As you may know, one of my very favorite topics around here is the feeding frenzy that kicks in on Etsy whenever someone of note dies. I call it, TragiCrafting™.

But let’s be clear about one thing: TragiCrafting™ is not fueled by the desire to make a buck off a dead celebrity. That would be so very cynical and wrong, and not at all pastel and creamy and covered with mustaches.

No, TragiCrafting™ is different. TragiCrafting™ is all about healing.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Yes. Yes, it is.

So when Dick Clark checked out yesterday, I felt that special tingle I get whenever poor judgment is in the air. It would only be a matter of time before hastily decoupaged American Bandstand tampon boxes and battery operated clocks made out of Ohio Players albums started clogging up the Etsy colon.

Then this happened.

DID YOU EVER KNOW THAT YOU’RE MY HERO

More Tragicrafting™:

- Amy Winehouse
- Davy Jones
- Steve Jobs
- Whitney Houston

UPDATE: SOLD!

Let’s face it. We all have someone we’d like to banish, but handmade Guardian Meditation Enhancer Shield ARC units aren’t cheap. Fortunately, you can get a similar effect by staring at a Dyson canister after vacuuming under a lathe.

*For added realism, stick five $100 bills up your ass until you “no longer feel anything.”

This post first appeared on Regretsy on April 14, 2011

Poor Doris Handmade.

She’s having an awfully hard time making sales these days. So she decides to drop in to an Etsy forum and ask for a little helpful advice:

Immediately, friendly Etsy sellers begin looking at her store, trying to figure out why beautiful handmade journals like these aren’t selling.

Gosh, it’s hard to say isn’t it?

Some people suggest the price might be a bit high, though it certainly seems fair for a handmade journal. Others advise Doris to reconsider her backgrounds or styling. And some just blame the whole economy.

But it’s not until Etsy seller Rune Leather speaks up that we actually get anywhere.

Oh, snap.

Snappity snap snap.

I no see snap like this so long.

Yes, a re-seller posted a link to her shop in the Etsy forums, under the guise of reaching out to the community. She even posted the same plea for help in other areas of the forum, adding self-promotion and spamming to her list of accomplishments.

Obviously, Etsy was not going to sit idly by. They take the reseller problem very seriously over there. In fact, they’ve recently added a monkey to the Content Team, thereby doubling their manpower. So when this all came to light in the forum, Etsy quickly responded to the problem the best way they knew how.

Knickey, who spells her name with a K, klosed the thread. She also linked to Etsy’s Official Rules Of Shut Your Pie-Hole, just in case you thought you might want to help some more.

Please don’t call out.

Please don’t bring attention to the fact that someone is re-selling mass-produced garbage on Etsy, because then we might have to do something. And right now, we’re really busy drawing pictures of bacon on the dry-erase board, and coming up with names for our ironic bowling team.

And just to put a few Swarovski crystals on the dog turd, the person who identifies a re-seller this way could actually wind up getting suspended. Because while flooding Etsy with cheap shit from China is icky, being mean is ickier.

As of this writing, a full seven hours after Etsy was made aware of this situation, DorisHandmade is still open for business.

But as soon as Rob White finishes brushing his cat, shit’s going to get real.

BUY HANDMADE
FREE TIBET

UPDATE: What is Doris doing now?