as classified ads go, this ranks somewhere near the top
if this thing is for sale someone will buy it
shades of prancer the chihuahua https://twitter.com/HLMongoose/status/1380505940265463818
Unwanted Corkpull
11–20 of 33 posts
Re: Unwanted Corkpull
#12I have a similar view on most gifts. It would be ungrateful to throw them away, but annoying clutter in my life to keep them. What can you do? I have started asking for "non-perishable consumables" such as light bulbs, tinned foods, and wine, whenever someone asks me what I want for a gift.
Donate unused or lightly used gifts so that they may find use with someone else, and don't spend a moment more on them. You do the gift giver no favors by merely warehousing their gifts.
Re: Unwanted Corkpull
#13Well, I think I can relate to the corkpull problem but at least it is fully functional. There's a decent amount of objects that are poorly designed but I have to live with because I don't want to be responsible for more waste.
Well off people I know generally tend to buy new stuff just to have new stuff, because it feels good, creating wawes of abandonware. I just wish they had other outlets to feel better in their lives.
Please stop offering me stuff. A bottle of nice wine/beer/whiskey or flowers will do.
Re: Unwanted Corkpull
#14And here I am, trying to stave off that inevitability and figure out how to shepherd a motley array of kitchen implements and old extension cords through an uncaring world. As Steven Phillips-Horst tweeted, on the aesthetic and moral wretchedness of a Container Store paper towel holder: “I’m meant to be this heinous dildo’s nanny between a Chinese factory and a Jersey landfill?? I’d rather die.”
Somewhat ironic. I actually like the Container Store because it's a curated selection of items their merchandising team prepared and ostensibly deemed "the best".
You want a real hyper-consumerist hellscape? Go onto Amazon, search for "spatula", and sit in devastating awe at the thousands upon thousands of results all coming from the same Chinese factory, but under a hundred different cringy brand names. Fuck online shopping; I'll drive to Williams Sonoma and have what they're having.
Re: Unwanted Corkpull
#15I have a similar view on most gifts. It would be ungrateful to throw them away, but annoying clutter in my life to keep them. What can you do? I have started asking for "non-perishable consumables" such as light bulbs, tinned foods, and wine, whenever someone asks me what I want for a gift.
Donate unused or lightly used gifts so that they may find use with someone else, and don't spend a moment more on them. You do the gift giver no favors by merely warehousing their gifts.
From TFA:
Boxes and paper grocery bags pile up along the hallway, full of things to be gotten rid of. But the thrift stores and donation drop-offs are still closed, or have limited hours. And you know that most of those things don’t get sold.
The flaw is in the object. The original gift didn't improve your life. Passing it on doesn't improve anyone else's life. Once upon a time thrift stores might have made sense, and for a very specific class of durable yet useful objects they might still, but the corkpull (and most similar gifts) is not in that class.
Re: Unwanted Corkpull
#16To me OXO is exactly what the poster is looking for, well-built-to-last utilitarian gadgets that are universally easy to use, and decent looking, though perhaps not fashionable. What's not to like? Is it because they're not produced by a bearded artisanal blacksmith within cycling distance? The article seems to be searching for a problem.
Re: Unwanted Corkpull
#17Whatever else TFA might or might not accomplish, its author is unlikely to receive that sort of gift from that particular giver ever again.
Re: Unwanted Corkpull
#18This is a really insightful essay. Although it isn’t part of the main thrust of the essay, this jumped out at me: > “Every single thing you see is future trash,” says Robin Nagle, anthropologist of material cultures and anthropologist-in-residence at the New York Department of Sanitation. This system that “not only generates so much trash, but relies upon the accelerating production of waste for its own perpetuation”…
I think the comment by Nagle, which indeed seems to include "everything you see" [0], is a bit too extreme. Is water future trash? A piece of rock? Also, how is "future" defined here? I don't think that a piece of gold will be considered "trash" even in 1,000 years. I think what he means is this: the added manufactured value of any object will degrade over time. [0] https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-robin-nag…
> I think the comment by Nagle, which indeed seems to include "everything you see" [0], is a bit too extreme.
i think Pendergrast used the quote to highlight the capitalist dynamic that incentivizes the profit-seeking economy towards creating low-quality single-use industrially-produced products, due to the parasitic economic rents from intellectual property making proper products overly expensive. in other words: the propertied class makes the working class pay double/triple.
that and planned obsolescence.
that's what i read in this article.
Re: Unwanted Corkpull
#19When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of fashionable furniture. […] At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning’s work undone. Morning work! By the bl…
Thoreau, Walden
Re: Unwanted Corkpull
#20And here I am, trying to stave off that inevitability and figure out how to shepherd a motley array of kitchen implements and old extension cords through an uncaring world. As Steven Phillips-Horst tweeted, on the aesthetic and moral wretchedness of a Container Store paper towel holder: “I’m meant to be this heinous dildo’s nanny between a Chinese factory and a Jersey landfill?? I’d rather die.” Somewhat ironic. I ac…
Reminds me of the UHF commercial for Spatula City.