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Technology

The Market For Online Merch Has Changed

Elizabeth Technology July 25, 2024

Wearing a band T-shirt from your favorite artist is a way to signal to other people that you enjoy a particular band. Pins, bags with logos on them, bracelets, hats, etc. can all be used as a way to say you’re a part of a fandom and you don’t mind people knowing that.

What if you did mind, though? As time passes, a streamer, a band, a TV show host, even a beverage brand might lose its appeal and become just another item to you. In the worst-case situations, it becomes actively painful or controversial. Wearing a shirt signaling that you align your values with the person on it can spark fights if the figure is recognizable enough – even mainstream shirt staples like Bob Marley or Che Guevara can get the wearer into an uncomfortable political debate! YouTube creators are constantly embroiled in drama, sometimes funny, sometimes so serious it could end in legal consequences. What do you do when your favorite Minecraft guy growing up turned out to be a wifebeater? What do you do with the shirt then? The shirt could be anywhere from twenty to fifty dollars, depending on what creator you were trying to support when you bought it. Do you save it for painting and housework? You can’t exactly wear it outside or to conventions.

Where bigger mainstream artists, to some extent, have PR teams dedicated to making sure they don’t suddenly become radioactive overnight, smaller creators just don’t. Doja Cat’s recent streak of deliberately pushing fans away is a massive anomaly. Meanwhile an announcement that a Youtuber had been texting inappropriately with an underage fan is just another Tuesday. If you Google it, you’ll see dozens of people you’ve never heard of crop up with allegations. Not all of them are true, of course, but enough of them are that it’s considered a real problem with the Youtuber community.

If you were a fan, outgrew your gamer of choice, and now you keep the shirt for the memories, you still have to keep an eye on them lest you go out wearing a shirt that suggests you’re okay with their next controversy however many years down the road it is.

Buying Merch to Support Someone’s Career

This is made worse by the fact that most merch is unimpressive by itself. Even today, merch ranges all across the board: some are just shirts with slogans (often branded as stealth), some are actual art created by an artist for the express purpose of the merch, and some you couldn’t wear outside or to the grocery store because the subject matter of the merch is deliberately controversial. The fans are buying a shirt as a token of support, essentially. You are buying a 75$ hoodie purely for support.

Thus, the shirt doesn’t need to be good. It would be nice if it was, but the artists know it doesn’t matter. Melanie Martinez’s relaunch into her Portals album has generated a ton of buzz for the wrong reasons: the new merch, everything from the perfume to the dresses to the candles, is waaaay too expensive for the products that they are. The perfume bottles were mostly plastic, not glass, and the holder for them was inconsistent; the dresses sometimes tear when people try to put them on, so more inconsistency; the candles reportedly smell and look nice, but are 75$ and only 4 oz. Melanie’s Crybaby album put her on the map, and had much better merch quality, so this dropoff is a big disappointment to fans.

Olivia Rodrigo suffered a similar fate during the release of her album Sour. Fans ordered shirts, the graphics were misplaced and the shirts were not purple. Fans ordered vinyl records, same issue – not purple. Mispelled merch, hats the wrong size, etc. all came through the mail, all at once, and created a bit of a social media storm.

Still, for both of these artists, the push is to buy to support them, not to buy because you want the product. These two artists are very different – Melanie’s gothic fairy theming is wildly different from Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘just broke free of Disney’ only slightly edgy brand. One indie singer, one as pop as it gets. And yet both are failing to consistently produce merch that’s good and well-made. The issue is the industry of merch at large, not the artist.

Why Even Bother?

So the merch is poorly planned, it could become a problem to wear outside at basically any time, it’s not always made well, even though it always costs more than an equivalent shirt of the same size and quality, and it’s kind of a bummer to be reminded that the artist or influencer wants your attention and your money, too. Why bother with this strange dance between fans and merch companies?

