Elizabeth Arden [a skincare brand] got reported for false advertising, and a blogger covered the event, “Just read the latest gossip on Elizabeth Arden. The whole thing is pretty ridiculous. Basically, Elizabeth Arden’s official tiktok account posted a video claiming that, “You can enjoy a full set of Elizabeth Arden white tea skin care items for just the price of two cups of boba tea.” But the actual price was 168 RMB. So they got reported.
So Shanghai’s Market Regulation Bureau went and surveyed all the most famous boba tea places, like Hey Tea and Coco and Mixue, and found that each cup of boba tea is between 7-28 RMB, and 99.50% of boba tea is between 10-40 RMB. But in order for their ad to be true, each cup of boba tea would have to be 84 RMB. What a fucking scam.
So the Market Regulation Bureau ended up fining Elizabeth Arden 20K RMB for, “Not clarifying the price of the item in the ad, nor clarifying the corresponding brand, type, and price of boba tea, and far exceeding the common perception of boba tea pricing at 84 RMB per cup.”
Comments say, “The brand could easily say, “I bought Amo’s Handmade Boba Tea through a purchasing agent, and they’re 80 RMB a cup.” I just bought five cups of Amo’s, and they charged me 500 RMB.”
“Yeah, they definitely broke advertising law for sure. They had this huge campaign of “Save Elizabeth Arden”, but after we saved them, the price has only skyrocketed. I have no more faith in their brand at all. I can only say, what a great fine.”
“Last time I saw a charity fundraiser on the internet, they said, “For the price of a single lunch, you can blah blah blah.” Then I looked closer, and the smallest amount you’re allowed to donate was 66 RMB. Jesus, I can’t afford 66 RMB for lunch. So I didn’t end up donating XD”
“Sometimes I feel like merchants have it really hard too. The economy is doing bad, so business is doing poorly in general. To make their sales numbers look a little better, they have to participate in every sales event that Taobao holds. But honestly, everyone’s kind of burnt out by a sales event every two months.
I chatted with the PR for Dr. Alva [skincare brand], and their price for this latest event is honestly really reasonable. The price they gave me was even lower than 618 RMB, and when you buy one get one free, you get a 50g “sample” with every 50g product you buy. In theory, everything is 57% off. But their sales numbers are still doing terrible compared to before. That, and the event is only 3 days, so it’s super short.
This isn’t just an anecdote. I feel like most Taobao merchants are like this, especially this year. No one’s doing well. Everyone’s out of money.
I feel like when you’re in business, it’s really common to see someone explode with wealth overnight. They didn’t do anything special, they just got lucky. And sometimes, it feels so incredibly hard to do any business. It takes everything you have to barely survival.
When it’s your time, the heaven and earth will move with you. When it’s not, no hero can really change their fate.”
Comments say, “I don’t buy anything other than absolute necessities. I used to hoard all kinds of stuff, but now I buy exactly as much as I need.”
“I suggest everyone stop working with livestreamers, and just give customers better prices directly. And don’t run these promotions where everything’s super complicated. Just give a straightforward discount. In this kind of economy, only a big discount can truly attract customers. Tiny brands might be able to achieve some promotional purposes working together with a livestreamer, but as an already well known brand, does Dr. Alva really need to do this?”
“My spending habits has completely changed. I used to spend 7-8K a month on travelling, but now, my entire skincare routine is just soap and generic lotion.”
“All the fans that used to feel bad for Lisa for having to wear such exposing outfits on stage only understand now that she’s declared she’s going to Crazy Horse, that she’s a lot more open than her fans ever thought. She started not daring to post any pictures of herself in a bikini because her mom will yell at her, to shorter and shorter pants for her performances. Lisa just likes to show off her body.”
[There’s a big compilation of sexy dancing gifs of Lisa underneath. You can get a basic idea just looking up “Lisa dancing kpop” on youtube, so I won’t post all of them here. I’ll just leave one example gif.]
Comments say, “She really is such a fake bitch. She does so many sexually suggestive moves, and then turns around all like, “Where am I? What am I doing?”
“I don’t care how scantily clad her and Jenny are, they still look cute.”
“Dita [burlesque dancer] is at least a buxom, sexy beauty. Lisa’s not bad when she’s dancing kpop—she’s got long limbs and a good sense of rhythm. But I can’t imagine her dancing burlesque. I can’t imagine her being alluring. She’s got no curves at all. At most, she can just copy the moves and just be advertisement for Crazy Horse.”
Addressing the controversy of the top livestreamer in China getting into trouble for looking down on people for not being able to afford Huaxizi [makeup brand], a blogger writes, “I feel like the rumours flying around on line that Huaxizi pays him 60%-80% of their profits is probably not true. It just doesn’t feel realistic. This whole rumour stinks of ridiculousness like, “The Emperor must use a golden hoe to till his fields. The Empress makes pancakes every day.” Most people who believe it don’t understand the industry at all.
