"That’s a bit like using an AI generated background. I have a great vintage item; I sourced it, I cleaned it, I researched it, but I also want my buyers to be able to see the item as something unique—which means staging it to excite the imagination and entice purchase. (It sounds shady when I say it that way, but it’s also the truth and it’s also how businesses work. I don’t want to encourage over consumption AND/BUT I want people to buy my items.) It’s easier to excite and entice with a nicer space than I have."

"As a working class queer Black fem, using my physical self to promote my clothes so that they are easily sold is directly connected to racial desirability politics and algorithms".

"In my fictional rental business, AI can predict trends and help me manage inventory more effectively by analyzing buying patterns and consumer behavior. It can also suggest which items are likely to sell quickly and which may need more aggressive marketing."

"I’m an AFAB transmasc, nonbinary Queer person, neurodivergent, and precariously middle class (one reason I side gig the heck out of my full time job). I’m fascinated by the ways in which labor remains both central to the capitalist marketplace and persistently gendered—most smalls resellers on IG are women, for example, but only a few of us rely on that additional income—which may account for some of the (often uninformed) pushback we get. It’s seen as both unnecessary (“get a real job!” Ie a “professional” job that would also place the seller more easily within traditional—and misogynistic—labor structures and ignore the dynamics that often prompt AFAB folks into the reseller economy), and why reselling is attacked as “removing” “valuable goods” from the lowest-price point of access at major resale outlets like Goodwill and Arc. "

"I think part of the reason people buy secondhand is to get away from mass manufactured items and seek more individualized products… I think implementing AI tools could make it more difficult to shop with that intention"

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