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Not your imagination: from backpacks to food, consumer goods are getting worse
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2026
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I've actually noticed quality of textiles on IRL shelves going back up since COVID. If you're buying from Temu or something, then yes, it will be cheap. In a direct counterexample, cars get more and more luxury and huge all the time.
Food is a thing, and it's basically because you can't taste it in the store, so it's bred more for looks.
Cars get more expensive and techy, but from what I've seen the plastic-y interiors are nowhere near as sturdy as they once were.
As a modern car hater, interiors are the one thing that have gotten significantly better as long as you exclude replacing physical buttons with touch screens. All the touch points in modern cars feel so much nicer and more premium than a car 20 years ago. Take a look through Google images of economy car interiors from the 2000s and the amount of gray plastic is shocking. My 1992 Jaguar has a debatebly worse interior than a modern Kia.
I'm sure some still do, but didn't some plastic in older cars just melt in the sun? lol
That wasn't common but it definitely has happened in the past
Food is, indeed, a thing.
Forget that part, homie is over here breeding food….
Do not the food
Big if true
And yet The Thing is not food
It could be if you are brave enough
Because the people buying in a physical store, care more about quality than the regular online shopper does.
Sure there's also good brands online, but most big ones are also seeing tremendous declines in recent years
Which gets to the real meat of the issue: In some categories, people don't want good stuff, they want cheap crap they can throw away, and then buy again for another dopamine hit. Similarly, new cars are getting more and more expensive, because anyone that's not loaded buys them used, and it's a k-shaped economy.
Markets have had all kinds of unfortunate features, which on Lemmy need no introduction, but outside of the most extreme monopolies, they're pretty flawless at delivering the kinds of products people are shopping for.
i’d say they didn't want crap but online shoppers would put up with crap moreso than the meatspace shoppers.
Yeah, cheap was an important modifier there. It's not expensive crap, and great cheap stuff isn't an option in real life.
For clothes especially, yeah, the ultra-fast fashion is all online. Probably for the same reason online gambling seems to be everywhere now.
"Marjorie, is life even worth living? This food tastes like ash in my mouth." "Oh Roger, darling. Wait, is that the new McAsh?"