(Roughly) Daily

Readers will know Etsy, the successful online “market for handmade things,” where the mission is “to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.”

Now, thanks to reader PL, readers can discover Regretsy— a site that focuses on a sub-set of the postings on Etsy; as Regretsy’s motto explains:  “Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet.”

For example:

or…

Regretsy is quick to be clear about where it stands:

Don’t get us wrong. We like crafts.

We just don’t like these crafts.

Yes, we know these people put their hearts into it. We know it took hours and hours. We know how mean it is to laugh at their creations. And we regret being the only web site on the internet that makes fun of things.

But what can we do? We’re immature.

Besides, art is totally subjective. Who cares what we think? I barely care and I’m writing this.

Listen, if you like something you see here, don’t argue with us, go and buy it. Seriously. Click on any photo and you’ll be taken to the seller’s store (if a photo is not linked, the store is closed, or we are unable to find the seller). We’re only too glad to have made the introduction.

Otherwise, we’re just going to sit here and look at the amputee kitten paintings and vulva earrings and laugh so hard that we pee in our reusable Pokemon pads.

Etsy, for its part, has been very gracious: “If it brings in more traffic to the shop and helps make sales, then all the better.”  And in fact, many of the items featured on Regretsy have found new owners.

For our parts, lest we rush too quickly to any judgments, we might recall the thoughts of several close observers of beauty and the arts:

Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last ditch stand of the artist.
– Marshall McLuhan

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.
– Salvador Dali

Taste is the enemy of creativity.
– Pablo Picasso

As we reach for those knitting needles, we might ponder bobbing our hair in commemoration of the incomparable Louise Brooks, fabled actress (Pandora’s Box and other Pabst greats) and author of Lulu in Hollywood; she was born this day in 1906.

in Pandora’s Box