from Hacker News

Fast Fashion Casino

by anupamchugh on 12/14/23, 7:54 AM with 56 comments

• by jawns on 12/14/23, 2:58 PM

  Temu, in particular, operates very much like a gambling app, with the clothing and other products dangled as prizes. Yes, you can purchase them directly -- but there are ample avenues through which you are tempted to get them for even more steeply discounted prices by completing various challenges, promotions, and games.

  The app steers users heavily toward its in-app games that use tactics grabbed straight from slot machines to keep users enticed.

  I was directed toward its Fishland game, which allows you to select five products, each valued between $10-$20, to get for free if you complete the game. And initially, the game is easy and credits are free-flowing. You're told you're 50% of the way there within the first few minutes of playing. But as you get closer and closer to 100%, progress becomes glacial, and you're directed to make more purchases and share referral codes to earn more credits. I'm told that to get from 99.99% to 100%, you need 100,000 credits.

• by harimau777 on 12/14/23, 1:48 PM

  I sew clothing as a hobby and have a friend who does so as their job. One of the most difficult things that my friend deals with is people having no idea what a hand sewn (in this case by "hand sewn" I mean not industrially manufactured, not sewing using needle and thread) garment costs to make.

  Just the materials generally cost more than a fast fashion garment and even relatively simple garments like a basic shirt take hours to sew. Even at if the labor is priced at minimum wage, something like a jacket or dress could cost hundreds of dollars.

• by tristor on 12/15/23, 3:11 PM

  The thing about fast fashion that upsets me the most is that it’s driving the market. It’s very very difficult to find high quality clothing that is ethically made, because so much of the market and money have gone to fast fashion. Teemu and Shein may be the new thing, but H&M, Mango, Gap, etc have been around forever.

  I had to spend 4 months doing research on textiles and enlisting help to scour the internet/world before I could find a properly made pea coat last year, as an example. Sure there’s some sort of pea coat available from every major fashion brand, but they’re made for looks not function and durability, whereas a proper coat will keep you warm walking the dog in driving snow where I live in the Colorado mountains.

  I have had a hell of a time buying shirts and dressier pants that hold up, but I think finally arrived at good options.

  If it was simply a matter of paying more to get better stuff, I wouldn’t be so bothered, but that’s really not how it works. You can’t even rely on the same brand and product to maintain quality due to market pressures from fast fashion, and I am not quite well to do enough to have everything made bespoke, so it’s a relentless grind to buy non-shitty clothes in 2023, of similar quality to most higher end mall brands in 1995. In a lot of ways, I see this as another expression of shrinkflation and the failure of American and European industry.

• by reisse on 12/14/23, 10:55 AM

  I don't buy the rant about fast fashion. For once, the market worked as expected, competition driven the prices down, and now people can buy months worth of wardrobe for a price of a single LVMH item. Clothing is now cheap beyond commodity, and suddenly a crop of journalists start to lament how it is unacceptable. Should be looking for my tinfoil hat probably.

• by mouzogu on 12/14/23, 12:12 PM

  during years of austerity when fast fashion was a money maker it was all good

  now that companies are under observation for their waste and pollution suddenly it's ok to criticise and demonise it and by association the poor who relied on it

  - as if its the people who are responsible for the waste and exploitation of sweatshop labour that enabled it

• by m3kw9 on 12/14/23, 3:30 PM

  Just like a real casino if you really know how it works, you won’t play the way they want you to, you shop at Temu when you need a gift something or it’s just cheaper than Amazon or something

• by uxp100 on 12/14/23, 2:00 PM

  The idea that today is an age of shopping as entertainment is kinda goofy. I mean, sure, but wasn’t that also true 30 years ago? The mall era? It seems that articles that reference Cory Doctrow’s enshittification are likely to have a rosy view of the past and quality of goods in the past.

  Tangentially, I do a lot of the blah blah blah, repair my clothes (it’s mostly easy, but sometimes hard) buy used clothing, and try to buy from companies with transparent supply chains. SHEIN has low quality goods and likely poor labor practices, but spending 10x isn’t a guarantee of transparent supply chains and good labor practices. Some expensive brands are not better. You gotta look a little.