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Etsy was a twee culture punchline, now it’s a Wall Street darling
- blakesterz 6y agoSomehow I've missed "twee culture" and I had to lookup what that meant, he's an Atlantic Article that goes into some depth: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/07/the-twee-revolution/372273/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/07/the-twe... " Twee’s core values include “a healthy suspicion of adulthood”; “a steadfast focus on our essential goodness”; “the cultivation of a passion project” (T-shirt company, organic food truck); and “the utter dispensing with of ‘cool’ as it’s conventionally known, often in favor of a kind of fetishization of the nerd, the geek, the dork, the virgin.”"
- UShouldBWorking 6y agoSo, losers.
- minikites 6y agoI believe it originated in music first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twee_pop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twee_pop
- glitcher 6y agoThis is the context I know twee from - it was kind of the cutesy branch of indie pop around the same time as the shoegaze movement. Bands like Heavenly and The Softies are good examples of the twee pop genre.
- Bukhmanizer 6y agoTo be honest that article sounds like it's stretching pretty hard to take some broad cultural trends and encompass them into a single phrase or movement. Six years later, I think we can say that there hasn't been a "Twee Revolution".
- cafard 6y agoIs that really the original (English) English meaning of twee? I thought that the English used it more or less where we would use "cutesy" or some other dismissive. But then I didn't know that there was a "twee culture".
- DanBC 6y agoHere's what my dictionaries say. I agree that I'd tend to use it for "cutesy". > twee, a. (and n. 3) colloq. > 1. Originally: `sweet', dainty, chic. Now only in depreciatory use: affectedly dainty or quaint; over-nice, over-refined, precious, mawkish. > 1905: Punch 8 Mar. 178/1, “`I call him perfectly twee!' persisted Phyllis.” > 1917: M. T. Hainsselin Grand Fleet Days xv. 91 “Girl: Oh, here's another little gun; isn't it a darling! Isn't it just too twee for words!” > 1947: E. Hyams William Medium viii. 164 “`Isn't he twee!' said Mary, and pinched his cheek.” > 1956: G. Durrell Drunken Forest x. 193 “`What twee individuals?' `Those knowledgeable sentimentalists who are forever telling me that it's cruel to lock up the poor wild creatures in little wooden boxes.'” > 1962: Observer 25 Mar. 25/3 “She has a small and, it must be said, pretty twee cottage.” > 1967: E. Short Embroidery & Fabric Collage iv. 102 “The best of our designers who have abandoned the rather `twee' decorative type of embroidered picture.” > 1973: G. Robyns Wimbledon xxix. 192 “There is..a twee Arcadian outdoor studio complete with white trellis and plastic flowers.” > 1983: Listener 21 July 33/1 “Mike Nichols's thriller-fantasy about dolphins should be as nauseatingly twee as the worst Disney—but it isn't.” Chambers 11th (because they give an origin) > twee > twee /twē/ ( informal) > adjective > 1. Small and sweet > 2. Affectedly or sentimentally pretty or quaint > ORIGIN: tweet for ‘sweet’, and later tiny and wee
- jgalt212 6y agoBein' Quirky with Zooey Deschanel pretty much nails it https://snl.fandom.com/wiki/Bein%27_Quirky_with_Zooey_Deschanel https://snl.fandom.com/wiki/Bein%27_Quirky_with_Zooey_Descha...
- badconvincer 6y agoYou had me till the end. Now I feel dirty. Fetishization of the virgin, are we at the behavioral sink already? I hate it, makes me want to convert to Islam.
- notJim 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHmLljk2t8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHmLljk2t8M
- nemo44x 6y agoAt some point 40 happens. It’s interesting though as it’s the complete opposite of previous generations where kids wanted to be treated as adults as soon as possible (request for responsibility), focused on improving their lot in life, and their passion project was raising a family. “Cool” was something previous generations also dispensed with in very early adulthood and maybe replaced it with “respect” as something more useful than fetishizing a personality trope. Not sure if the shift is good or bad but if it is bad you can’t really blame the kids.
