Back when I was a kid, Blogs were called 'imaginary friends' and were only slightly more pathetic.

Friday, October 06, 2006

I'm So Done With Threadless...

Or, "Hipster Reform School, Lesson #227".

About six months ago, I saw a t-shirt design that was awesome. It was hilarious, timed just right and made me think art wasn't dead after all. The design was the 'Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man' from Ghostbusters wandering Godzilla style through New York City with a big subscript underneath that said, "NEVER FORGET". Fucking brilliant.

This design was part of Threadless.com's never ending search for the next uber-hipster t-shirt that Seth Cohen will be wearing on every other episode of The O.C.*. The way their site works is that hundreds of designs are submitted and they choose a couple each week to actually produce and sell. This all sounds like a sound business plan, but in actual operation it sucks, mainly because the internet is filled with losers.

Over the past months, I've looked over all the designs in the running (probably 3 to 4 hundred a week) looking for stuff I like. Most (and I'm talking 99.99%) of the designs are fucking awful. Nothing but bleeding heart, amateur Tim Burton ripoffs made for Cutters by Cutters. Honestly, if I see another of their designs that features teenage depression as it's inspiration, I'm gonna puke.

Every once in awhile, however, one of their designers will come up with something I think is clever. Examples include this, this and this. The problem? Threadless will never make these shirts because the losers they have in charge there have no sense of humor and insist on putting out the same dumb joke shirts and unicorn/Nightmare before Christmas crap that brings in the 12 to 14 year old crowd.

So screw you Threadless. Stop encouraging shitty designers. You're only making aging hipster geeks like me angry...

* - I realize that an O.C. reference makes me totally outdated, but Laguna Beach sucks, and you're not going to make me watch it.

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5 comments:

Blogger Eugene_L blathered...

Well fuckin' said my man! The thing's got potential, but it's just not geared to output intellectually hi-Q products. Not that any pouplarity (community?) based contest is either. Although, I hear this IDOL thing is producing some AMAZING musical talents! Anyway, I agree with your stance.

11:50 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous blathered...

Its all opinion based, but aside from the art that wins/loses..

Threadless is quickly becoming to big, the t-shirts aren't any more limited production than a regular t-shirt.. selling 60,000 tshirts a month, then reprinting old ones etc.. they're exploiting the artists and those who like cheap "funny" but not edgy t-shirts are eating it up..

Making 20mil USD last year wasn't enough for them? Why not put a cap on prints, more contests, less prints.. lower the profit margin a little bit, help the artists out more.. who knows.. all i know is Threadless is quickly becoming boring, someone new needs to enter the market place.

10:01 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous blathered...

jesus fucking christ you're right. i've just trailed the web to find someone who isn't suckng threadless' cock. 99.99% of the designs are so piss week it makes my teeth hurt. fucking bedroom "artists" who wouldn't know good aesthetics if it ran up to them and injected them with syphilis. Utter twats.

5:56 PM

 
Blogger Unknown blathered...

any sites better then threadless?

5:48 PM

 
Blogger Unknown blathered...

any sites better then threadless?

7:24 PM

 

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