Make Knock-Offs Stigmatized Again

Dupe Culture is destroying creativity and innovation.

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

If you spend any time in female-centric media, and especially on TikTok, you cannot escape the obsession with dupes. There are seemingly endless TikTok accounts dedicated to finding cheaper duplicate versions of whatever you might want: Designer clothes, running shoes, skin serums, sunscreen, sunglasses, high chairs, lipstick, couches, rugs, perfume, candles, handbags, foundation, shampoo, shapewear, strollers, leggings, mascara, hairdryers, face lotion, watches, and on and on. You can find a dupe for just about any popular consumer product, but especially those consumer products mostly purchased by women. There are dupes of dupes, a kind of race to the consumer bottom where products are copied and then copied again, getting cheaper but also ever shittier.

#dupe is now one of the most-searched terms on social media. People have always sought out knock-offs; if you’ve ever been to New York City’s Chinatown, you may have seen the long-thriving demand for fake designer bags. Many of us have purchased knock-offs without even knowing it (some of what you might pick up at Zara just because you think it’s cute is actually ripped off from a luxury fashion house). For a long time, though, the purpose of the knock-off was to fake the real thing. Among young people today, dupe culture has intertwined with hyper-consumerism and disposability culture. Dupes aren’t being hidden; they’re being advertised and boasted-about. Finding a dupe is a brag. The stigma around dupes is fast receding.

We should bring it back.

This is not to argue that everyone should spend money they don’t have on luxury goods and designer brands. It is certainly not to say that I personally always buy the “real” version of luxury goods and designer brands (I definitely do not!). It’s not to say that we should make classism great again, or that there should be stigma attached to being unable to afford designer goods. It’s not even to say that knock-offs shouldn’t exist in the marketplace or in your closet (my own closet has plenty).

It is to say that there is something wrong with an entire culture of venerating ripping off others’ creativity and research, and there is definitely something wrong with a culture that wants more ripped-off disposable stuff, that collectively says who cares if it’s quality or not because we’re going to throw it away anyway, and who cares that ripping off others’ research and development means we all get crappier stuff at every price point. The existence of knock-offs as one part of a consumer economy is less the problem than a growing agreement that more cheap and disposable stuff is preferable to better stuff. Because dupe culture, to be clear, is not a celebration of being thrifty; it is not a strike against name-brand consumerism. It is a celebration of voracious consumption patterns that mirror a TikTok algorithm: next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing.

It seems to me that this issue goes deeper than simple out-of-control consumerism, and is tied into the many other ways in which our attention spans have become shorter and our dedication to excellence shallower. I cannot help but notice that the penchant for $2 Shein dresses that you can wear once for an Instagram photo before throwing away has come along with algorithmic social media — especially TikTok — that encourages endless swiping and scrolling, that serves up more tailored-to-you content designed to keep your eyeballs glued to your phone and your brain craving endless novelty. I cannot help but notice that the obsession with dupes comes along with AI tools that are creating the art and music that human beings were once paid to make, a further separation of creation from creator.

If we want to live in a world in which creativity is compensated, in which innovation is rewarded, in which products are high-quality and objects are long-lasting, in which new and cool things actually get made, and in which our land and oceans aren’t teeming with trash and crap, then we need to reject a culture that celebrates getting ever-more and ever-cheaper imitations of the quality things an ever-shrinking number of suckers have paid for.