfill. You can buy a single sofa for $450 today, but you'll be lucky if you get it into your house without breaking part of it.
Tangent Edit:
Favorite line in the Sears Robuck catalog is this one:
Gold is not a good benchmark for other prices as it’s quite volatile and most recently has been very high.
I suspect that the furniture market has its own quirks too? I read somewhere that the bottom dropped out on nice antique furniture due to boomers downsizing and other people not being interested, so if you like old furniture, you can probably get it pretty reasonably?
While I tend to agree...even cheap trinket rings often cost more than $50 right now.
Also, you could define "recently" as "since about 2002", when it was last below $500.
I don't disagree with you entirely, but I also think there is more to it. So, I do want to place a critical note or two. Part of what you are talking about is also survivorship bias, in the past there would also be plenty of cheap crappy products that simply didn't survive into the modern era.
I do believe the ratio of crap vs quality has changed for the worse over time. But, it isn't as simple as saying that everything in the past was of better quality. Another aspect is simply what stu2b50 also touched on, the older a piece of furniture is that has survived the test of time, the more likely it is that you are dealing with a luxury product to begin with.
That's not to say that there weren't cheaper quality products. But those were likely very basic and functional for the most part.
Then there is the fact that with the amount of people we have managed to put on this ball of dirt in the past century, wood consumption has skyrocketed. This also simply means that denser slow growth wood has become much more expensive because demand has gone up a ton.
Which touches on another aspect of this all. Part of it is companies squeezing out the most profit they can for the least amount of effort. Part of it is also that there are a ton more people with the income around the globe who are after these products. It is amazing that prices for some products have remained as stable as they are, all things considered.
Again, I am not saying that you are entirely wrong. But there is a lot more going on than just a dive to the bottom for the sake of profit.
From that angle, I do understand the other discussion about not using enshittification to describe what is happening to physical products. Because the prices of them are influenced by entirely different factors compared to digital services.
My wife and I bought a table when we were still dating during our university days. We found it for ~10 bucks online, and it came with 3 leaves to extend the table and the ability to drop the ends of the table. When had that table for ~7 years and one day I was cleaning up a spill under the table and noticed the information painted/printed on the bottom. It turned out the table was built in the 50s by a now defunct local (the area where we originally purchased it) furniture company.
If we hadn't moved abroad I have a feeling we would have continued using that table for many more years, either as our dinning table, or if we ended up purchasing a nicer one, for games/event table. I'm really hoping that it found a good home as we donated it to a thrift shop before our move.
Fantastic quality, and this was on the cheaper end of their catalog at the time. I'll edit this post later if I can find the information about the company. I took a picture of the information but don't have it handy at the moment.
I meant more that it's "just life" that products you like get discontinued sometimes, and you have to look around for something somewhat equivalent. That in itself doesn't seem like much evidence of a broader issue; it's something people always complain about. Manufacturers come and go and product lines change.
As far as durability goes, I'm not sure the issues are the same for socks and furniture.
The issue for clothing is everything now contains plastic. This is a relatively recent development. Elastane is in almost every clothing item, and it is not durable. Not long ago jeans were made of denim. Now they are made of some denim and some elastane. Socks, shirts, it's in everything :( It's substantially more difficult to find clothing made of wool, or 100% cotton, than it is to find clothing made of plastic. This doesn't even touch on the design/build quality, which is orders of magnitude worse than it was a few decades ago. Fast fashion is the worst thing that has ever happened to clothes. And it's in places that market themselves as high end, so it's really tricky to avoid.
Find something good --> stock up
This is probably (1) how hoarder homes happen and (2) where I'm headed.
I've turned it into a hobby almost, of repairing items instead of replacing them. This Thursday I'm taking apart my oven door because it doesn't quite close all the way, I think I can fix it.... maybe. But yeah it's such a solid appliance I'm not ready to let it go. Same with clothing. I will cling to these things I like until the very last! I also had a blackberry until they stopped making them, so maybe I take it too far.
