Demonizing the Depop Girlie

Why do we hate online resellers so much?

Tiktok user LanaDelRedneck said it best: 

You bitches are so fucking dumb. 

“Yikes, you’re a reseller.” 

Shut the fuck up.

What’s the difference between going to those bougie-ass vintage stores–

that charge way more than I do–

And me doing it online for cheaper?

Why is it okay to go to a vintage store but not shop from a depop seller?

Shut the fuck up

Also all that shit is on its way to a landfill 

So, if you’re so worried about it go get it– and do some reducing reusing and recycling

You stupid bitch.

I genuinely couldn’t have said it better myself. LanaDelRedneck so succinctly calls out the blatant double standard between Vintage Stores and Depop– in a way that forces you to consider: wait, why do we have such a bias against Depop Sellers? 

All the classic reasons come to mind: Classism (one has an established, “professional” storefront, one does not), Optics (people feel much more comfortable buying from a brick-and-mortar store than from an app) and Good ‘Ole Bias Against Teen Girls (a tried-and-true classic. A tale as old as time. People really do hate the girlie pops).

The image of the “Depop Girlie” doesn’t help much either. The stereotype is of a young girl, from an upper middle class background, living with her parents and spending her free time “taking all the good stuff” from thrift stores. She will then flip the barely-out-of-season garments online as “vintage treasures” for an insane mark-up. 

Now, the mark-up part is where people get enraged– and I can see their point. It is off-putting to see something listed online for far beyond what you understand to be its actual value. It’s actually why I abandoned the Depop platform all together in 2017-ish. I was exhausted. I couldn’t go another day scrolling through ratty Hollister henleys selling for sixty, seventy, eighty dollars. It was insane. But, in all honesty, if this same business model were run by a 20-something White guy outta Silicon Valley, he’d be celebrated for his profit margins. Nobody is holding you at gunpoint while you put that $65 baby tee on Afterpay.

The platform was also mired with ISO (In Search Of) posts– so much so that it rendered the search function nearly unusable. A person looking for a Charlotte Simone pink fur coat would have to sift through 40-50 posts made by desperate girls who “want one sooo bad if anyone has an extra coat in a size small!” before they found anything useful.

So, I can see why the general public would have a sort of disdain for the Depop app– but why has this negative perception bled out to resellers as a whole? Why is LanaDelRedneck getting “Yikes you’re a reseller?” in her comments?

It’s because of how her shop looks. It’s on an app, it’s owned by a young girl with a low production budget and– even though we’re more confident online consumers today— there’s no actual, real life, brick and mortar store in the background providing credibility. It’s a harder sell.

Sure, people love to yap on and on about “Sustainability” and “supporting emerging brands”-- but the general public is going to gravitate more towards the shiny, high production value Stella McCartney ad than the poorly-lit, curated-Goodwill finds that Miss DelRedneck hung on a plastic hanger, took a photo of and Bazaart’d out the background before posting online.

We equate the quality of artifice with the quality of good. And no matter how many times we’re burned, we never seem to learn the lesson that, just because a shop has an expensive ad, doesn’t mean their clothes are any good. I mean, look at Zara. They have some of the most enticing, editorial, delicious ads in the fast-fashion game– but I have never once gone into a Zara and thought: oh, this is well made! 

It’s crap! It’s trendy crap– but crap all the same! All the money goes towards advertisement– towards propping up the business as something more credible than what it is. There is nothing different between the $90 vintage T-shirts your local 34 year old hypebeast is selling at his reclaimed vintage store and the single-stitch, Lithuanian DeadHead shirt some 15 year old girl is hocking online.   

We need to be smarter consumers. I know that the internet landscape is ever-evolving and their capitalistic tricks are getting harder to spot– but, come on guys. I feel like this is an easy one. 

Buy things because you like them. Buy things because you think they’re a good deal, because the product aligns better with your morals, because you want to support a business or a person– buy things for whatever reason you’d like. But if you’re going to have a hardline, negative stance on Online Reselling…. Maybe ask yourself why?