1 February was a sad day for a number of reasons. Not only did it mark the 10th anniversary of the Space shuttle Columbia disaster, but it’s also the day that Regretsy stopped publishing new material and became an archive.
If you aren’t already familiar with Regretsy, it’s a blog that highlights some of the most ridiculous items listed on peer-to-peer ecommerce site Etsy. Created by April Winchell, Regretsy comments on some of the “objets d’fart” found on Etsy with a superbly snarky tone, under the strapline “where DIY meets WTF”. Highlights include pieces of art, such as this oil painting of a couple copulating inside a burger bun, called Sex Burger; a vulva-faced zombie ornament; a custom unicorn hoodie and a cat hairball necklace.
Regretsy’s irreverence has attracted the rage of a number of different factions with strong views on topics such as breastfeeding, circumcision and female body hair.
In 2011, Regretsy got into a spat with PayPal, after using the wrong button to accept donations for a Secret Santa campaign, which raises money to buy toys for needy children. Because Regretsy used the “donate” button rather than the “buy now” or “shopping cart” button, PayPal demanded that the site refunded all of the donations ($20,000), minus the transaction fees. After attracting a lot of criticism, Paypal eventually backed down and made a donation to the fund.
Winchell first set up the site in 2009 when she was out of work and looking for something to fill her time with. She describes it in a blog post as “an incredibly fun thing to do, and for much longer than I had a right to expect”. At the time she promised herself that if the site stopped being fun, she would stop doing it. “That day came and went quite a while ago, but the success of the site, the readership and the community have been very hard to give up.”
This is partly due to the fact that Winchell’s work as a voice actor in animations has picked up, including roles in a number of Pixar projects, and a leading role in a Disney show called
Wander Over Yonder, where she playas Jack MacBrayer’s (comedy actor who plays Kenneth Parcell in 30 Rock) horse. She is also in discussions to transform her weekly web series SockPuppet Theatre for television. Finally, Winchell says she has “no more jokes left to tell about crafting”. “After nearly three and a half years, I’ve said everything I have to say about it, and now we’re just Bedazzling a dead horse.”
As of 1 February, Winchell stopped updating the site, but the forum and the archive will remain active. Wired.co.uk caught up with her to find out about her Regretsy highlights, most extreme complaints and future plans.
**Wired.co.uk: Has Regretsy been a commercial enterprise or a labour of love?
Winchell:** Both, actually. In the beginning, I really had no dreams for the site. It was just something I thought would keep me occupied between jobs. But then I had close to 96 million hits in 72 hours and we were all just kind of stunned. I didn’t even have ads on Regretsy until I realised I had to pay for the bandwidth.
It became my job pretty quickly. There was so much work involved that I was at the computer all day. And eventually I had to hire a few people, and they had to be paid out of the site as well. So the site had to make money to keep itself alive, and I was able to do that for three and a half years.
How much time were you spending on it? You would think that a joke and a photo wouldn’t take that long to crap out, but this site was a time suck like you would not believe. There would be days when I would be on the couch with my laptop for 16 hours, just exhausted and in tears.
First, you have to find the stuff. And you have find great stuff. And that gets harder because the shock needle keeps moving.
After a year or two you’re like, “Eh, another teddy bear with a vagina, who cares.” Bad crafts are like drugs; you have to keep upping the dose to feel anything.
Then you have to write the joke or do the Photoshop or come up with the contest. You do the coding and resize the images and read hundreds of emails every day. We mailed thousands of books and packages, we fulfilled hundreds of charity requests, we did sales and fundraising and fan meet-ups and Secret Santa for underprivileged kids, and at one point I was writing four posts a day. I loved every second of it. But you can’t do that forever.
You say you have run out of jokes about crafting. What’s the least funny sector of crafting and why? I think everything has the potential to be funny, provided its asking for it, and everything is asking for it in some way. You just have to figure out what that is, so people have permission to laugh.
The biggest threat to humour however, is relentless positivity; this knee-jerk response to lavish praise on anything made by hand. I guarantee that if I featured a wedding gown made out of tampons, someone would rave about how absorbent it was.
On Etsy, everyone is as good at everything as everyone else.
