5 ms·

garden -> microfarm garage -> microfactory trailer park -> tiny house village gruel -> soylent I'm not sure if there's a word for this other than "marketing

garden -> microfarm garage -> microfactory trailer park -> tiny house village gruel -> soylent I'm not sure if there's a word for this other than "marketing", but it's an interesting phenomenon I've been noticing lately. Just re-label something old and it sells better. See also: the McDonald's celebrity meals, it's the same chicken nuggets or hamburgers they've been selling for decades, but call it the "____ Meal" and get a million new customers.

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
> I'm not sure if there's a word for this other than "marketing", gentrification?
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  Exactly this - it's a remarketing of normal working class concepts to upper middle class hipsters so they can pretend to be authentic and salt-of-the-earth. All of the labels the parent listed are associated with hipsters for a reason.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
They are similar in size but not in quality. A microfarm is a profitable (hopefully) but small business. A garage is where you park your car. A microfactory is where you build goods that you sell. Quite a few famous companies started in garages of course. Trailer parks are where trailer trash live in old and broken trailers. People with limited means may choose to live in a place that doesn't suck that just happens to be small. And so on. It's not just relabeling. It's actually doing things better/differently with modern means and technology. I follow quite a few people on youtube into things like farming, making, cooking/baking. It's a thing this century. People with good educations busying themselves in the small with reinventing humble things like farming, baking, etc. and making a living out of that. It's not just marketing. I was born in the seventies and find this fascinating. These people are choosing to do these things instead of being wage slaves in some corporate hell hole and are making it work with modern technology, hard work, and creative use of resources. I agree Soylent is weird though. I guess if you hate food and life in general, that would be acceptable as a way to survive. Otherwise, you might get a bit of joy out of eating or making some genuinely nice food. It's not that hard.
- PostOnce 5y ago
  People sell stuff from their gardens at local markets on weekends and always have, some are quite productive. People keep their tools in their garage and that's where they make stuff, like the local wooden toymaker here. It's his "microfactory" and he has 50+ (articulated, stained-in-multiple-colors, interesting and varied in type) on display every weekend for sale, quantity enough to justify the haughty "factory" label for his garage, I'd say. MANY retirees live in rather nice, well-maintained trailer parks, the only difference between their trailer park and a tiny house village is the exterior cladding. Theirs might even cost more. Don't buy the hype. These things aren't actually different.
  - gadaprog 5y ago
    I don't disagree with your original point that marketing is likely the key driver here. However, I don't think your second point really stands up when considering 'kinds' and classification of things. jillesvangurp's response was that "micro-whatevers" are a profitized subset of the original definitions (e.g., they are saying a 'microfarm' is a profit-driven subset of 'home vegetable gardens'. You then say that people can and do make money from their gardens, thus arguing that microfarms are not a thing? The existence of profitable home vegetable gardens does not mean that they are not microfarm's in jillesvangurp's definition.
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  I guess all those working class people who have been doing this exact thing for centuries better get with the times.

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago

> I'm not sure if there's a word for this other than "marketing", gentrification?

beaconstudios 5y ago
Exactly this - it's a remarketing of normal working class concepts to upper middle class hipsters so they can pretend to be authentic and salt-of-the-earth. All of the labels the parent listed are associated with hipsters for a reason.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

They are similar in size but not in quality. A microfarm is a profitable (hopefully) but small business. A garage is where you park your car. A microfactory is where you build goods that you sell. Quite a few famous companies started in garages of course. Trailer parks are where trailer trash live in old and broken trailers. People with limited means may choose to live in a place that doesn't suck that just happens to be small. And so on. It's not just relabeling. It's actually doing things better/differently with modern means and technology. I follow quite a few people on youtube into things like farming, making, cooking/baking. It's a thing this century. People with good educations busying themselves in the small with reinventing humble things like farming, baking, etc. and making a living out of that. It's not just marketing. I was born in the seventies and find this fascinating. These people are choosing to do these things instead of being wage slaves in some corporate hell hole and are making it work with modern technology, hard work, and creative use of resources. I agree Soylent is weird though. I guess if you hate food and life in general, that would be acceptable as a way to survive. Otherwise, you might get a bit of joy out of eating or making some genuinely nice food. It's not that hard.

PostOnce 5y ago
People sell stuff from their gardens at local markets on weekends and always have, some are quite productive. People keep their tools in their garage and that's where they make stuff, like the local wooden toymaker here. It's his "microfactory" and he has 50+ (articulated, stained-in-multiple-colors, interesting and varied in type) on display every weekend for sale, quantity enough to justify the haughty "factory" label for his garage, I'd say. MANY retirees live in rather nice, well-maintained trailer parks, the only difference between their trailer park and a tiny house village is the exterior cladding. Theirs might even cost more. Don't buy the hype. These things aren't actually different.
- gadaprog 5y ago
  I don't disagree with your original point that marketing is likely the key driver here. However, I don't think your second point really stands up when considering 'kinds' and classification of things. jillesvangurp's response was that "micro-whatevers" are a profitized subset of the original definitions (e.g., they are saying a 'microfarm' is a profit-driven subset of 'home vegetable gardens'. You then say that people can and do make money from their gardens, thus arguing that microfarms are not a thing? The existence of profitable home vegetable gardens does not mean that they are not microfarm's in jillesvangurp's definition.
idiotsecant 5y ago
I guess all those working class people who have been doing this exact thing for centuries better get with the times.