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Zig-Zag posted:Someone lost a whole box of toilet paper on the interstate today. I almost pulled over and got some.
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Aug 20, 2017 02:10
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Panfilo posted:Are Millennials also killing the gambling industry? I'm genuinely curious what kind of demographic shifts will happen when Baby Boomers die out and successive generations don't have the same disposable income and more understanding of gambling odds. The studio that makes Candy Crush sold for more money than the entirety of the Star Wars IP. People gamble more than ever, everywhere, and they don't even get to win real money from it.
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Aug 20, 2017 02:47
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Guy Mann posted:The studio that makes Candy Crush sold for more money than the entirety of the Star Wars IP. People gamble more than ever, everywhere, and they don't even get to win real money from it. Yeah and for all the "lol avocado toast" stuff out there, millennials are actually truly bad with money with absurd product standards in many cases. I blame marketing in large part but people's expectations are absurd now.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:02
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Pick posted:Yeah and for all the "lol avocado toast" stuff out there, millennials are actually truly bad with money with absurd product standards in many cases. I blame marketing in large part but people's expectations are absurd now. This we can definitely agree on. While I'm guilty of Steam purchases just as much as my wife's designer shoe habit, I don't spend money on fremium games anymore as you end up spending far more on a 'free' game. I think another part of it is flash in the pan fads along with much easier means to facilitate impulse buys. Hell, kids are making micro transactions on their parents poorly secured amazon accounts courtesy of Alexa.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:31
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Well it's also things like seeing the explosion of luxury markets among working-class and lower-middle-class buyers. That was incredibly deliberate but ultimately they can't force you to buy 12 handbags a year.
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Aug 20, 2017 03:43
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Pick posted:Well it's also things like seeing the explosion of luxury markets among working-class and lower-middle-class buyers. That was incredibly deliberate but ultimately they can't force you to buy 12 handbags a year. This sounds like someone thats never seen a middle aged Asian lady spear tackle someone to get a designer purse. *the males skitter about the perimeter, anxious to see the arrival of the newly bepursed alpha female* 
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Aug 20, 2017 03:58
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I can understand buying one or two designer purses if they're well-made and will last for years. Sometimes it makes sense to pay more for a higher-quality product that will last longer. I don't get the attraction of chronically buying designer purses. I worked with a girl who had a several-hundred-dollar-a-month purse habit, and she wasn't rich. It probably amounted to more than 25% of her income. Our office is casual, so it's not like everyone was dressed to impress and she was trying to keep up. What is the reason for this? Sure, it's an addiction, but why expensive purses, of all things? Where do people even put dozens of purses? Do they just pile up in a closet? I can understand shoes better because they're a form of clothing. A purse is a bag to put your stuff, and that's very inconvenient to switch out all the time. Maybe someone here can shed light on the peculiar habit that is purse addiction.
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Aug 20, 2017 13:27
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purses are like beanie babies: only valuable if you keep the tags on and find someone dumber than you to buy it next
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Aug 20, 2017 13:40
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Aren't freemium games relatively age-agnostic in getting people to throw away money? And pretty sure they make 95% of the profits from a relatively tiny amount of people who are dumb/addicted enough to do so. Also, pretty sure fashion is a market that's spent half the 20th century or more convincing women they absolutely have to acquire the NEW SHINY or be the laughing stock of the playground like the kid who owns an Atari when everyone else has a Nintendo or Sega.
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Aug 20, 2017 14:16
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Inescapable Duck posted:Aren't freemium games relatively age-agnostic in getting people to throw away money? And pretty sure they make 95% of the profits from a relatively tiny amount of people who are dumb/addicted enough to do so. The best has to be games like Madden and the Madden Ultimate Team mode where you build your team based on cards you get in packs that you buy with free in game coins, or real money 'points'. You can get a really good team for free if you play a lot and know what you are doing, but people spend a ton of actual cash buying packs. The game isn't even out yet, but people are already spending big money, one guy bought $500 in packs, and these aren't people on Youtube who do it to make money, they are addicted. So you get this, plus $60 for the game, and have a license to print money, also the monopoly on NFL games helps a ton too.