Veering slightly /offtopic, is there a non-profane alternative term for "enshittification"? It's a useful word, but I can't use it in certain settings because of the swearing. "Bait-and-Switch-as-a-Service" describes it well, but even that is too snarky for some professional contexts.
I think the other, more formal term, is "Platform Decay."
…and "Platform Decay" is also a wonky enough technical term that I expect it to resist definition decay into "something I like got worse" instead of a specific pattern of worsening found in SaaS offerings.
Enshittification is just phase 2 of a loss leader business model, not anything that gets worse over time.
Sometimes, you could talk about value engineering and planned obsolescence, but I think it’s better to avoid abstract terms and give examples of what you mean.
I'm actually here for this.
One of my biggest take aways from this post has been that I had a poor understanding of what canonical "Enshittification" is/was; I need to educate myself further.
Should what I'm describing be called "Encrapification" ? It certainly hits on "Shrinkflation", but as we have discussed, this is not the entirety of the situation.
I suppose let me define better what I hate:
Gradual lowering of the level of quality of an item, while not disproportionately lowering the price, while simultaneously no longer providing an option of the same level of (previous)quality and function that has an inflation matched price.
The above, but pretending that the item is the same item and that you are delusional as if the quality has not changed. (Looking at you Cadbury Eggs. Which in this instance is a version of shrinkflation, but also I assume quality of ingredient degradation, proof needed).
Other pet peeve - changing versions of something for the sake of changing something. Less genius a la "New Coke vs. Classic Coke" and more annoying like, here is Brook's Ghost 15 Sneaker, now with more Ghost than Brook's Ghost 14. I suppose this is like planned obsolescence, but again, not quite.
Your Coke example led me to this interesting rabbithole, which taught me we can add "legitimized HFCS as a sugar alternative" to the list of ways Reagan fucked up the USA.
Spoiler: It involves
bribescampaign contributions.Coincidentally, I happened to watch a video on this subject not too long ago, so it’s been on my mind lately, as well.
I don't have an answer. There are still products I really loved, are long gone, and that I still miss.
Want to share and we'll try to brainstorm replacements?
I think I will see cold fusion first, but I appreciate the offer. :-)
I have a huge sock problem too, so relatable!
I don't have an answer except to try to find places that aren't 100% profit focused and are proud of their products. For socks and tea I have been really enjoying good.store which is currently having a sock bundle sale https://good.store/products/mystery-sock-bundle?variant=49798560481562.
I've been subscribed for the last 6 months and I have been really enjoying it, and I'm normally very frugal and subscribe to almost nothing! They also use all their profits for charitable causes. I know it's not as efficient because you could just buy normal products, donate yourself and get a tax break, but I think the products are worth the price!
Also ping @smoontjes in case you want to also look at the socks!
I can definitely second a recommendation for their socks! I don't know how well they'd stand up to really heavy wear, like in a work boot, but I've got ones from years ago that still have pretty much no wear after years of normal use. Very much worth the money ime. The current sale is a smart place to snag some if you don't have a subscription like me.
I think the soap they sell is pretty decent as well, though there's no shortage of other good natural soap places. I haven't tried their tea or coffee yet.
Let's not enshittify the definition of the word "enshittification," which is a great and useful term coined by Cory Doctorow to refer to a specific phenomenon in tech services.
That said, there's a very real race to the bottom happening in many consumer goods categories. Shrinkflation has risen to comical levels in the past decade or two. It drives me up the wall too! I don't have a solution apart from "don't settle for cheap, crappy stuff when you can pay more for a quality alternative" but that will only get you so far.
My problem is that I would love to
but it’s becoming very difficult to find actual quality alternatives, versus the same garbage just at a higher price point. It’s basically impossible when shopping online, but even buying things in person it’s still not easy.
What is an item you cannot find quality versions of?
Well, clothes are a good starting place. The TJMax quality brands for less approach means that the same brands that you'd associate with good quality are making discount versions of their products for discount retailers using the same branding.