Nothing is special because everything is. Etsy users must say only nice things to each other, or risk being muted. You can’t learn or improve if no one acknowledges that some things are less than perfect. More importantly, you can’t laugh at yourself. And if you can’t do that, you’re screwed.
If you had to go into a crafty business and sell your products on Etsy, what would it be? Handmade steampunk post-apocalyptic zombie-themed menstrual blood paintings on upcycled thrift store sweaters.
What’s the most extreme complaint you’ve received about your site? Oh God, there have been so many. The most obnoxious complaint came from a woman who was angry that I made fun of her terrible drawing of Edward and Bella from
Twilight. She likened her bruised ego to “how gay teenagers must feel when they’re bullied into suicide.” That made me really angry. She was the poster child for the generation of self-important idiots Etsy has birthed from its polymer vagina.
There was also the guy who surfaced after I did a round-up of horrible 9/11 crafts, and used a crying eagle in the post. He claimed that he owned all images of the Word Trade Centre and eagles, so putting them together in any way was an infringement of his copyright. He was pretty entertaining. He told me that the FBI would come to my house and “remove any images of crying eagles” and prevent me from “ever using Hotmail again.”
Are you going to do anything with these complaints? I’ve had so many fantastic emails from angry crafters that I’ve been assembling them into a theatre piece. You know “Love Letters?” That play where two people sit on opposite sides of the stage and read some dopey correspondence? Every community theatre in the world does it. Well, I’m going to do “Hate Mail” with Rob Paulsen (Pinky and the Brain, Animaniacs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and we’ll read all my favourite complaints and baseless legal threats in cartoon voices.
What’s been the nicest reaction from an Etsy store holder you’ve had?
People have been amazing. I’ve gotten cards that were so touching they made me cry. And people have drawn me pictures, made me samplers, sent me toys and soap and candy and handmade gifts from all over the world. Not a week went by without something wonderful showing up at our post office box. One seller, a cross stitcher named “STEOTCH,” made me a Judge Judy sampler that I treasure. It says, “UMM IS NOT AN ANSWER.”[one of Judge Judy’s catchphrases]
How much of a pain in the ass was Paypal? They are just dumb as a box of hair. How in god’s name could you close down a Secret Santa drive for poor kids? How does no one in the chain say, “Hold on, we may want to think about taking presents away from poor children at Christmas, because from a PR standpoint, that could come back to bite us in the ass?” It’s the same kind of arrogance you see with Etsy; just a complete disregard for their customers. And in the end, Paypal was wrong about their own policy, which is another problem Etsy has. No one knows what the rules are, so no one can explain them to you.
And that means the rules are different for everybody.
After that whole thing happened, I started becoming the clearing house for Paypal horror stories. I got them in my mailbox every day, and they were just heartbreaking. So I wrote to the executive who apologised to me after the Secret Santa debacle and I said, “Look, do you want me to send these stories to you? I think you should see them, but you may not be interested.” And he was like, “Yes, yes of course! I want to help these people!”
And then, two weeks later, I got the email from the lady who had her antique violin destroyed at Paypal’s instruction. That really upset me.
I sent Paypal all the emails and all the photos and all of the documentation she gave me, and I said, “This is going to be a nightmare for you if you don’t reach out to her,” and they blew me off. So I published it. And then I opened an account with WePay.
What are you doing to do with AprilWinchell.com?
I used to run that site as an adjunct to my radio show, and it’s got an enormous library of terrible music (sort of an audio “Regretsy”). That will definitely stay up. Where else are you going to get the theme from Mr. Ed in German? I’ll also host all of my old radio shows and podcasts there. Some of those shows are pre- 9/11, so it’s an interesting pop culture time capsule.
As far as blogging there, I’ll be able to write about a variety of subjects, and that will help a lot. I never could stray too far from crafting without someone complaining that it “didn’t belong on Regretsy”. People get comfortable when they know what to expect from you, and really don’t like it when you change direction. I get that, but I think you have to keep changing direction to stay interesting.
And you know, life is too short to just mock one thing. There is so much shit out there that needs to be made fun of, and I’m not getting any younger.