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Aug 20, 2017 14:39
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Saint quartz is stronger. Saint quartz is the strongest.
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Aug 20, 2017 14:47
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Inescapable Duck posted:Also, pretty sure fashion is a market that's spent half the 20th century or more convincing women they absolutely have to acquire the NEW SHINY or be the laughing stock of the playground like the kid who owns an Atari when everyone else has a Nintendo or Sega. This has been going on for a very long time, but it doesn't make sense in the context of people working in a casual setting. In a high-powered legal firm in NYC, where the appearance of financial success is expected, maybe. But in a small town operation where everyone is wearing jeans and sneakers and most families are just trying to make ends meet? There is no cause for competition on the fashion front. People are more likely to criticize that you'd spend so much on fashion than to admire it. So I'm trying to figure out why someone in that situation would have an expensive purse habit. She would notice that no one else around her was buying designer purses every month.
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Aug 20, 2017 14:51
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green chicken feet posted:This has been going on for a very long time, but it doesn't make sense in the context of people working in a casual setting. In a high-powered legal firm in NYC, where the appearance of financial success is expected, maybe. Because they've been taught they absolutely have to keep up with standards that no one around them cares about, to compare with people they never meet and exist mostly in fiction, I figured. I know most of what I know about women's fashion from cartoons, but I'm pretty sure I got the gist of it being a Kafkaesque hellscape designed to prop up classism.
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Aug 20, 2017 15:32
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Inescapable Duck posted:a Kafkaesque hellscape designed to prop up classism. tbh that's what like almost everything is for
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Aug 20, 2017 15:45
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The simpler answer is that collecting purses is a hobby like any other expensive hobby. The women I know that do this aren't trying to Keep up with the Joneses, they just like purses.
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Aug 20, 2017 15:49
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Panfilo posted:The simpler answer is that collecting purses is a hobby like any other expensive hobby. The women I know that do this aren't trying to Keep up with the Joneses, they just like purses. It's easy to be reductive like this, but frankly no one develops preferences like that in a vacuum. Otherwise, you'd see women as similarly obsessed with other objects that aren't coded to femininity and (often illusory) financial status. I really like frogs, and if I had the time and space to buy $250 of new frogs every month, I'd be all about that. I think it's fair to say I just like frogs. But that would exist outside this massive framework of "being a desirable woman of status" because like, no one looks at a Walton and thinks, "that woman has every frog she wants".
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Aug 20, 2017 16:04
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Pick posted:It's easy to be reductive like this, but frankly no one develops preferences like that in a vacuum. Otherwise, you'd see women as similarly obsessed with other objects that aren't coded to femininity and (often illusory) financial status. I look at most women and think "that woman has every frog she wants" and that number is 0
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Aug 20, 2017 16:18
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Pick posted:no one looks at a Walton and thinks, "that woman has every frog she wants". Speak for yourself.
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Aug 20, 2017 16:29
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green chicken feet posted:I can understand buying one or two designer purses if they're well-made and will last for years. Sometimes it makes sense to pay more for a higher-quality product that will last longer. do they hold value? is it like buying an expensive piece of jewellery?
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Aug 20, 2017 16:32
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I have only held one expensive designer bag before (~$2000ish) and, having had some experience with leather, was amazed at how garbage it was. I thought expensive purses were expensive because of the craftsmanship, that was not that case.
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Aug 20, 2017 16:45
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maskenfreiheit posted:do they hold value? is it like buying an expensive piece of jewellery? Supposedly they do. They don't.
