SALES

Another curated TikTok video, entitled SALES. I’m having a lot of fun putting these together, and people seem to enjoy them! This one is a little shorter - just experimenting with different lengths to see what sticks. No set schedule on release because these get compiled when I deem I have a critical mass of source videos to pull from.

This one features segments from TikTok Live, where the next generation of Billy Mays-types hock dropshipped Chinese plastic without taking a breath (TikTok shop seem to have benefited two groups of people - American small businesses with a niche and visually catchy product[*], and Chinese plastic goods sold via referral from these videos).

I’m particularly impressed by the various forms of sustained engagement bait at play here. The guy stuffing candy into the bag never stopped stuffing candy into the bag - part of the schtick is that, like successive rubber bands being wrapped around a watermelon, you get people to stick around anticipating some kind of catastrophic finale. The guy pimple popping pearlescent trinkets out of clams is the closest I’ve felt to what cyberpunk TV looks like.

However, as someone with pottery experience, the pottery tea cup reveals are (I think) faked. These had been already running on Chinese social media video, given that there is an actual tea drinking culture there, but the slot machine-esque mechanics involved appear to be translating over here. They’re hocking modern Jian ware[*] tea cups, which are high iron glazed teacups that are distinct for sometimes exhibiting special effects in the glazes as a result of the firing process.

There are some great examples of Jian ware in museums (they were particularly prized by the Japanese) - this Song dynasty example cup in the MOMA[*] is one of my favorites. The pieces are saggar fired (fired in an enclosed container) and historically there is a low rate of success for each of these cups.

To be clear, I don’t have actual evidence here it’s all fake, but I’m basing my opinion on a few observations (having watched numerous of these types of streams for hours now):

• It doesn’t make sense to me that the first yellow teacup is stuck with black glaze on the foot - it should just be yellow, glaze doesn’t just suddenly change colors at the bottom of the cup. The last cup (also yellow) doesn’t exhibit any of the pooling along the bottom edge of the yellow either, which you’d expect all over the piece.

• The sheer amount of drip seems excessive (after all, if you were getting that much drip that often, the first move would be to alter your glaze application, glaze specific gravity, or glaze chemistry)

• There aren’t enough “near” misses. One would expect more examples where the piece isn’t stuck, but the special effect in the glaze sucks - the hare’s fur lines aren’t aesthetically pleasing, or the dichromatic effect isn’t that good, etc.

Not saying this is how they do it, but if I were to do this as efficiently and cheaply as possible, I’d buy defective ware in bulk, splash a little glaze on the foots to stick them and saggar them up, sprinkling in the occasional perfect piece in there. Then I’d fire the lot at a low temperature just to melt the glaze I added and do the whole rigamarole on camera. Seeing as they’re selling the pieces at 5x what you can get from simply searching “Jian tea cup” on AliExpress[*] I bet you could make a profit doing this.