There's a difference between Buffalo jeans from a full price seller and TJMax but as a consumer, you wouldn't know the difference.
And they're counting on that.
For jeans, for selvedge on the lower end, there’s japan blue jeans https://japanblue-jeans.com/jeans.html
Kapital and vsvim are excellent although a bit more expensive.
If they must be American, the best I knew was Roy Denim, although he closed down shop a few years ago. You can still find them on eBay though. I’m sure there’s more American manufacturers that are good, I just don’t know them.
Is it that high quality clothes don’t exist or you don’t know what the brands are?
Gustin is the brand I wear for jeans, and they're real solid. One can find them rather cheap secondhand, too.
Could be a bit of both. I'm in Canada though, so it's a different game up here. That said, brands do sell high and low quality versions of their product to different retailers with no obvious indicators that that's what they're doing.
Sure, there are always better options, but what has changed is the level of deception around how quality is indicated in mass fashion (ie: where most people shop)
How much of that is something specific to TJMaxx? To be honest, it is a discount big box store.
There’s been more bifurcation because of online shopping. I wouldn’t put that as a movement of the entire industry. If you’re a denimhead, now that you can buy direct from anything from Levi’s to a family of 4 in rural japan that’s been making jeans by hand for 3 decades, are you going to be the one shopping in big box stores? Probably not, and your TJMax’s need to cater to what customer base they have left.
Honestly, it’s rarely been a better time for buying high quality clothes, because the internet has made accessibility so widespread. No longer do you need to pray that your local mall caters to your wants.
As a counter-example of a big name brand moving upmarket, take JCrew. They did move towards fast fashion, had a chapter 11 bankruptcy as a result, but ever since the re-org, they’ve been back to making more expensive, but high quality clothes again for the past 5 or so years. They’ve still been very safe in their designs, but they’ve been branching out to more experimental styles as sales have picked up.
Some brands move up market, some move down.
This is part of the problem, if not the main problem. You can't trust that any given brand is currently making good or bad products short of buying them and then getting burned. It's exacerbated by brands being traded back and forth between parent companies like trading cards with no indication on the product that its been done. This is part of why it's nearly impossible to boycott Nestle. I think it might be worthwhile to consider making brands non-transferable....that if something changes owners it must change its trademark. Githubs's logo would now have a prominent Microsoft logo right beside it, the way that Xbox does. Seriously, try to figure out just from Github's site that it's owned by Microsoft.
Additionally, players like Walmart can pressure brands to make lower-quality versions of the same goods that are sold at the same time, with the same visible model number. It'll be versioned something like WD-10105-PD and WD-10105-WX, while the store listing only shows WD-10105, and you'll have to dig into the fine print to notice the suffix. You often can't tell the difference unless you have the two models side-by side, because the spec sheet will look the same on the website. Tommy Bahama jumps out as an immediate example. If you buy the product off their website, it's higher quality but more expensive. But if you buy it from a wholesaler like BJs, the stitching will be looser, the frames will be flimsier, and parts that were wood or metal are now cheap plastic. But they are both advertised as the same product, with the same branding and packaging, with only barely-visible model number differences. Things like smokers and grills suffer the same problem...a layperson would need to check for all sorts of little things, like checking that parts are welded in the proper locations, that the screws are corrosion-resistant...things that make a huge difference to durability but are hard to tell unless you know exactly what you're looking for. In the case of things like mixers, you won't know until you crack the thing open (thus voiding your ability to return it) and see if it's got cheap plastic gears or quality metal ones.
At the end of the day, after thinking about it more, I think I don't mind that cheap crap exists. I am immensely bothered that cheap crap is made to be virtually indistinguishable from good products to a layperson, as well as advertised like it's the same quality. It is this deception which makes it nearly impossible for the average consumer to evaluate quality and make rational decisions. Which is one of the fundamental assumptions about a market economy: That consumers will make rational decisions when they have the available information. Marketing and the other problems I've described heavily distort the market which makes it seem like people want cheap crap, when in reality they aren't capable of telling the difference, or worse; they don't have enough purchasing power to reasonably choose to do better. This last example is highlighted by the housing frenzy that came in the wake of COVID....huge quantities of people were rushing to escape rental hell, but were previously priced out of doing so. It made the demand for rentals seem much higher simply because there isn't sufficient affordable housing stock.