Maybe you shouldn’t, actually. When fans buy merch no matter what, it is a signal that they will continue to buy whatever the artist or influencer signs their name to regardless of quality (this includes the content they make, not just the merch they sell). It may become a point of pride in the community to spend the most money out of anyone, because the money proves that one fan loves the artist more than anyone else. It provides constant fodder for social media, and scares off younger or less rich fans who can’t afford to buy 50 of the same vinyl record, over and over again, to prove their love. The atmosphere changes, and the fans begin checking each other, correcting less-‘supportive’ fans and insisting they buy in. It’s not fun anymore. It turns toxic and bitter.

You don’t need to spend money to be part of a fandom. That’s not how being a fan works. You should be buying the merch because it’s well-made and you want it, not because you believe you’re helping out a cause or earning some sort of recognition from the artist. The attitude around the merch and being a fan has to change.

Sources:

https://www.thecut.com/2021/08/olivia-rodrigos-sour-merchandise-isnt-good.html

‘They are entirely a scam’: Fans can’t believe how much Melanie Martinez is charging for ‘hand-painted’ candles, other merch

Questionable Safety And Autopilot

Elizabeth Technology July 23, 2024

It’s not clear what the crash record looks like for autonomous vehicles – a handful of concerning accidents marked by a bizarrely timed disengage of autopilot are not technically considered “autopilot crashes”. Survivors of these accidents then have to go on and somehow prove the auto-pilot was at fault, not them. Whose fault is it when the AI is still going 50 and approaching the back of a stopped semi-truck or a tree on the side of the road? Is it the driver’s, for not stopping in time? Is it the AI, for not spotting the hazards? It’s a bit of both.

The pitched abilities of the driverless cars temporarily eclipsed their actual abilities, and now the companies producing these vehicles have to reel back the customer’s expectation of “self-driving”. The truth is that there are many levels of autonomy – the most basic includes the auto-braking and cruise control systems already seen in cars for years, while the highest end of the spectrum (once available) will be able to drive safely without anyone in the car at all. Such a vehicle doesn’t currently exist – the cars closest to that goal can become confused and clog roads, or fail to see a person and injure them, or otherwise suffer all the same issues the back of the pack suffers, if less frequently.

These companies did such a great job at pitching their product that cities like San Fransisco allowed them permission to operate driverless 24/7, in spite of many valid complaints. In 2023, for example, San Fransisco’s fire department complained that Cruise vehicles had interfered with their emergency response in the city 55 times across eight months. Eventually, Cruise was forced to reduce it’s fleet in the city, much to the relief of the people living there.

As stated in the previous article, there are no cars capable of solving issues the way people are. Thus, there is no truly safe autonomous vehicle yet. Beyond safety, they’re often just clumsy – when a car is stopped in the turn lane with it’s hazards on, ordinary people know to get into that turn lane after the car, not before. When people see traffic cones, they know they are allowed to cross lines on the road to follow those cones. A person in a car sees another person on the sidewalk and can tell what direction they’re facing, and usually, from that info, whether they intend to cross the road or not. Cars cannot consistently do any of these things. Cars flip out and freeze, or they keep going, at speed, creating a hazard for any entity or object it doesn’t recognize in the process.

That seems to suggest the car is at fault. It is, in many ways; autonomous vehicles are often pitched as a solution for crashes caused by human error, and yet here these driverless cars sit, not pulling over for fire trucks, not responding at all in a pileup, when even the newest drivers know you have to pull over for flashing lights and sirens. A larger issue is the car companies themselves, and how they interact with the drivers or passengers: Cruise says they’re ready, so people believe them. Tesla was pitching their cars as if they were already fully autonomous, and it was simply a silly technicality of the law that you had to sit in the front seat while it was active. Customers who end up in crashes with these things largely behaved as though these cars can do things they cannot, and the advertising is responsible for that. There are a lot of things you can’t lie or stretch about a car. The top speed or 0-60 time are both testable. How could a customer hope to discover on their own that the safety features in their futuristic new can cannot spot a child, or an emergency vehicle? They have to take the car company’s word for it, and the car companies have screwed them over.

The self driving features were a big selling point for a lot of these brands, and the customer would need to turn their back on their investment to believe the news about these crashes. If they do believe the reports, the car programmers are still hedging their bets on “the autopilot shut off shortly before the incident, meaning the driver was at fault and not the car”. The customer cannot win. They don’t get their futuristic car or the benefit of the doubt should an accident occur.