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Aug 20, 2017 16:47
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maskenfreiheit posted:do they hold value? is it like buying an expensive piece of jewellery? Lmao no. Even an Hermes which is the closest thing to the platonic ideal purse doesnt truly hold its value. Also Hermes counterfeits are both good enough and the brand is bold enough that if you want your bag tested for being a counterfit they send it to the person who supposedly sowed it together, dissasemble it, and then tell you if they made it based on the stitching. They do not sew it back together for you.
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Aug 20, 2017 17:17
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If the manufacturer itself can't figure out if the bag is authentic without destroying it, then fakes are good enough IMO. Also handbag obsession is silly imo.
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Aug 20, 2017 18:45
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Steakandchips posted:Also handbag obsession is silly imo. Obsessions are always irrational otherwise we'd just call them "normal level of interest."  Collecting any specific type of thing is a bit weird when you think about it. Putting so much time and effort into collecting something that it becomes a defining element of your personality ("My names is Frank, I'm a philatelist") is even weirder. I'm pretty sure that any form of collecting that goes beyond a casual occasional pastime is a form of OCD. And I'm saying that as a guy who has several collections of my own and whose family and friends are almost all collectors of some sort.
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Aug 20, 2017 19:03
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I have this clearly homemade paisley turtle with googly eyes, a tuft of yellow hair, and a bow tie. Stuffed with like rice or sand or some other dense grainy stuff. I got it from an estate sale cause I thought he looked cute and was kind of sad that that no one was prolly gonna buy him and he'd just end up in a trashcan somewhere. Fast forward years later and my gf likes to get me small turtle nicknacks on trips we take together. I have a turtle on my keychain and a couple more stuffed/carved ones sitting around on bookshelves and clocks and such. I never intended to start collecting turtles but I guess now I have become a turtle collector. She saw my original turtle and just sorta assumed I really liked turtles. Which i do, but I don't think I would have started collecting them on my own.
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Aug 20, 2017 19:12
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Obsessions are always irrational otherwise we'd just call them "normal level of interest." I read once about the first edition of some famous author, where the publisher of the book was binding it in blue cloth covers, but ran out of blue and started to use red, or maybe he ran out of red and started to use blue. Since no one actually knows, and the important thing is to get the very first, first edition, the only solution for a collector is to buy two identical old, very expensive books, one in each color. This is perhaps our first clue that collectors are insane.
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Aug 20, 2017 21:57
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Pick posted:It's easy to be reductive like this, but frankly no one develops preferences like that in a vacuum. Otherwise, you'd see women as similarly obsessed with other objects that aren't coded to femininity and (often illusory) financial status. 
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Aug 20, 2017 22:35
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ArbitraryC posted:I have this clearly homemade paisley turtle with googly eyes, a tuft of yellow hair, and a bow tie. Stuffed with like rice or sand or some other dense grainy stuff. I got it from an estate sale cause I thought he looked cute and was kind of sad that that no one was prolly gonna buy him and he'd just end up in a trashcan somewhere. I'm reminded of a family friend who collects owl-related things, including figures and figurines. I gave her a little owl Pokemon figure. I think a lot of collections start that way, and just become 'hell, why not, gotta have somethin'. But yes, collectors are insane, but an insanity that nearly every human being seems to be prone to to a greater or lesser extent. Capitalism basically makes half its money taking full advantage of the urge to have all of the things in the right place and order.
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Aug 21, 2017 08:06
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maskenfreiheit posted:do they hold value? is it like buying an expensive piece of jewellery? No because you're supposed to use them. And if you use a purse even for a little while, it gets loving filthy and wears out because even the expensive ones aren't well made. It's not like a diamond necklace wears out after you wear it for two months. I used to like buying purses every so often, like cheap ones, and I have a few designer bags that I got as gifts....but like, they're just sacks. They're just sacks to carry around the hoard of items women are expected to have. So now when I have to tote items around I just use a canvas shopping bag because gently caress it, the only person who cares about your purse is you.
