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Yes she also willfully misread “mass produced goods” and asked me why I didn’t think Chinese artisans should use etsy for their handmade goods, a classic loaded

by amyhoy 5y ago

Yes she also willfully misread “mass produced goods” and asked me why I didn’t think Chinese artisans should use etsy for their handmade goods, a classic loaded question and a position I have never taken. The mass produced goods — that didn’t belong on Etsy — were literally from China. Calling something Chinese doesn’t make it racist.

kragen 5y ago
As I said at the time, I don't think she was willfully misreading you; I think she was suggesting you might be fallible. Because I said that, you've had me blocked on Twitter for eight years, which kind of amounts to conceding Star's original point. I'm sort of puzzled about where you think the mass-produced artisan goods on AliExpress come from. Like, presumably we're not talking about goods like "one ton of calcium chloride" or "1MW supercritical steam generator", right? We're talking about the kinds of goods that Chinese artisans hand-make en masse and sell on AliExpress, things like furniture and decorations, right?
- detaro 5y ago
  Etsy (certainly back then, afaik they've sort-of given up on that by now: hard to police and bad for growth - turns out mass-production gives more turnover) was very much about things hand-made by seller. The promise was that you don't get people selling stuff they bought from factories on Ali[baba|Express] and claiming it's something they've handmade - in 2013 they had just allowed outsourcing production steps for the first time, if you documented who did exactly what step, so no buying things (handmade or not) and just reselling them. Nevertheless, that's what you get, X shops selling the exact same thing they supposedly made (or selling them with small customizations done, which was OK according to the rules but plenty people still disliked), and Etsy was pushing "integrity updates" and promising to better police this. And that wasn't in any way about Chinese people, because obviously if people are reselling massproduced stuff the problem is not the worker who made them. Nor are Chinese artisans selling their own product a problem, but I don't think that was a large group on the market anyways.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Of course nobody should resell things on Etsy that they merely bought, but there was nothing to suggest that Hoy was complaining about reselling; instead, she seemed to be suggesting that Chinese artisans who mass-produced things shouldn't sell them on Etsy. My reading of Hoy's reasoning at the time was "artisan = white person", so I tried to provoke some questioning of that assumption, and got blocked for my trouble. Certainly she had the opportunity to clarify at the time if that wasn't what she was talking about.
    - mcphage 5y ago
      > so I tried to provoke some questioning of that assumption, and got blocked for my trouble. Certainly she had the opportunity to clarify at the time if that wasn't what she was talking about. What would be the point of clarifying to you if you jumped in with those assumptions? She doesn’t owe you anything. Blocking someone like that seems like the right call.
      - kragen 5y ago
        You say, "What would be the point of clarifying to you if you jumped in with those assumptions?" The assumptions under discussion were Hoy's (possible) assumptions, not assumptions I was jumping in with. On the contrary, as you can easily see from the thread, I approached the dialogue with an open and receptive mind, rather than imposing any structure of my own. But that inquiry evidently would have led somewhere that Hoy very much didn't want to go, leading to desperate efforts to smear me as "weird" in this thread eight years later. At least she's repudiated the position she evidently held at the time.
    - detaro 5y ago
