@nota thinking about this more, i'm a little reminded of a discussion i read a while ago (on tumblr i think?) about "handmade" clothing, in which several people who were very into sewing absolutely lost their mind at people believing there's any sort of cheap clothing that's "not handmade" — it's just that it gets done in places that aren't usually thought about much (unless one wants to insist that "handmade clothing" prohibits the use of a sewing machine ig)

like it's the same kind of assumption that "mass-produced elsewhere" might as well mean "it just kinda materialised" (and credit is given to whoever designed it, not whoever made it)

@stuebinm @nota@chaos.social I wonder if framing it in terms of "did the creator have agency over their work" would be a better way to talk about this than "was it made by hand"?

@joepie91 @nota possibly, yeah — as far as i remember it, in the discussion i referred to above, the initial example was a hip company doing expensive clothes with ads that was very about it being artisanal and such (and the conversation basically started as a "hey if that marketing works on you you probably don't understand how your clothes are made, and also have you considered supporting independent creatives/people on this platform who will happily sew you clothes instead")

which might gesture at the what you mean — as in, "the thing you think they're saying with 'hand-made' isn't that, but also the thing you probably *meant* can actually be had, just not from this hip company"

but i'm not sure how much I'd specifically agree with your phrasing? like, i think it's fine if the creator had little agency over the thing they produced (e.g. because it's a mass-produced design made by someone else), as long as they have agency over their job and aren't exploited (or am i just misunderstanding you here? 😅)