If you’ve seen a recent smart-car commercial, you may notice that they are instead pitching “advanced cruise control” rather than “self driving”. The image created by advertising suggested that someone would be able to turn on driver-assist and read the newspaper while the car drove to work, and customers internalized that. Some may have even bought a particular car for that reason. That kind of messaging is hard to undo; it’s even harder for the customer to figure out the true level of their car’s abilities when conflicting information comes out about crashes involving autopilot. For now, though, car companies are slowly being forced to admit that they aren’t nearly as autonomous as they say they are, and hopefully that will help curb some of the trouble they’ve caused.

sources:

https://www.autoinsurance.org/which-states-allow-automated-vehicles-to-drive-on-the-road

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/14/business/driverless-cars-san-francisco-cruise/index.html

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/23/1048723026/what-does-the-future-of-driverless-cars-look-like

Many of us thought we’d be riding around in AI-driven cars by now — so what happened?

https://qz.com/1397504/all-the-things-that-still-baffle-self-driving-cars-starting-with-seagulls

https://www.motortrend.com/news/nhtsa-tesla-autopilot-investigation-shutoff-crash

There Is No Autopilot

Elizabeth Technology July 18, 2024

Since Tesla burst onto the scene with the promise of entirely autonomous vehicles just around the corner, other car manufacturers started racing to keep up. It’s been some time now – what does the autopilot scene look like?

The Human Brain And Driving

The human brain is incredible. It can take information in, process it, and then develop an action plan using that information in microseconds, almost as soon as the data is received.

Furthermore, the enormous library of events a human will experience in their lifetime prepares them to think on their feet! So, even when encountering a never-before-seen scenario, a person can generally take some sort of action to prevent disaster. If something bizarre happens, the average person will be able to respond somehow, whether by swerving around an untethered inflatable clown drifting down the highway or turning around after spotting a sagging road ahead.

If something ordinary happens, like a flock of pigeons startles up and away when someone starts their car, they won’t even make a note of it.

The Computer’s Thought Process

However, when the same things happen to a computer, the computer lags. The computer must first identify the object to react to it, which in itself is a constant problem with most AI vehicles. Then, it must decide on an appropriate course of action. The obvious “easy” answer is to slow down and give the actual driver time to do something about whatever obstacle is in the road, but that presents new issues (accidentally brake-checking the car behind you for a plastic bag, for example) assuming it can actually even do that in the first case.

Early attempts couldn’t! A self-driving Uber killed a pedestrian back in 2018 because it 1) failed to identify the pedestrian as a pedestrian at first, 2) spotted the pedestrian, but was unable to engage the brakes, 3) should have alerted the driver something was in the way and that they must engage the brakes, 4) but didn’t, so the driver was unable to respond in time, hitting the pedestrian and killing her. Similar issues plague Tesla, which has had a steady stream of accidents involving emergency vehicles, because the car seemingly cannot identify an emergency vehicle if it has it’s lights on.

Even if the car can brake, they often do it at inappropriate times. If a flock of birds, a transient non-hazard, burst up in front of a car with autopilot, the car tends to panic and brake until the birds are gone no matter which brand it is. This is because it is totally incapable of processing so many different entities at once, and so instead must ‘play it safe’ in case it’s not actually a flock of birds, but a person on a bicycle or a child chasing a ball. That Uber case from before actually seems to indicate the car thought the pedestrian was on a bicycle, briefly, which delayed it’s response. “Playing it safe” and braking is better than doing nothing, but not a solution all to itself.

The problem with these self-driving and AI-powered cars is that they are not capable of thinking like people. They cannot see information and process it within microseconds – there are times the car cannot process what it’s “seeing” at all. At the moment, there is no truly safe autopilot, and there are a limited number of vehicles where you are able to take your eyes off the road. At best, you might be allowed to take your hands off the steering wheel.  Unpredictable things happen in front of cars all the time, and even if every single car were made autonomous overnight, that wouldn’t solve the issue of the birds, or of lost tires, or pedestrians taller or shorter or faster or slower than the computer expects them to be. It doesn’t solve the car not processing emergency vehicle lights. There is no autopilot.

