Ridiculous comedy merch

[madhair60]

I get you, this is my phone case:



It isn't made for a Pixel 3 so I had to get it custom-made. Knock-off of a knock-off.

Creasing at this.

[the]

it does mean that all of the online shops are full of trick unappealing products generated by automated spamming machines, and that is miserable has no bearing on the physical world.

Just ignore them and make your own.

     

[Twed]

It clearly does have a bearing on the physical world, due to people buying absolutely shitloads of hideous tat and its very existence lowering the standards in general. I'd quite like there to be fewer things and for those things to be higher quality, instead of the world being full of toxic Live Laugh Love fake wood sign landfill fodder.

[the]

You have to separate what is available on these sites from what is a physical product in the real world. They don't exist until ordered (and trust me, no-one is buying the vast, vast majority of the items listed as available), and even then they are only printed up on a per-order basis (if one gets ordered, one item is printed up and shipped).

If you want to highly-constructively worry about 'people buying too much stuff', well that is a broad social and economic concern, but trying to pin that on digital printing sites is a bit desperate.

[Twed]

"desperate". Me and my breathless anti-tat agenda.

I understand the on-demand nature of the items, Daniel. I live in 2019 though where people buy stuff online and think it might be a Bad Thing Actually if a robot shows idiots a bunch of indiscriminate images that can be made real at the click of a button. When people search for clothes and they're shown the cheapest, slave-made shit with designs on them that didn't even involve a human then that's actually pretty fucking awful, vote Beto.

I think that might contribute to things being worse in general. Your name is Daniel now, BTW, don't care if that's accurate or not.

[Absorb the anus burn]

http://www.summerwine-holmfirth.co.uk/gift-shop.html

[lazarou]

The strangest thing about this figure set is that it's from the Super7 ReAction line which is otherwise entirely figures based on properties that appeal to stereotypical 30-something sci-fi-/fantasy/horror geeks; Alien, Back to the Future, Star Trek, Big Trouble in Little China, Masters of the Universe and so-on.  Who the hell are these aimed at?

Probably the same people who buy the 'Stay Golden' shirts you see piled up at the local Targets over here alongside the Rick & Morty and Bob Ross shirts.

Biggest surprise on this front lately was at a recent visit to the excellent Amoeba Records in Hollywood I saw they were selling shirts of The Young Ones. Almost as big a surprise as my fortysomething former punk co-worker not only randomly bringing the show up one night but also quoting whole chunks of Alexei Sayle's parts.

[Brundle-Fly]

Wasn't some bizarre bastard back in 2005 selling screenprints on eBay of Jo Brand attending comedy promoter, Malcolm Hardee's funeral?

[Shaky]

I can just about see the Golden Girls figures ending up on some collector's mantle somewhere. Batman, Daredevil, Family Guy and - Ha Ha! - look at these ones, mate! Bit of a laugh!

They're more of a logical thing to exist than cheap leggings with Bea Arthur's warped face stretched across the crotch, at any rate.

[Chriddof]

When people search for clothes and they're shown the cheapest, slave-made shit with designs on them that didn't even involve a human

First, I believe it's all user-generated, as in there aren't bots slapping this stuff together, it's people who do it "for the lols"or who genuinely want to see at least one example of a thing exist because they like said thing. Secondly, there are people on Redbubble who do good stuff, which can involve actual technical skill in, say, recreating logos in Adobe Illustrator. Case in point:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/nikhorne/collections/439072-itv

(Full disclosure: I have bought shirts off of that guy's page, and I have a RB store of my own which I won't link to for various reasons.)

[Twed]

Yes, of course there's good stuff too. I'm not talking specifically about Redbubble with the bot-generated stuff (although choosing an image and applying it to *every product possible* is arguably a bit too automatic, hence the silly leggings). I'm not saying Redbubble is universally bad, I ordered something from there last week.

Look:

https://thehustle.co/who-makes-those-insanely-specific-t-shirts-on-the-internet/

[Twed]

If anybody's remembers the Flash game market, there was a network called MochiMedia. They were bought by a Chinese company who refused to let them discriminate on the content they accepted. So bots flooded the network with terrible generated "games" that were just the same jigsaw puzzle with different stock images swapped in. Quality content was drowned out and the entire network was destroyed.

Obviously that's not going to happen to Amazon, but it is grim when a noticable amount of automatically-generated stuff is out online without discrimination.

Similar issues with the mobile app stores, and children being targeted by generated content on YouTube videos: https://thehustle.co/who-makes-those-insanely-specific-t-shirts-on-the-internet/

People being tricked into buying made-on-demand tat generated from targeted personal marketing data is not a good situation, but at least some of it is funny.

[Twed]

(writing on phone, excuse bad form)

There's a lot of stuff that might not be bot-generated but is definitely SEO-style spamming. Lots of accounts on Redbubble with content made from templates with image & text swaps to target specific interests and demographics (I've noticed that many of these accounts have profile pages which just quote text from popular geek culture novels). That's another sucky element of it all, bringing it back to the MochiMedia and app store examples: good work is often buried or just cheapened by the floods of souless image swaps, making it more difficult for legit artists.

I know I'm going on about this a lot, but there are so many fascinating dimensions to it all.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

The strangest thing about this figure set is that it's from the Super7 ReAction line which is otherwise entirely figures based on properties that appeal to stereotypical 30-something sci-fi-/fantasy/horror geeks; Alien, Back to the Future, Star Trek, Big Trouble in Little China, Masters of the Universe and so-on.  Who the hell are these aimed at?

This post really made me laugh; at the actual products, and Avril's genuine bafflement, which really comes through in the last line.

[Pseudopath]

I like how they got the Betty White figurine so hilariously wrong despite her being the only Golden Girl who's still alive.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

They got Bea Arthur's simmering " just look at the state of these fucking cunts I have to live with " look of resentment right, though.

[kittens]

so i can draw a cool picture or find a cool picture and then get it printed up and sent to me in good quality for about a tenner? if this is true my wardrobe will be revolutionised. i go on red bubbles? or somewhere else?

[Twed]

so i can draw a cool picture or find a cool picture and then get it printed up and sent to me in good quality for about a tenner? if this is true my wardrobe will be revolutionised. i go on red bubbles? or somewhere else?

Yep! Sticker Mule is good for stickers and similar things, there are other sites for t-shirts and posters etc.

[Jumblegraws]

More worrying is the fact there are 25 reviews and most of them are very positive. Some people really will buy fucking anything.

Late with this, but thought I should point out that the customer reviews on Redbubble are for the product type (legging in that case), not the specific design being viewed.