- merricksb 6y agohttps://archive.md/wip/2uBq1 https://archive.md/wip/2uBq1
- pmdulaney 6y agoUse of the word "twee" kind of makes my skin crawl -- like a grown man using the word "yummy".
- appletrotter 6y ago> like a grown man using the word "yummy". Fascinating.
- ctlachance 6y agoDoes it bother you the same way when grown women use the word "yummy"?
- me_me_me 6y agoif you would use 9mm to open your coke bottles you'd understand /s Why are so many people concern with how others should or shouldn't express themselves? Why would anyone care if I want to wear a pink tshirt with a flower. Or use yummy in a sentence. Sure there are people who are eccentric for sake of being eccentric. I just dont hang with them and that's as much though I will waste on that topic.
- president 6y agoFrom HN Guidelines: > Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Bukhmanizer 6y agoTo be clear, that's a "you" problem.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- t-writescode 6y agoYou understand this is going to increase the proliferation of the word "yummy" among 'grown men', right?
- meagher 6y agoIt's amazing how much journalism is driven by Shareholder Value™
- jameslk 6y agoIt's not just Etsy's stock that's up, but also the stock of Shopify, Amazon, Overstock, Walmart, Ebay, etc. And all the tech infra companies that support these ecommerce sites. There's a huge ecommerce bubble, and to a degree a tech bubble, being driven by all that disposable income that used to go to restaurants, travel, events, etc. instead being redirected to online shopping and online activity. Compounded by the money being printed by Fed which also doesn't have a lot of places to go. I doubt it's sustainable to expect that this is the new normal and nobody will want to go back to the way life was before. If that's the case, I can't understand how the PE ratios that imply someday the future value of these companies will be worth 100x-1000x multiples in 10-20 years are justified. But this has lead to an incredible transfer of wealth to a lot of tech companies. I just wonder when the party will end and we'll see a correction?
- m3kw9 6y agoIf you are waiting for a correction to buy stocks you shouldn’t be in stocks the first place. It’s because you are trying to time the market to begin with, which is one of the biggest mistake mind set of all for investing or trading
- jameslk 6y agoNo, more that I work in the ecommerce sector, have seen how crazy it's become as of recently, and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. But I agree generally that trying to time the market is a bad idea for most retail investors
- da02 6y agoCan you give more examples of what you have seen from the inside that is not being reported by TV news? (I agree with you on the crazy PE ratios and FED manipulations. Something is going to happen to bring things back to reality.)
- jameslk 6y agoI work with medium-size Shopify brands to assist on the development-side of things. When the pandemic started, a lot of ecommerce brands were clamping down on budgets. Shortly after the CARES act was passed, suddenly revenue for a lot of my clients started to skyrocket, especially those in the food industry (some were making what they made over the course of a year in a few months) but soon also to discretionary industries like apparel and beauty. Ever since, I've been seeing large-scale projects to agencies we work with being pushed through without hesitation and of course business has been growing at a much higher clip for my own company versus prior to CARES. I'm grateful for it, but at the same time I know this is at the expense of many small companies in the restaurant and travel space, and all the labor they employ too, so that's pretty depressing. And I don't think it's sustainable so I expect my own luck to turn around eventually. I don't think things will change much in the next 6 months though with another potential stimulus check on the horizon and at least until some of the state-level measures to reduce the spread of COVID are reversed (possibly with vaccines widely available?)
- gnicholas 6y agoI don’t understand Etsy anymore. I was recently looking at an item that is sold by a shop in Texas, and after chatting with the owner I learned their stuff is just made in China in a factory. They’re just reselling the stuff at a healthy markup. Is that allowed now? I thought it was all supposed to be handmade or vintage or whatever?
- jpm_sd 6y agoNow that Etsy is dominated by mass produced crap, Wall Street loves it! Finally, a business model they can understand.