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Aug 21, 2017 09:08
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Professor Shark posted:I have only held one expensive designer bag before (~$2000ish) and, having had some experience with leather, was amazed at how garbage it was. A friend of mine once said that Prada was a good indicator that you had lots of money as not only were you willing to spend that much money on a wallet, you were willing to spend that much money on a not-very-well-made wallet.
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Aug 21, 2017 10:49
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There is some point where an activity moves beyond being a hobby and into being an addiction. Maybe it's when it starts ruining your quality of life, but you keep doing it anyway because it's so hard for you to give it up that it's beyond reason. With this definition, the threshold would be very different for the average person vs. the wealthy. Billionaire wants to collect every single card in Hearthstone? Not a problem. Average person? Bye-bye grocery budget and possibly your relationship. Makes me wonder if the very rich ever choose something relatively reasonable to collect like Funko Pop* or if they always go for crazy expensive things like classic cars so they end up screwed if it becomes an addiction as well. Is part of the allure for the addicted collector the inability to truly own it all? *I do not endorse collecting Funko Pop even if you are rich.
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Aug 21, 2017 11:06
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A big part of collecting when you're rich and can buy anything you want is exclusivity. Chasing and waiting for the item you want is more important than owning the item itself. Companies like Patek Philipe, Vacheron Constantine etc. that cater to you put you on 2-3 year artificial wait lists, because that's where their algorithms say that you are willing to pay and wait. Any longer and it's not worth the wait, any shorter and it's not exclusive enough, and you lose interest.
evobatman fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Aug 21, 2017 |
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Aug 21, 2017 11:26
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evobatman posted:A big part of collecting when you're rich and can buy anything you want is exclusivity. Chasing and waiting for the item you want is more important than owning the item itself. Companies like Patek Philipe, Vaceron Constantine etc. that cater to you put you on 2-3 year artificial wait lists, because that's where their algorithms say that you are willing to pay and wait. Any longer and it's not worth the wait, any shorter and it's not exclusive enough, and you lose interest. Sounds like the answer is yes, then, that the wealthy often choose things that are difficult to collect. Aside from the status symbol aspect of it being an exclusive item, perhaps the delayed reward gives the same sort of high that someone else would get from collecting something less expensive. I call it a high for a lack of a better term, but for someone addicted to collecting there must be a high when you get that thing you've been waiting for. I remember how exciting it was when I was a kid and I saved up for a long time to buy a toy and I finally got it.
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Aug 21, 2017 11:34
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It's definitively a high, and it's what leads to hoarding. I collect hifi gear, and the excitement of the chase for a good deal on a specific item I want to own and try out far beats actually owning it. I am lucky enough to have no money and no room to hoard, so whatever stuff I get, I usually sell on so that I can finance the next thing I want to try.
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Aug 21, 2017 12:14
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Barudak posted:Lmao no. Even an Hermes which is the closest thing to the platonic ideal purse doesnt truly hold its value. Also Hermes counterfeits are both good enough and the brand is bold enough that if you want your bag tested for being a counterfit they send it to the person who supposedly sowed it together, dissasemble it, and then tell you if they made it based on the stitching. That's why Hermes loving owns haha. Anyway, you should always be able to tell by the slant to the stitches (assuming also it largely matches expectations). Though if someone's scrutinizing your bag that hard, it means your social cache is suspect and no birkin is gonna fix that.
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Aug 22, 2017 06:43
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spog posted:A friend of mine once said that Prada was a good indicator that you had lots of money as not only were you willing to spend that much money on a wallet, you were willing to spend that much money on a not-very-well-made wallet. The vintage stuff still made in Italy was good.
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Aug 22, 2017 06:44
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Pick posted:It's easy to be reductive like this, but frankly no one develops preferences like that in a vacuum. Otherwise, you'd see women as similarly obsessed with other objects that aren't coded to femininity and (often illusory) financial status. It's much harder to collect frogs than purses, though, because frogs will oftentimes croak.