      Rejecting the leading question clarified that quite nicely. And really, the jump of "could she be talking about the main Etsy point of complaints right now? No, way more likely she's just racist" is a crap starting assumption to make.
      - 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- amyhoy 5y ago
  “mass produced hand made artisan goods” is not a thing. You’re inventing things and putting words in my mouth, just like you did originally, which is why you’re blocked. No, you can’t put words in someone’s mouth and say “you blocked me so it’s true” either.
  - kragen 5y ago
    I didn't put any words in your mouth in the original thread. If anyone had a legitimate complaint about that, it would be Star; you did put words in her mouth, and I suggested that you might be mistaken about your interpretation. Here are my tweets in full: > Is it possible @starsandrobots did read your tweet, and simply thought you were fallible? > I thought her point was actually pretty interesting: is Etsy a reasonable outlet for Chinese artisans? Could it be? How? And then, in response to your accusations against Star: > It's possible that might be in her heart, but doesn't seem certain to me. And then (though this was hard to find) I posted this, but I'm not sure what it refers to; maybe someone said "for shame" in a tweet that's been deleted: > I mean, it's possible that Chinese artisans who mass-handmake things and post them on Etsy will run into "for shame" even if not yet And then, in response to a now-lost tweet from an extremely bizarre account that I now suspect was a Russian troll (flip-flopped from fervent support of Black Lives Matter to suddenly being some kind of alt-right account): > @AmyStephen You're using these terms as if they're opposites, but I don't think they are. cc @amyhoy (I just found those last two tweets and added them to this comment.) That's the whole thread! After that, you blocked us both, apparently for eight years. Anyone can read this (at least, if they log into HN and turn on "showdead" in their profile, since my comments are getting flagged) and see that what I'm saying is true and what you're saying is not true, and moreover that you were doing what you falsely accused me of doing, so I don't know why you are posting these comments. Maybe you just think people are really easy to fool? As for mass-produced handmade artisan goods, I'm not sure how you think mass production works in factories, but it generally involves a great deal of handmaking, much of which is done by artisans. There are exceptions, like JLCPCB and chemical plants, but I think their goods are not the kind that would sell best on Etsy. A lot of the totally unskilled assembly-line work, like what I did when I worked in a bubblebath factory, has been long since automated. What's left is largely skilled artisan work like investment casting.
mkishi 5y ago
I don't know where to dm you, so I'll do this here: I really shouldn't have posted this submission. Ghost is a relatively big platform that I've always kept in consideration for projects. I was so shocked by the situation and the discovery that something similar happened in the past that I went "people need to know this!" disregarding how out of place it'd be to blast the thread here. Thankfully it was flagged quickly, but it shouldn't have been up to begin with. I'm sorry.
- amyhoy 5y ago
  I really appreciate you saying that. Don’t worry about it, it’s not causing me any distress and I’m too sick to do anything productive right now anyway. But this place is a cesspit. This is actually a better experience than I would’ve expected from years before, and it’s still terrible. Just something to take away from the experience.
  - kragen 5y ago
    > But this place is a cesspit. This is actually a better experience than I would’ve expected from years before, and it’s still terrible. Interestingly, this is something we agree on; it's causing me a great deal of distress.