Sources:

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmGOjHi-7MM&ab_channel=SomeMoreNews)

https://qz.com/1397504/all-the-things-that-still-baffle-self-driving-cars-starting-with-seagulls

https://www.motortrend.com/news/nhtsa-tesla-autopilot-investigation-shutoff-crash

How Is Apple Doing With No Aux Cords?

Elizabeth Technology July 16, 2024

Ah, iPhones. There was once a time when the iPod reigned supreme over portable digital music, and the iPhone was the only ready-to-go choice for smartphones. When Apple products were genuinely worth the price – there were no 100$ Apple Pens, in two separate generations, that didn’t even work universally so you have to buy the right one for your iPad.

Now, it seems like Apple is in a constant battle with use vs. aesthetic – it looks nicer to have a mouse with no cord, sure, but to keep users from using it and charging it at the same time (which ruins the cordless effect, obviously), they moved the charging port to the bottom, so users couldn’t leave the mouse plugged in to charge while they were using it. Apple. Come on.

3.5 MM Aux-less

The aux decision. Apple removed the aux port in favor of the much clunkier charging-port aux converter. For those of you who don’t know, an aux cord, jack or cable is the standard for a great many devices to import or export sound. It’s compact and cheap without sacrificing quality, which is why most user devices have an aux port (in addition to Bluetooth, not instead of). Apple’s decision meant that people were forced into a few boxes if they upgraded:

  • Users buy (or have) BlueTooth headphones, which they also have to charge to use.

  • The user just doesn’t listen to music with headphones on while their phone is charging.

  • Users buy (or have) headphones compatible with the lightning plug-in port. These headphones may not be compatible with other systems. You cannot charge your phone and listen on headphones at the same time due to a lack of free ports. Again.

  • Users buy an adaptor with two plugs.

Today

The iPhone dominates the smartphone landscape. According to Asymco, the average iPhone is about four years old, a couple of model years behind the current one. On average, users have adjusted – Bluetooth devices reign supreme, in spite of the outrage at the time. The charging times have gone down, the battery lives have gone up – as long as you remember to charge your device before you expect to use it again, the change may actually be sort of convenient. A general sense of malaise around the disappearance of plugins in general hovers over the air in tech forums and on the blogs pushing for Apple to keep the aux. Approximately 1 in 3 active smartphones in the entire world are Apple – it clearly hasn’t slowed them down. While Android devices still hold on to the aux, the switch from Apple – which has everything from already-purchased and un-transferable music to saved passwords and map preferences – would be enormously difficult for most.

Sources:

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/heres-how-long-your-iphone-will-really-last/

https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/audio-jack

https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics

Maintaining USB Ports

Elizabeth Technology July 11, 2024

Some tips and tricks for keeping your device’s built-in ports working.

1) Buy Quality Peripherals

Be careful which brand of USB-C cable you buy, and if possible, look at reviews if you’re buying third-party. For most computers, the job of power regulation falls onto the cable, not the devices it’s connecting! Many devices are designed to send or receive as much power as the cable will allow as a result. This is not necessarily a good thing: while a cable with a better design can charge your phone faster, many people have unintentionally damaged their USB ports by using cables that maximized power draw, shorting the port out and ruining it in the process because it was designed for a wall plug-in, not a computer.

    For the same reason, you have to be careful if you’re using a USB dock that relies on the computer for power – just like the charging cables, you can pull more power than the computer’s USB can supply if you’re using devices that ask for power via the USB port, like keyboards, or computer mice.  

    2) Don’t Drop It!

    Obviously nobody is intentionally dropping their machine while something is plugged into it. However, some small precautions can keep disasters at bay – it’s generally inadvisable to move a device while it has things like its power cord or a jump drive plugged in, full stop. If you accidentally reach the end of the power cable and pull too hard, you can seriously damage the cable’s port on the computer, and if you accidentally bump or twist a USB drive while it’s still plugged in, you can detach it from your laptop’s motherboard, which will be an expensive fix. In general, a little bit of inconvenience will save you from pricey repairs.

