One of the enigmas of the internet age is that as everything becomes more available it has less value.
What was once a symbol of wealth and status, such as the watch or the mirror, is now a throwaway item.
Do you need something beautiful and thought-provoking to brighten your loungeroom? It’s yours for $2.
I was reminded of this last week when much-loved Shepparton artist Tank warned on social media that people were selling prints of his iconic images online for less than $5. He was philosophical about it, saying it had happened before — but not to the same extent as this most recent rip-off. A seller using a new online marketplace had sold more than 500 prints of Tank’s painting The Complexity of Being, which shows a chick looking up at a vase of fried egg flowers. The original mural adorns a wall of The Aussie Hotel.
This rip-off illustrates the quandary that all artists now face with their work being endlessly copied and reduced to the price of the paper it is printed upon. There is now no price at all for creativity, original thought or skill.
While some of the older marketplace platforms such as Meta do make attempts to police the wild west of internet sales, newer operators feel no obligation to play by any set of community rules, particularly if they are owned, or based, in places outside the legal reach of western capitalism — like China.
So, we get flooded with cheap throwaway stuff such as a motion-sensing toilet bowl seat night light for $4.39. Yes, you read that right the first time. Or a silk scarf storage rack for $1.47. These are things we never knew we needed until we saw them for sale. And so cheap!
Of course, we all like cheap stuff.
But you have to ask yourself, why is it so cheap?
The answer almost always involves one of three reasons: (A) because the person who made it is part of a global supply chain and is being paid next to nothing — such as $5 T-shirts made by sweatshop workers in a locked back-street factory somewhere in Xinjiang; (B) because it doesn’t exist, in which case it’s plain fraud; or (C) because, as in the case of Tank’s art — it’s stolen. Buying cheap art is like buying knock-off Wedgwood dinner sets from the back of a truck. You know it’s dodgy, but you buy it anyway because it’s breakable with no great loss.
Everyone gets tempted once in a while. Last year I saw a hand-held digital recorder with separate mixing channels advertised for $30 on everyone’s favourite social media platform.
I ignored the fact that this highly sophisticated piece of technology produced after decades of scientific research and development by highly specialised audio technicians was being sold for the price of a set of cheap cotton socks. I just saw the price tag. I thought — at last I’ll be able to sit on my verandah with my guitar and mobile hand-held digital audio recorder and produce instant low-fi songs mixed with magpie warbles and become a unique indie country music streaming artist making billions on the internet.
That’s what the $30 price tag said to me.
Of course, what I got was socks. When a little black box arrived in the post I was excited. It weighed next to nothing, but I thought this must be because it was the latest piece of user-friendly 21st-century audio technology made from weightless carbon fibre developed during the Voyager space program.
When I opened the box, I found six pairs of cheap cotton socks. Fair enough, I thought. Thirty dollars is about the price of half a dozen pairs of cotton socks. It’s just not what I ordered.
With so much stuff now floating in the digital and the actual oceans of the world – the principle of buyer beware is more pertinent than ever. There is a choice to be made that does not involve a monetary price tag. It’s a moral choice about whether we really do need to contribute to burying ourselves and the Earth in a tsunami of toilet bowl night lights and their equivalent.