by amyhoy 5y ago

kragen 5y ago

As I said at the time, I don't think she was willfully misreading you; I think she was suggesting you might be fallible. Because I said that, you've had me blocked on Twitter for eight years, which kind of amounts to conceding Star's original point. I'm sort of puzzled about where you think the mass-produced artisan goods on AliExpress come from. Like, presumably we're not talking about goods like "one ton of calcium chloride" or "1MW supercritical steam generator", right? We're talking about the kinds of goods that Chinese artisans hand-make en masse and sell on AliExpress, things like furniture and decorations, right?

detaro 5y ago
Etsy (certainly back then, afaik they've sort-of given up on that by now: hard to police and bad for growth - turns out mass-production gives more turnover) was very much about things hand-made by seller. The promise was that you don't get people selling stuff they bought from factories on Ali[baba|Express] and claiming it's something they've handmade - in 2013 they had just allowed outsourcing production steps for the first time, if you documented who did exactly what step, so no buying things (handmade or not) and just reselling them. Nevertheless, that's what you get, X shops selling the exact same thing they supposedly made (or selling them with small customizations done, which was OK according to the rules but plenty people still disliked), and Etsy was pushing "integrity updates" and promising to better police this. And that wasn't in any way about Chinese people, because obviously if people are reselling massproduced stuff the problem is not the worker who made them. Nor are Chinese artisans selling their own product a problem, but I don't think that was a large group on the market anyways.
- kragen 5y ago
  Of course nobody should resell things on Etsy that they merely bought, but there was nothing to suggest that Hoy was complaining about reselling; instead, she seemed to be suggesting that Chinese artisans who mass-produced things shouldn't sell them on Etsy. My reading of Hoy's reasoning at the time was "artisan = white person", so I tried to provoke some questioning of that assumption, and got blocked for my trouble. Certainly she had the opportunity to clarify at the time if that wasn't what she was talking about.
  - mcphage 5y ago
    > so I tried to provoke some questioning of that assumption, and got blocked for my trouble. Certainly she had the opportunity to clarify at the time if that wasn't what she was talking about. What would be the point of clarifying to you if you jumped in with those assumptions? She doesn’t owe you anything. Blocking someone like that seems like the right call.
    - kragen 5y ago
      You say, "What would be the point of clarifying to you if you jumped in with those assumptions?" The assumptions under discussion were Hoy's (possible) assumptions, not assumptions I was jumping in with. On the contrary, as you can easily see from the thread, I approached the dialogue with an open and receptive mind, rather than imposing any structure of my own. But that inquiry evidently would have led somewhere that Hoy very much didn't want to go, leading to desperate efforts to smear me as "weird" in this thread eight years later. At least she's repudiated the position she evidently held at the time.
  - detaro 5y ago
    Rejecting the leading question clarified that quite nicely. And really, the jump of "could she be talking about the main Etsy point of complaints right now? No, way more likely she's just racist" is a crap starting assumption to make.
    - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amyhoy 5y ago
“mass produced hand made artisan goods” is not a thing. You’re inventing things and putting words in my mouth, just like you did originally, which is why you’re blocked. No, you can’t put words in someone’s mouth and say “you blocked me so it’s true” either.
- kragen 5y ago
  I didn't put any words in your mouth in the original thread. If anyone had a legitimate complaint about that, it would be Star; you did put words in her mouth, and I suggested that you might be mistaken about your interpretation. Here are my tweets in full: > Is it possible @starsandrobots did read your tweet, and simply thought you were fallible? > I thought her point was actually pretty interesting: is Etsy a reasonable outlet for Chinese artisans? Could it be? How? And then, in response to your accusations against Star: > It's possible that might be in her heart, but doesn't seem certain to me. And then (though this was hard to find) I posted this, but I'm not sure what it refers to; maybe someone said "for shame" in a tweet that's been deleted: > I mean, it's possible that Chinese artisans who mass-handmake things and post them on Etsy will run into "for shame" even if not yet And then, in response to a now-lost tweet from an extremely bizarre account that I now suspect was a Russian troll (flip-flopped from fervent support of Black Lives Matter to suddenly being some kind of alt-right account): > @AmyStephen You're using these terms as if they're opposites, but I don't think they are. cc @amyhoy (I just found those last two tweets and added them to this comment.) That's the whole thread! After that, you blocked us both, apparently for eight years. Anyone can read this (at least, if they log into HN and turn on "showdead" in their profile, since my comments are getting flagged) and see that what I'm saying is true and what you're saying is not true, and moreover that you were doing what you falsely accused me of doing, so I don't know why you are posting these comments. Maybe you just think people are really easy to fool? As for mass-produced handmade artisan goods, I'm not sure how you think mass production works in factories, but it generally involves a great deal of handmaking, much of which is done by artisans. There are exceptions, like JLCPCB and chemical plants, but I think their goods are not the kind that would sell best on Etsy. A lot of the totally unskilled assembly-line work, like what I did when I worked in a bubblebath factory, has been long since automated. What's left is largely skilled artisan work like investment casting.

mkishi 5y ago

I don't know where to dm you, so I'll do this here: I really shouldn't have posted this submission. Ghost is a relatively big platform that I've always kept in consideration for projects. I was so shocked by the situation and the discovery that something similar happened in the past that I went "people need to know this!" disregarding how out of place it'd be to blast the thread here. Thankfully it was flagged quickly, but it shouldn't have been up to begin with. I'm sorry.

amyhoy 5y ago
I really appreciate you saying that. Don’t worry about it, it’s not causing me any distress and I’m too sick to do anything productive right now anyway. But this place is a cesspit. This is actually a better experience than I would’ve expected from years before, and it’s still terrible. Just something to take away from the experience.
- kragen 5y ago
  > But this place is a cesspit. This is actually a better experience than I would’ve expected from years before, and it’s still terrible. Interestingly, this is something we agree on; it's causing me a great deal of distress.