A clear delineation of brands, perhaps a rule that a brand (or product line within a brand) must specifically market itself as budget, mid-range, or high-end....with clear rules about warranty offerings in each tier would solve a lot of problems. You can't, for example, class your goods as high-end with a 1-year limited warranty.
The entire economy has become a market for lemons. That's one of the big subconscious reasons I became an irredeemable Crapple stan (vulgar nickname while also faintly praising them on purpose). Yes, there is some Android that will fit my needs better than an iPhone. However,
Apple products are consistently 80% good enough or better, while the rest of the industry spans the full scale of quality. (And if you only consider products marketed to compete with Apple on quality, you're not saving any money, or they're heavily minmaxxing and require you to have a firm and accurate estimate of your needs)
Good to hear. To be honest, I haven't had the time or made the effort to exit the mall eco system, largely because I'm worried that I'll send good money after bad with an unknown vendor.
I'm absolutely keen to branch out, though. What are your suggestions for semi casual outdoor wear that won't break the bank?
Not OP, but I've been looking for solid colored women's t shirts that hold up in the wash. The last few times that I've tried to update my wardrobe, I've had to revert to the old shirts since the new ones don't seem to last longer than 3-4 washes.
I've heard this before and I don't get it. I'm stuck buying t-shirts from Gap because they're the only place that consistently has tall sizes and a fit I like. I keep two weeks worth and have had some of them over a decade.
Do I have a magical washing machine? This isn't supposed to be that good of a brand.
Edit: I just realized that in this timespan I've lived in two different apartments and then my own place. Most of that time I used a top loading el cheapo model.
A lot of people do not wash clothes very well. They wont read fabric tags, they’ll wash things on high heat, they’ll use fabric softener, they’ll use too much detergent and the wrong kind, when they see a tough stain they’ll just put them through more cycles.
And drying is even more brutal - machine dry cycles at high heat.
Ironically, a cheapo washing machine may make damaging your clothes more difficult.
I don't think it's that in my case because the old shirts and the new shirts will share loads. The old ones will survive even when the new ones don't.
...where are you buying shirts? Even the cheapest dollar store shirt should last a couple months at a minimum. Are you washing them in cold or warm water and drying on a low setting?
I grabbed a bunch at Target maybe a year and a half ago and they ended up with holes after a few washes. I also got some from uniclo a few months ago and they ended up shrinking irregularly.
Water tends to be warm and drying tends to be medium.
Make sure to zip up your trousers and vests and turn them inside out. Small holes are often caused by other clothing ripping into them. Turning your clothing inside out before washing is good practice to preserve clothing anyway, but it also prevents those smaller snags.
But yeah, thicker 100% cotton stuff from a decade ago will hold better than anything that contains elastine.
Washing at 30c° is usually enough and I can't recommend airdrying enough. Americans always find that difficult to accept but truly, it helps.
For cotton, try loopwheeled shirts. An example https://www.ironheartamerica.com/utilitees/
For more conventional US, I’ve found the merino wool from Patagonia to be good https://www.patagonia.com/shop/collections/merino-wool-clothing
Currently looking for a nice bathrobe. Also a good outdoors blanket, I’d heard Vermont Flannel recommended for flannel shirts & blankets, but then others were saying that their quality isn’t what it’s made out to be.
I was going to say an Air Purifier, but I did recently find a review website that seems trustworthy enough (HouseFresh).
I understand where it came from but language evolves. Seems to me that it can apply to tons of things, including what @carrie used it for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
But that’s definitely not what they are describing. This is a case where a physical product has simply become worse to maximize profits for shareholders. So not online (arguably not critical to the spirit of the word), but also no element of the brokerage aspect which is what it’s really about. There’s no third party that the sock manufacturer was trying to appeal to by building a customer base of captive sock wearers using under margin high quality socks, only to pull a bait and switch.
