Sometimes a mystery is not worth solving…

Have you ever received a package covered in an unnamed black sludge? Me neither, but this person did, and it’s worth investigating. Online shopping can be a huge risk. You never quite know what you’re getting into until you open the package. And then it all becomes clear. Who hasn’t been catfished by an online listing? Maybe something was suspiciously cheap, but you added it to your cart anyway, and when it arrived 6 weeks later, you realize that you got got. The material is cheap, the fit is weird, and the pattern is not what they said it was. This seems to happen now more than ever in an era of digital photo manipulation and cheap manufacturing processes. It’s buyer beware out there. Sometimes it’s malicious false advertising, and sometimes things just happen. 

It’s a human impulse to want to air your gripes. You want some witness to your pain so you feel like you’re not alone in it. It’s why we reach out to friends when something bad happens, and it’s why we hit «post» on stories like this. We also love to help each other toward solutions. Two heads are better than one, and multiply that across the vastness of the internet, and we’re really cooking. Sometimes it takes outside perspective to really dig into an issue and figure it out. It’s also how you know when something is a widespread issue rather than a myopic one. That’s what was happening here.