Because most brand give 100% of their profit to him, because being on his livestream at all is such a valuable promotional opportunity.”
A tiktok video about the winner of the Miss Thailand Beauty Pageant:
“This dark-skinned lady posing in photos with everybody is quite a figure alright. She is the winner of the 2023 Miss Thailand Beauty Pageant. Her name is Maeya. If you closely observe her features, you’ll discover that she’s nothing like people’s stereotypical idea of a “beauty”. Her features are so unique that they’re beyond what most people would define as “beautiful”. In real life, she doesn’t even have any hair, and her figure isn’t exactly perfect either. So how did she win?
This is a photo of her as a child. You can tell that even from a young age, she had lost all her hair. Everything we see is a wig. But this never made her insecure, she only showed off her confidence more proactively. I’ve read through a lot of comments by Thai people on the internet, and the keywords of “confidence”, “poise”, “elegant”, and “beautiful”.
You can tell from the videos of her catwalk shows.”
The video is captioned at the end, “Congratulations to Maeya for winning the Beauty Pageant. She is going to represent Thailand in further international beauty pageants.”
Comments say, “She’s not just beyond what most people would define as “beautiful”. She’s beyond what most people would define as “human”.”
“It’s all political correctness, American white lefty bullshit. It’s not a beauty pageant at all. It’s just a way for the judges to express how “tolerant” they are.”
“What are we supposed to look at if not her face? It’s a fucking beauty pageant, and you’re telling me to ignore her face?”
“The first wave of baby boomers are arriving. Based on births per year from 1929 to 2022, the first wave of 8-figures of births per year is turning 77.9 this year. This next two years is when we’ll really see the ageing population hit.
What this means is a dramatic shrink in the working population. Which industry is it going to affect the most? Maybe the pain of Dongbei will be repeated in all the other provinces.”
Comments say, “Primary schools are all merging. Daycares are closing left and right. What do I care? I’ve already lied flat.”
“My daughter was born 2022. Wonder if she’ll have an easier time taking the college entrance exams.”
“What the hell happened in 1961?”
Under the hashtag #Over 30 million men in China cannot find a wife, a blogger writes, “This reminded me of a joke I heard today. It basically went—with the current economic environment, you’re way better off being some rich guy’s mistress than marrying a normal dude. You can get a good six to seven figures from your sugar daddy every year, you don’t have to go to work or do any housework, and you don’t have to worry about MIL relationships and family disputes. And bastards can still get a hukou and be eligible for inheritance. You just have to dress up all pretty every day and shop and be happy and do whatever you want.
I thought about it, and it matches up pretty well with what I’ve heard people say on the internet, when they’re complaining about their husband not participating in childcare—“If he could give me [so much] money per month, I wouldn’t care if he never came home.”
Forget the gender imbalance. Even if we had one woman to every man, it would still be hard for a portion of men to get married, because high-income men can have a lot more women to themselves than just their wives. It’s not rare for a guy to have several women around him at all. But it’s very rare to see one woman with several guys at once. With the income gap as big as it is, there’s only going to be more men having trouble getting married.
Life is hard, work is difficult to find, women are losing status in society. And unmarried women would lean more and more towards choosing high income men. Even if you’re sharing 10K with five women, you’d still get 2K each per year. If you marry a normal man, you might only get 20 per year.
Not to mention, we are in fact still very sexist. A lot of girls die as soon as they’re born. There’s a strong cultural foundation that people have to look for their wives in hell.
Anyway, I only typed all of this because I’m trapped in a subway station by a rainstorm. I’ll delete it soon enough.”
Comments say, “But the problem is, a sugar daddy who can give you 2 million RMB might not be with you for a whole year. Maybe he’ll just pay you per encounter. And sugar daddies might not even want your kids. Men aren’t dumb. They objectify their mistresses a lot. They’re just paying money to fuck pussy.”
“This is the karma of being sexist.”
“Agreed. In my graduating class, it’s the guys who are from comfortable families who are the most popular with girls. Salarymen like us who are the children of workers and farmers are at the bottom of the food chain XD”
Kpop idols are far better at being cute and pretty than at being sexy.
Lisa has become more famous in China since she was a judge on an chinese idol competition show but there are fewer opportunities now for kpop idols to make money in China besides their fans bulk buying their albums so I doubt she cares if her dancing at Crazy Horse loses her some chinese fans. Kpop tried for a decade to gain in China the position it has in Japan but they failed so now they are focusing on the western markets and trying to generate buzz with stunts like Lisa did.
I did not see anything from Lisa's performance but I bet it was tame for western standards.