    3) Eject The USB First

    Your computer and the USB itself will tell you not to just pull the drive out once you’re done doing what you’re doing. This is because you can corrupt the files on the USB drive by pulling it mid-operation. Your data does not transfer instantly between the computer’s internal storage and the external jump drive, and interrupting the two while they are swapping data in the background could result in a totally unusable file on the drive or your computer. Many apps today work to prevent you losing data this way, but it is still plenty possible.

    4) Don’t Use Toothpicks

    In the event you discover dust or other debris is preventing the USB from connecting to your device’s port, you can’t use water to flush it for obvious reasons. But toothpicks are also not a good solution – they can break unexpectedly, and wedge debris further in instead of pulling it out. Instead, what you should do is use canned air! If that doesn’t solve the issue, it’s better to talk to a professional about clearing the port instead of risking damaging it further. At the very least, they’ll have better tools!

    USB 1-4

    Elizabeth Technology July 9, 2024

    USB 1.0 was the first major creation of USB standards, made in 1996. It could transfer data at a rate between 1.5 and 12 Mbps, and was not widely adopted by tech companies. 1.1, which had several improvements on the initial product, was adopted by Apple for the iMac G3, which swapped that device off of serial and parallel ports and set USB onto the trajectory it’s been on ever since.

    2.0 was made in 2000, and could transfer data at 480 Mbps, but generally hung around 280 Mbps due to hardware limitations in the devices that had it. 2.0 was backwards compatible, and could also allow two devices to talk to each other without a computer in the middle. 2.0 can communicate with most other kinds of USBs introduced later, except for USB-C. USB 2.0 was also now capable of (or at least better known for) delivering power, and could manage about 500 mA at 5 V.

     3.0 (and 3.1 and 3.2) is a faster, more powerful version that was introduced in 2008. USB 3.0 devices can achieve up to 5 Gbps data transfer rate, 10 times what USB 2.0 can do, and can deliver up to 900 mA of power, at 5 V. USB 3.0 ports and connectors usually have blue in them somewhere to distinguish them from USB 2.0 ports and connectors. 3.0 also allowed for data to flow both ways at the same time between devices, and remained backwards-compatible with 2.0 (but not 1.1). These connectors doubled the number of data channels in the USB, which is what allowed for the speed and power of the 3.0.

    3.1 did not change much except for the data transfer rate, which shot up to 10 Gbps, and 3.2 doubled it again to 20 Gbps. In combination with the USB-C, it can transfer 10 Gbps both ways!

    4.0 can manage up to 40 Gpbs, but is also available in a 20 Gbps variation, and can deliver 240 W of power over the (confusingly named) 3.1 power standard. That’s the same wattage coming out of most American wall plugs!

    Aside from 1.1 (which is multiple decades old at this point) most of these plugs can communicate with each other, across the gaps of time. USB-C is an exception at USB 2.0, and this can present issues if these two are somehow expected to talk to each other, like they might if an older computer is being used to supplement equipment (like lab or tooling equipment) that cannot use more modern versions of Windows. However, the average person is unlikely to encounter these issues on the equipment they use day – to – day, and even if they did, odds are they would be able to use an intermediary computer to jump from 2.0 to 3.0, and then from there to USB-C. Not ideal, but not unsolveable, like a number of the issues created by serial/parallel port crossovers were!

    Sources: https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/decoding-the-usb-standards-from-1-to-4

    What Kinds of USB Are Out There?

    Elizabeth Technology July 4, 2024

    Over the last ten years, the most common kinds of USBs for phones have been the micro USB, Mini USB, and USB-C. Outside of that, USB-A types are the most common for computers, while USB-B, USB-C, mini- and micro- types can largely be found in specialty peripheral connections as well as older tech. USB-A connectors are the kind of connector that jump drives use, with a large square connection. Mini- and micro-USB connectors are much smaller, and the bottom of the connection is flat. USB-C drives are about the same size as the micro-USB, but round, and can be connected “upside down”, an advantage over previous versions of USBs which must be plugged in a certain way to function. USB-As for example do not have a visual cue to show which way is ‘up’ on a jump drive or cable.  Ideally, everything will eventually connect to and from USB-Cs.

