i feel like writing a god damn essay on why shopping on amazon is actually fucking miserable and the role of stores in REMOVING selection
one of the roles of stores is to act as a filter between you and the host of scumsucking fiends foisting garbage on the market
in other words, the market is not between you and manufacturers, it's between stores and manufacturers
not even that's true in a lot of cases; it's between you and the store, the store and distributor, the distributor and manufacturer
and a lot of guesswork is put into selecting new products, so in the short term there's no connection between purchaser and manuf. profit
If I go to Fred Meyer, they present me with about 30 varieties of socks. I can stand back and see the dividing lines - which are deliberate.
Amazon produces a deluge of socks culled from thousands of machine-generated "stores" and
No fuck this fuck all of this let's talk about what really matters: Ironic as it sounds, we need computers to get the fuck off the internet.
Machine generated content is UNIVERSALLY bad. From electronics components to clothing, anything not touched by human hands is awful
We are MISERABLE because of this. Online shopping fucking sucks. Online EVERYTHING sucks. And it's all because of bots.
A goddamn robot reads the contents of a product catalog and mindlessly churns it into a database - we used to pay humans to do this.
"The machine makes fewer mistakes" oh BULL SHIT. Have you LOOKED at a modern online storefront? They're fucking GHASTLY.
The machine WOULD make fewer mistakes IF THE INPUT DATA WAS MACHINE READABLE, WHICH IT ISN'T
We used to pay armies of humans to do this. Now we pay armies of humans to make software to do it worse.
Machine-populating storefronts was flat-out a mistake. It benefited nobody and materially harms everyone.
It MAY result in up-front labor savings for the companies but I really do not give a good god damn about that. Their product is shit now.
Amazon is fucking terrible. Youtube recs are fucking terrible. Netflix is fucking terrible. Nothing is curated.
App stores for FUCKS sake, are terrible, and it all used to be better. Before APIs.
When humans were entering data, they weren't spending countless man-hours entering gibberish because it cost measurable resources.
When the cost of entering seven million variations on Sweater Cozy Winter Warm Snuggie is zero, that's what we get. Garbage. Grey goo.
And it's accelerating. From SEO churn to Amazon to ePaperSuppliesOutlet, the internet is mostly fake.
I think there's a big question going on right now - "How do we filter harmful bots out of acceptable automated content production?"
My answer is: Don't. Nobody actually wants this. No end users. Only businesses who don't even know if it fucking works.
Crucify me if you like but I am saying APIs need to end. Randos having access to machine-stuff the internet ballot box is bad.
I realize that makes you panic - "but I need APIs!" - but either A) you probably shouldn't or B) you would be an exception
I know people who are probably reacting to this bc they have jobs where they do stuff that would be seen as scummy if we weren't used to it
I am posting all of this because I've been trying to buy socks on Amazon for half an hour and I'm fucking defeated.
It's a warren. It's the Kowloon Walled City. Layers upon layers of random generated gibberish you CANNOT make sense of.
I need the following:
- White
- Crew
- Socks
- Size 13+
- 6 pack
I can walk into Fred Meyer and buy this in under a minute.
- White
- Crew
- Socks
- Size 13+
- 6 pack
I can walk into Fred Meyer and buy this in under a minute.
I have been on Amazon for half an hour trying to line all these things up. Turns out you cannot search on size, at all. They didn't do that.
So every set of socks I find that I'm interested in is listed as "$6.99 - $48.99" because it's not a product, it's DOZENS
A single link represents hundreds of SKUs in different sizes and colors from thousands of "storefronts"
You have to be hypervigilant in order to not get fucked. I have tried filtering to Prime bc that's the only way to avoid getting screwed
If you don't filter to prime, chances are very high that you'll get one of their godforsaken "marketplace" listings - which ship 3wks later
You have to be on your fucking TOES to avoid this. You have to SCRUTINIZE your cart at checkout and read every item carefully
I almost bought some socks earlier until I realized that when it said "Two-day shipping - FREE" it meant two days FROM NEXT TUESDAY
And of course this is the other problem. Thousands upon thousands of fraudulent products.
So what brick and mortar stores and distributors do is act as a filter between you and this.
These shitty sellers were always around, but some two-bit fuckface couldn't get a deal to sell to Safeway.
By the time the product got to the shelves there were plenty of opportunities for someone to notice it was bad.
And if it was bad, they would stop selling it. Not so with Amazon.
Think about this: A product that gets *consistently* 1-star reviews and is reviewed as literally fraudulent is *still listed on Amazon*
And some libertarian shrugs and says "let the buyer beware" but like, why? Why though? We didn't do this before.
This is all because online stores did what computers
ALWAYS
FUCKING
DO
insulate humans from blame.
ALWAYS
FUCKING
DO
insulate humans from blame.
You buy a shit product from Amazon, they shrug. "we're just a broker, sorry. you bought that from iHawaiiMarketplace"
A brick and mortar store, IN THEORY, has a reputation to uphold. I mean, massive corp. chain stores fucked that up but there was SOME value
If people brought enough of a particular thing back to best buy and said "this thing caught fire immediately", they'd stop carrying it.
Because best buy wants to be respected, they want to be seen as safe and a trustworthy supplier of products.
Amazon knows that if you are online you are going to order from them because they don't take two weeks to ship a $3 product.
That's literally it, that's why Amazon took over everything, because ePaperSupplyOnline couldn't ship ANYTHING same-day.
You ever order from an online store these days? It's still the same. They take for fucking ever and it's totally opaque.