I think there's definitely a case to be made for certain brands becoming known for high quality and then lowering their standards and beginning to sell much crappier stuff, often switching materials to cheaper ones and/or outsourcing manufacture to cheaper and cheaper countries. It's certainly very easy to find people complaining about this on r/BIFL for a huge variety of brands that sell physical goods. While the degree to which this happens varies, it's definitely not as far away from the original digital definition of enshittification as you imply. At minimum, there are a ton of very salient similarities.
While language evolves, you might understand why it might become confusing if we start using it for "every possible way something can be made shittier" instead of "fairly specific description of how online platforms degrade."
There's plenty of other viable terms, but for example if we started using shrinkflation to refer to overall quality decline of goods.... it would be more confusing rather than less.
Language gradually evolves, but we must counter it with linguistic rigor, because the ability to reason about and discuss complex things effectively requires specificity and the reduction of ambiguity.
When everything becomes a vague alternative for "thing but more biggerer," we lose the ability to communicate effectively.
Which is more meaningful?
Then if people come along and decide they want to misuse "syncopation" to mean "this vibes harder" and not that it's an emphasis on the downbeat, now nobody knows what the hell anyone's talking about anymore.
Language may tend to evolve, but like with pets and livestock, we want to artificially select for our purposes...
This is the absolutely best counter arguement to the 'language evolves' dismissal of people correcting word use.
Lose != loose, no matter how often people use one or the other wrong.
Lose vs loose is a spelling mistake alone anyway. Language change absolutely can merge or change meanings of words in big ways, though, far bigger than merging "lose" and "loose", and it's not something that even can be avoided. It will happen. To far more drastic extents than these examples.
That said, it's perfectly possible to insist on someone using jargon or technical terminology correctly within that domain. Linguists themselves do this plenty. It's reasonable to say "hey, it makes more sense to continue using this narrow definition of this word when discussing this"... but you're fighting the tides if you do this outside of a specific, limited domain in which a limited set of people can consciously agree on definitions, especially when a change already has any momentum behind it.
Even then, it can be highly amusing to be deliberately obtuse and play stupid.
No one can stop language change, but neither can anyone stop you being funny. I asked my younger sister if she was "on fleek" for years hehehe
I have some sympathy for the lose/loose confusion, because it's a direct result of English's shitty spelling system. "lose" spelled phonetically should be "looze" (although that still isn't perfect since the "oo" sound could be interpreted as like "cook"), and we should encourage phonetic spelling whenever it isn't specifically ambiguous (for instance, you shouldn't "correct" someone who spells 'friend' without the i).
The core problem is that we don't have enough vowels. There are a couple of different options, like leveraging the silent e (e.g. "lose", "craze", "made") as a consistent vowel-modifier, there's accents/diacritics ( ö è ç à and whatnot), but nobody does them because they involve people re-learning how to spell and that's a huge political project that nobody cares to solve.
The best thing we can do, is just wait for people to start spelling things more phonetically, then make sure to support them when they do.
When people
s used to be make a z-sound when between vowels (which it used to be in "lose") which is at fault for the consonant weirdness there. But I agree, English spelling has a lot of weirdness that makes it unnecessarily hard to learn, and our large vowel inventory is a big part of it. That said, it's not the only part -- other Germanic languages have similarly large vowel inventories but much better spelling systems. Unfortunately it's more the difficulty of reforming spelling at all in the modern day that's the real problem for English.
All he did was add a prefix and used the word exactly as it has been used for quite some time to describe the process of turning things to shit like this 2018 reddit post "Pitchfork: An Exemplar of the Internet Shitification Process".
I don't see why it can't apply to both? Context would make it pretty obvious I feel. I would clearly not be talking about techy stuff if I'm saying that H&M's quality has gone down.