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Aug 22, 2017 07:18
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Beachcomber posted:It's much harder to collect frogs than purses, though, because frogs will oftentimes croak. yeah but its cute until the very last time
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Aug 22, 2017 07:25
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Someone complaining that one three dollar roll of cabinet liner isn't enough for all of his cabinets and he doesn't want to have to buy more than one because he might end up buying too much
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Aug 22, 2017 07:28
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 11:51 |
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Hobologist posted:I read once about the first edition of some famous author, where the publisher of the book was binding it in blue cloth covers, but ran out of blue and started to use red, or maybe he ran out of red and started to use blue. Since no one actually knows, and the important thing is to get the very first, first edition, the only solution for a collector is to buy two identical old, very expensive books, one in each color. People really want to feel (or be) special in some way to others or to themselves. Some people are determined to make who they are extra special (I am more intelligent than all those people, I don't like those things that all those people like, I have a bigger collection of mental illnesses/headmates/whatever, etc), and some people are determined to be special by having things no one else has. It seems like for some people, what it is doesn't necessarily matter so much as its social value matters (so a super wealthy person with a bunch of fancy cars isn't necessarily that interested in cars themselves). Collectors, on the other hand, combine the latter human motivation with a genuine interest in a subject - they are motivated both by interest in rare books (or whatever it is) and also that juicy feeling of having something special, something that other people can't or don't have. There's also that competitive aspect of it because only other collectors can really understand each other's collections, and they end up encouraging each other and fostering even more collective zeal. People feel pride and awe in the collection they have created, and the more you learn about whatever it is, the more you realise just how vast the possibilities. There can be a tipping point where you go from comfortable in your knowledge or possession of a subject/thing to the sudden realisation of just how little you know or have (like the saying 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' but applied more genially to your interests). If you like stamps because you find them pretty and interesting and you start keeping nice ones you come across, you'll end up feeling like you have lots of stamps compared to everyone else. If you get to the point where you actually start researching stamps or specifically seeking them out, you'll suddenly discover just how many there are, how many different kinds you could find, different ways they have been made, influences etc. Suddenly you will realise that you have hardly any stamps, not even a drop in the bucket. The more you engage with something and learn about it, the more you discover to engage with, as trite as that sounds. Egg collecting used to be a huge thing before it was largely outlawed across most countries. People used to collect bird eggs for eating, but then people started becoming obsessed with the eggshells. Collectors of common guillemot eggs (a type of sea bird that breeds on incredibly steep cliffs in huge colonies) would go mental each year for these really beautiful, oddly shaped eggs. Men made a really good living scaling down these cliffs during every breeding season, collecting eggs from these tiny little ledges only a few inches wide, and selling them to collectors who would devote their entire fortune to more and more eggs. Guillemots are pretty unique in a variety of ways. They will lay the same uniquely coloured/patterned egg in the same exact spot every year (and will lay a further 2-3 eggs every couple of weeks after their first is taken in a breeding season), so if you could find an egg that a collector thought was particularly unique or beautiful in some way, the collector would pay you extra to get those eggs again and again year after year to the point that some birds were never able to raise a chick because their eggs were taken like clockwork every year for literal decades. Egg collectors (and the people who followed the egg collecting spectacle for profit or giggles) managed to completely ravage guillemot populations, especially in certain UK nesting areas - in just one cliff area, around 50,000 eggs were collected a year (which doesn't include all those that would be knocked off the cliff in the panic caused whenever the the climmers would scare the flock away from their eggs). Then it was outlawed in the 1950s, so their population largely recovered until the mass die-off of seabirds last year. The worst part is, while we still have tons of eggs from the big collectors, they are practically useless to science because they didn't mark or label them in a way anyone else could understand, so we don't even know the year or location. We could have learned a lot from from these eggs, especially since many were collected from the same birds every year for decades. But nope, just piles and piles of mouldering eggshells. Pretty though. 
Enfys fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Aug 22, 2017 |
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Aug 22, 2017 15:21
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