As much as I despise Amazon, it is NOT unreasonable to be mad that your product is just sitting in limbo but your money is already gone.
absolutely. Amazon has fucked up our perception of how returns work, BUT, other places are still unreasonable.
the thing about amazon is it's SUCH a house of fucking leaves that I keep going back to it saying "ok fuck it i'm going to get this done"
"i'm going to just grab some plain white socks and stop trying to find a bra-- OH RIGHT THE FUCKING SHOE SIZE"
there are so many moving parts, so many goddamn variables to keep track of, that you forget what you're even doing
but you know what? I don't WANT to go to a physical store because - I HAVE A FORTY HOUR A WEEK JOB AND I AM DYING.
and I just, look, I know I'm a Fuck for using the services of this hellish megacorp, but I ALSO don't want to throw away MORE of myl ife
I don't want to go home from work and immediately go out to the store for an hour just to get fucking socks
I want to go home and draw. I want to go home and do - ANYTHING except be in transit or standing in line to pay
So I'm sorry, I apologize to the workers of the world for incentivizing Amazon to continue their exploitation
But also I assert that nobody can entirely resist this temptation or, at least, I am not strong enough to.
In other words what I'm saying is that an ETHICAL, FUNCTIONAL online store that ships same day is something i deeply desire.
All of this stems from a disgusting intrusive thought I had earlier
I thought, "what if there was a website that curates Amazon's products and presents a sensible storefront?"
And I thought about that and I was like... yes, that could be a thing, but god! how gross! how fucking awful!
It seemed like such a great idea to me, and when I realized what I was considering I felt disgusted at myself. God!
This is, in theory, what we are paying amazon FOR. They're just taking that money and smoking it.
Paying MORE money to build MORE infrastructure on top of their broken infrastructure should be revolting and I hate that I like it
can we just have online businesses where humans are actually paid wages to do real work? is that so wrong?
Anyway, after all this I've decided to give up. There's a Target downtown, I'll walk there on my lunch break. Fuck everything.
Maybe I can even find a banana hook to hang my headphones on.
God, you know what the real kicker is, by the way? I also needed underwear and I couldn't find any that was what I wanted.
At Fred Meyer they have a bunch of boxer briefs with funky designs on them, and Amazon /actually doesn't/
I looked at several pages of listings, descended into the warren, clicked through the varieties, and came up empty handed.
And that's another part of the problem. The Target doesn't buy 98 different instances of the SAME BLUE BOXER BRIEFS
Amazon sees "6pk Mens Boxer Briefs Underwear Large Blue Solid Color Hanes" and "Boxers Briefs Mens S-XL Colors (6pc)" as unique
Obviously this is undesirable. Obviously nobody on the planet would want to see two listings of the identical product.
But you can't fix this if the "store" is populated via API from millions of anonymous fake sellers.
It's impossible. The deluge of data is too intense. And the lesson there is, very possibly, that you just shouldn't allow that.
And I don't know how to solve it. I don't know on what level this could be fought. Amazon obviously is very content to continue.
We can't convince millions of clueless Americans who don't understand they're being fucked over that they should hate this.
And that just brings us back to the core question I and many of my friends ask every day: how do we stop corporations?
The entire structure of our society doesn't permit it.
I suppose I should point out that socialism would. But whoa nelly can't go there
I suppose I should point out that socialism would. But whoa nelly can't go there
More thoughts on this: what are we going to do, as a society, about fully user-driven policy enforcement?
Put differently: Amazon, but also everywhere else, does absolutely nothing about anything unless YOU take action, unless YOU report.
is this how we want things to work? is this healthy? is this how it ought to be? do we not have any control over this?
Amazon is not policing their listings. We know this. They are also enforcing absolutely no quality metrics on their "vendors"
this is a thing I keep coming back to: the internet is sleazy
Safeway, Best Buy, even Fry's, hell, the DOLLAR store are all obsessed with branding and presentation. Image. Consistency.
Safeway will fire you for not keeping the Hostess fruit pies straight on the shelf and that is an ironclad fact
They send a photo of a perfectly organized aisle to every store and then everyone has to honor it. Two shifts a day or more to achieve this.
Amazon is ok with the primary image of a Hanes product being a bad scan of the OUTSIDE of a package. Front page results for "socks"
And it's just... Why the fuck are we paying them to scrounge through their junk pile? Their disorganized mess?
Every retail store spends a kings ransom keeping the shelves stocked, standees out to advertise sales, aisles clear
Amazon waves us dismissively towards a pile of wrapped pallets and says "uhhhh I think there's some socks on the bottom...?"
And then we have to tear into this stock - doing their job for them - to find nothing but some off brands and ankle socks
When we complain, without looking up from their phone they mumble "crew socks might be here on Tuesday I think"
You see what I mean? Not to praise any element of capitalism but we were getting far more of our money's worth with brick and mortar.
You could say there's less variety but anything after the first page - just like with every searchable site - is trash
So Amazon, functionally, has... About the same amount of products as a local store. But uglier and harder to shop.
And that's just ORDINARY products, where there IS a recognized, trustworthy brand. What about exclusively Chinese industries?
There are no reputable manufacturers of USB chargers but Amazon doesn't even make an ATTEMPT to bubble any up.
The first result is usually the worst, cheesiest garbage. This company is not doing anything with our money.
They are fantastically wealthy but refuse to pay workers to deliver anything approaching a quality product /and they are fine with that/
They make no bones about it. They are not trying to deny that they are skeevy as hell.
And again, as much as I hate capitalism, I would like the other type back. The one that doesn't think this is ok.
The one that cares about image, about being respected, about anything other than pushing literally everyone else out of business
Amazon just wants there to be one online store that's fucking terrible so the bar will be so low nobody can compete ever again
They've moved the goalposts and I hate them for it. They made people think this is normal and okay
That it's ok to basically buy shit sight unseen, that maybe THEY haven't even seen.
And to just pick the lowest price, to give up completely on decision-making and don't even think about trying to find a reputable store