- ryantgtg 6y agoIt's not allowed, as far as I know. The other day I came across brand new Nintendo Switches. It seems like someone got a pile of special edition ones and then set up a flash shop where they sold them for like $120. But yeah, overall there seems to be lots of shops reselling stuff. For example, I recently bought a little dollhouse kit, and I noticed that multiple sellers were selling it. And I've watched youtube vids on how to make money on Etsy, and while the examples I found don't explicitly say to buy stuff from aliexpress, it's clear that they weren't making and packaging those bath bombs themselves.
- at-fates-hands 6y ago>> I learned their stuff is just made in China in a factory. When it first started out, I had a lot of friends in distant states that had shops on Etsy and I would find really cool, inexpensive stuff from theirs and other shops. I really like the eclectic feel of the stuff people were making and it was original and I have always gotten compliments on the stuff I was buying from their shops. Last couple years, you really have to search to find stuff that isn't being mass produced in China or overseas. Looking back, thinking of other "eclectic" online shops, it seems to be a pattern. You get the people who set up their shops with their hand made goods, then it gets popular, then it gets overrun with China knockoffs and other people just reselling China goods for a markup. Even with the requirements in place, I'm not sure how you eradicate it once it gets a foothold like it has now.
- mac_was 6y agoEtsy is horrible for sellers. A friend started selling there and he had to wait for the money from transactions for 3 months after he started selling there.
- etsythrowaway1 6y agoCan you send me their shop name? I want to verify this.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoEtsy has also begun banning objects bearing certain political slogans.[1] 1. https://www.etsy.com/legal/policy/harmful-misinformation/938683190953 https://www.etsy.com/legal/policy/harmful-misinformation/938...
- aconbere 6y agoWait... What's the claim you're making here? This policy does not seem to make any statements about political slogans unless you're including within that categorization; harmful miss-information such as anti-vaccine claims and holocaust denial.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoThey're banning objects that challenge the presidential election results, slogans like "Stop the steal". "Harmful misinformation" is cancel culture.
- grueblur 6y agoTheir devops story has always fascinated me.
- tsukurimashou 6y agoCould you elaborate on that?
- frob 6y agoMy partner has gotten involved in many handmade groups and almost every person says that etsy is no longer a place for small businesses. You have to pay out the nose to get any sort of relevant listing in search results and for many small sellers this eats most or all of their profits.
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y agoSo is there a new place for them now?
- Nuzzerino 6y agoMakes sense, considering that they're now censoring vendors from selling merchandise labeled "stop the steal" and probably other political messages to come in the future. Wall Street is not a friend of Trump. https://reclaimthenet.org/etsy-stop-the-steal-beanies-banned/ https://reclaimthenet.org/etsy-stop-the-steal-beanies-banned... https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/10/business/wall-street-trump-biden-2020-election/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/10/business/wall-street-trump-bi...
- ehvatum 6y agoWe are well beyond material scarcity. If you need something, you can buy it on Amazon, made in China, and it will do a great job of brushing your teeth, boiling your tea, or whatever. But it will not be unique. And so, every need met, our lives are hollow. Hollow and without objects of meaning and power - nothing that your distant offspring will inherit, that will make them think, “holy shit, my ancestors WERE INTERESTING PEOPLE!!!” No totems. Just disposable Apple ear buds with dead batteries glued forever into plastic shells. No diaries. Just tweets that were lost in the great lizard war of 2031, when the data centers were turned into lizard egg incubators. So, people hunger for robust, interesting wares. Maybe most don’t know it, but they’ll buy those things anyway. Based on this lizard-apocalypse thesis, I listed stuff on Etsy: custom CNC titanium pistol grips, solid metal wood keys, childproof jewel boxes milled from scrapped train knuckles, and etc. I listed all kinds of stuff I made when I wasn’t filling “normal” orders for big industry titans like Boeing. Just whatever the hell I felt like making, as long as it’s something I would be proud to own. And it all sold. Every weird thing I make eventually sells on Etsy. Etsy has featured my stuff in big advertisements, because my thesis is correct. There is a new kind of scarcity, because of the upcoming lizard war. https://www.etsy.com/shop/HenryVIIIdotSpace https://www.etsy.com/shop/HenryVIIIdotSpace
- p1necone 6y agoYou're living in a very sheltered bubble if you think that any more than a very small minority of people are "well beyond material scarcity". That titanium switch plate is cool though.
