Saturday, December 14, 2024

Temu's "shop like a billionaire" ads are the unfunniest joke of the season

 


I guess "shop like a billionaire" is supposed to mean "shop like the price doesn't matter."  Which, yeah, I guess makes sense if you think that you can buy a dress of any quality for less than the thrift store is charging, or if you think that you can fill your one-bedroom apartment with decent furniture for the cost of one bag of groceries.  Just look at the AI-generated image, decide it looks good, and hit the BUY button.  In a few weeks it will show up fresh from a Chinese slave mill and won't look one bit like the thing you thought you were buying, but it was so cheap it's not worth returning and hell maybe it will be ok for one wear or a few months of use before it lands in the trash can (not the thrift store, because it doesn't qualify for the thrift store.)

Here's how billionaires actually shop- they go to the store and check out the item (or send an employee to do it.)  They buy quality stuff and get value for their dollar.  Impulse-buying junk is not something billionaires do (William Randolph Hearst was a famous impulse buyer, but he wasn't a billionaire.)  Impulse buying is not something that anyone with a lot of money does.  It's kind of why they have money.  

This is using an iPhone to do your Dollar Store shopping.  Instead of being seen at the Dollar Store, you get to buy the same garbage from the other side of the planet from your phone, delivered discreetly to your doorstep.  But it's still Dollar Store Junk sold at Dollar Store prices.  Which means, it's actually quite expensive considering the quality received.

But considering the rapid closure of every large department store in the United States, it's also probably the future of shopping.  So this is going to get worse before it gets better (it's never getting better.)  Good luck to all of us.

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