That one's infernal.
The video was enchanting. A crystal cube sits in the middle of a darkened bedroom, soft mood music playing as it glows softly and somehow casts a moving tracery of blue-green light on the walls and ceiling. I waved my colleague, T, over.
“Come look,” I said, to my colleague, T. I often show her the ads that crowd my Facebook feed. She, like me, is an afficionado of internet marketing. That she also often encourages my online shopping habit is incidental.
The light shifts, becoming first more green, then more blue, then an oddly-sparkly yellow. T, watching the video over my shoulder, ooh-ed occasionally under her breath.
“That one’s infernal,” she said after the light show turns red. She wasn’t wrong. Red enough to preserve one’s night vision. No blue-light problems. Like going to sleep in hell.
I wasn’t entirely sold, but it sure looked good. I imagined myself reading a book in bed, the plastic aurora shining above and around me. The main problem was the price, which I discovered after clicking through the link on the ad.
The website for the brand-which-shall-not-be-named listed the gadget at $49 down (after an I-assume-imaginary discount) from $149. A bargain. Not.
The price goes down even further if you buy more than one. Perhaps the idea was to entice buyers into a bulk purchase. I only wanted one.
It only took a little bit of searching on Shopee to find “Creative Acrylic Rotating Water Ripple Night Light Remote Control” for a little over $11 - $13 after shipping. Amazon has them, too, ranging anywhere in price from $17 to $50.
I ordered the $13 one. It’s exactly as I imagined: a cheap USB-powered acrylic cube with a rotating multi-colour LED light, and a remote control to change the colours and patterns. Worth what I paid for it, and more more than $30 at best.
This shouldn’t surprise me. Online advertising is so easy and affordable now that anyone can put together a professional-looking video to sell low-quality goods ordered at low cost in bulk from overseas. How difficult is it to pretend that a small-scale operation is more than it is?
The number of leather artisans sadly closing down their studios and offering purportedly handmade goods at rock bottom prices is suspicious, at best. I’m even cynical enough to doubt the intentions of all the self-made investment gurus who have kindly stopped making millions in order to sell workshops and video lessons online.
This is nothing new. Articles on the degradation of online shopping/advertising abound: here’s one from the Washington Post, and another from The New York Times. The internet was supposed to make things easier for us, but consumers have to wade through all manner of deceptive marketing to get to what they really want.
Even though it’s so easy to make ads that run online, the quality is still pretty rubbish.
Here’s one that appeared on my feed. “Available in 6 styles”, it says …
… except that it’s not. The website lists only five style options.
There’s even a useful graphic showing the five available styles, including their sizes and weights.
This other ad offers a bag for under $50.
Except, of course, that it doesn't. When you select the bag, the price is clearly $54 … which on my planet is more than $50.
So buying things has become more difficult. I try to ignore online advertising, and when I am enticed, I do a lot of searching before I actually buy anything. I’m wary of being overcharged, or being lied to, or scammed. I don’t want to pay money out for something that I want, and not receive it.
And even when I get what I want, well … there’s one setting on my wave ripple acrylic light that I don’t ever use.
Because it looks, basically, infernal.