- walrus01 6y agoI am fairly certain from context that by "we", he means "white collar professionals in the US/Canada/Europe who make a very comfortable salary and have all of their essential material needs already met by an overabundance of choice" But I also wouldn't say that shopping for cute handmade weird custom things is essentially an activity of some extreme elite. Once people in any culture have lots of disposable income they'll do it. Here's a video from a few days ago of shopping for traditional hand made jewlery in Kabul, Afghanistan. Language is Dari. Farsi/Persian speakers should understand it OK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LelKUITywE&feature=emb_title https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LelKUITywE&feature=emb_titl... If there were a sufficiently large population of Afghans with a reliable, secure online payment method, and HSPA+/HSDPA/LTE data services on their android phones, I have no doubt that those products would show up on the Dari language version of Etsy. At present probably less than 1% of people nationwide have any form of credit or debit card.
- esja 6y agoStories like this one, plus the recent IPO rush, the Tesla spike, and the frenzied day-trading of twenty-somethings on Robinhood reminds me a LOT of 1999... The difference in 2020 is that by now everyone has decades of very strong evidence that the Fed won't allow markets to fall very far or for very long. They've created a one-way bet which they must keep supporting, because the moment that market participants believe the Fed Put is dead, there will be a major crash across all asset classes. And most importantly, the Fed will rightly get the blame and may be restructured as a result... which means the Fed will avoid this outcome at all costs. Everyone knows this, and everyone knows the Fed knows, and the Fed knows that everyone knows that they know. Which means there can be no escape except via something externally-imposed which allows the Fed to avoid the blame. COVID was an opportunity for this but they did exactly the wrong thing and doubled down, giving people even stronger evidence that they are trapped. It's a problem.
- nemo44x 6y agoWhat were they supposed to do during the scariest moments of a global pandemic when millions of people (mostly already in debt) lost their incomes and many industries ground to a halt? I don’t think that’s a great time to raise interest rates. How many people would be under water as their homes lost so much value? How many people would be literally on the streets without money for food without a check to get through those couple months of absolute uncertainty. I agree with you that the Fed has dug a hole I’m not sure they can get out of without some pain. The market nearly melted down 2 years ago when interest rates went up to just barely above historic lows. It’s hard to raise interest rates when money is being printed.
- borplk 6y agoEtsy: Alibaba with a lipstick™
- CosmicShadow 6y agoEtsy definitely does a lot of shady shit now and really takes a lot of what you make, forces you into offsite ads if you do well and then takes 12-15% including from the shipping, which is the worst when you already legit have to pay $80 to ship something and get shorted twice. Lots of crap shops with Chinese production, which they are supposed to list as a "production partner", but they make it really hard for the customer to find. It IS a great place to open a shop and make money though, you can pay zero dollars and start selling if you figure out their internal SEO system well enough and have the right products. Even without knowing the SEO, if you have the right niches, people will just buy your shit out of the blue, it's crazy! We've been growing our laser cut wood art shop for over a year, got up to like 432 sales by November and now we are over 1000 sales a few weeks later, which has been insane. My other shop I started in the summer grew slow, but is now up to like 5-6 sales a day and I think I can get it much higher as I add more and more products, it's also 100 times easier, cheaper, and faster to do than the laser cut stuff. If we can figure out digital stuff, we'll be laughing. My one friend pays for his monthly Tesla 3 bills with his Etsy shop. Will you save more money if you just use Shopify and co? Yes, but you will have to market and bring your own people in, which is the tough part until you've built a huge brand, email list, social strategy and figured out ads, which you can avoid almost entirely for a long time with Etsy and still see success.