    USBs are extremely convenient – as mentioned in the last article, these nifty plugins replaced larger, bulkier serial and parallel ports which were rarely made to be compatible with each other, although for the time their speed was fine. The industry desperately needed something to ensure devices could talk to each other, and USB delivered, with ports appearing on the backs and sides of PC computers before 1999, and Apple devices too after (with version 1.1 being used for the iMac G3). These early USBs could only communicate with a host computer upon the host’s request – peripherals couldn’t talk to each other until later, around 2000 with USB version 2.0, which also supported more devices as USBs (and small consumer electronics) became more widespread.

    Shortly after, mobile and cellular phones grew in popularity as cell networks became more reliable, which itself lead to a sort of diversification of micro-sized plugins as each device tried to re-invent the wheel, much to the annoyance of the customer, who would have to find a replacement cord should their charger ever split. People who still use Blackberry devices will tell you that it’s agonizingly difficult to find a charger in-stores now because it’s one of many devices that just didn’t use USB-C and paid for it down the line. Right now, you may still struggle to find the right cable for your device, because mini-USBs are just as common as lightning cables, but lightning cables are still everywhere. Apple really did think it would win in the lightning vs. USB-C argument!

    All of this has gradually pushed the EU to standardize onto the USB-C cable, hoping to ease the load on both the consumer and the electronic waste disposal services.

    Sources:

    https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/USB

    https://simson.net/clips/1999/99.Globe.05-20.USB_deserves_more_support+.shtml

    What Is The Universal Serial Bus?

    Elizabeth Technology July 2, 2024

    Universal Serial Bus (or USB) connectors are a kind of connector meant to standardize computer peripherals, first created in 1996! The most common adaptors before this, serial and parallel ports, worked fine when it came to data and power transfer, but since they came in all sorts of pincounts and orientations, matching two pieces of hardware together could get difficult.

    USBs were made to alleviate this, but since they themselves can come in many sizes and shapes, further efforts to reach the one true USB connector that will always work are still underway over twenty years later. Right now, the favorite for this role is the USB-C connector, which is small, symmetrical, and forwards compatible, meaning that future ports will be able to take old cables, and vice-versa. The European Union recently declared that battery devices must become USB-C compatible to be sold there!

    For a time, Apple hoped it’s Lightning connector would be the default, rather than USB-C. Lightning connectors can also transmit data and power, and are also forwards-compatible, but USB-C connectors were already considered an industry standard by a number of manufacturers, and so eventually Apple had to admit defeat and plan to switch to USB-C in the coming years.

    While some tech will always be left behind by standardizations (just think of how much legacy equipment is running on Windows XP, with its own special power or data cables) this standardization aims to reduce the amount of electronics waste generated by broken connecting or charging cables. If everything has its own cable, you end up with a drawerful of cables, and should you break one for a niche gadget or toy, you may find that the cable it needs is not sold separately, or not sold at all. The lack of a cable might cause you to throw away the gadget, even if it still works, because you have no way to power it!

    But if devices become standardized such that your headphones, your camera snake, and your favorite RC car all charge off of one type of cable, you don’t have to throw one out when the cable breaks, and you only need to purchase one or two cables total.

    What is an MSP?

    Elizabeth Technology June 25, 2024

    An MSP, or Managed Service Provider, can supplement an existing IT department, or take the place of one if a business doesn’t have the resources to get one. The range of functions that an MSP can do for you is very large! MSPs can vend software, and be almost totally hands off, or step in and manage your IT day-to-day. There’s almost always a plan for your needs.

    What do you need out of an MSP?

    Hardware

    If you don’t know how to navigate the world of business computers, which printer would best suit your office, or which router to buy, we can help – we can source the equipment and order it for you for purchase based off of your requirements. Accessories too! Phones, RAM, docks, monitors – if your computer needs it, we can order it for you. If you need to upgrade a Windows license to Business grade, or retire an older device for a new one, we can smooth the path. If you’re worried about maintaining backups of your devices or keeping virtual servers, we can handle that, too. We even manage the warranties on new devices, so if something goes wrong within the warranty period, we can contact the supplier for you and get the next steps started.

    Software

    Worried about bricking up your work machines with a faulty program, or leaving security backdoors open on your machines? We can manage that for you! With update policies and download restrictions, we can keep business machines fully updated and safe from unapproved programs. Antivirus, anti-phishing tech and training, password managers, and more form a digital shield to protect you from Ransomware events, and training helps to prevent social engineering attacks from getting through when brute force attacks won’t.

    That’s not all! We can also set up VPNs for your employees if they work from home, and location-lock accounts so that hackers from other countries cannot get in. Need help setting up 2FA? Want someone else to handle Microsoft/Apple account setup for new employees so you can focus on training? We can do that for you.

    Internet

    We can manage your routers and WiFi points. We can monitor for outages, and if one is detected, call your internet provider for you! We can also provide network backup with cellular data, where you’ll switch over near-seamlessly if your main internet provider goes down.

    Your network connects your POS and ATMs to the rest of the world – we can manage the network. You want to switch to an easier phone system, we can transition you to a VOIP service like Teams. So much of business today relies on functional IT equipment, and streamlining your business processes can be a daunting task alone! When you need experts on your side to streamline your processes, an MSP like us is a valuable tool.  

    You Don’t Need Cheap Stuff From Temu

    Elizabeth Technology June 20, 2024

    The myth that you can buy almost anything direct from the manufacturer at wholesale prices has led to a number of online stores popping up selling garbage hoping to trick users with deals too good to be true. Sure, the prices are low, because there are fewer middle men when you buy from Temu, Alibaba, Shein, etc. – but the company is still taking a profit from somewhere, and in most cases it’s at the expense of the workers and the item’s quality. Fast fashion is the easiest facet of this grand machine to look at, so to describe the steps of this market, let’s describe the life cycle of a simple corset top on social media today.  

    First, a better-known fashion brand decides corsets are back in and makes one for a show. If this idea is accepted, then other fashion houses get in on the trend and start bringing corsets out to the runway to compete. Eventually, celebrities wear them, and because celebrities are wearing them, ordinary people want to wear them too. The catch is that not all of them have designer money, and other companies profit off of that by making cheaper ‘dupes’ of the initial design. Not close enough to get sued over, but clearly inspired. Many people go this route, but some are looking for an even cheaper product – they may want to keep up with the trends on a student budget, for example, and know they don’t need high or even medium quality clothing.

    Less reputable stores sense the demand via a number of channels and start producing a corset top that might or might not be just like one of the fashion brand ones if it were made of polyester and had plastic bones instead of metal ones, producing absurd amounts at a time using underpaid labor. Eventually, demand runs out, the item is no longer trendy, and instead of recycling the fabric or trying to time the end of the line better, all of the remainder of the product that didn’t sell now goes to a landfill, and production of the next item begins. And there’s always a next item! There is no gap. Social media has made it easier than ever for things to trend off of a whisper of a hint from an influencer, and because the products are so cheap, it’s easy to buy and then dump entire wardrobes’ worth of clothing on the consumer side, which keeps the ball rolling. The same is true of the factory.

    This is happening all of the time with all manner of products, mostly made of plastic, and the machine continues to profit because even when something manages to survive four or five trips through the washing machine or dishwasher without disintegrating, it’ll get tossed anyway to make room for the next product. The textiles are dirt-cheap, the labor is dirt-cheap, the shipping and the disposal are both wasteful without consequence. The final result is a market fueled by demand for things that can be let go as garbage with the least friction possible. Social media has created a vicious cycle that is always creating demand and always generating more and more waste.

    The invention of “Shein Hauls” is one of the worse things to come out of TikTok. The clothing itself is so cheap to buy that it doesn’t make sense to spend the gas to return it once it’s arrived. Take a picture in it, and then throw it away. This is the nature of the clothing haul.

    Sources: https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/the-aftermath-of-fast-fashion-how-discarded-clothes-impact-public-health-and-the-environment/

    https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2022/05/your-clothes-can-have-afterlife

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