The Truth About Skincare Products

I spent almost an entire day watching skincare videos and reactions yesterday. Why, you may ask. It started with me watching a new video Wengie had just uploaded. Oh, YouTube, how I love and hate you sometimes.

It got me thinking, WHY THE HECK do skincare products have such a wide range of prices? Take clay masks for example. I think they blew up these past few years. Not just clay masks, but Korean skincare, and specifically, the 10-step Korean skincare routine. Ain't nobody got time for that!

Back to clay masks. Some retail for $20 or less while others go for as much as $200. Two hundred!!! US dollars! My face is NOT worth that much.

I'd say I spend a good amount on skincare. Not a crazy amount, but just bare minimum for me to be considered a skincare...amateur? Not as much as the average person my age, I'd say.

That got me thinking, why DO skincare products range from relatively cheap to crazy expensive?! They have pretty much the same ingredients in them.

I bought this walnut scrub (I know, just bear with me) with the same ingredients as the overhyped St. Ives Apricot scrub for less than half the price.

So why. exactly? I would say branding. Take the example of Brandless. Everything on that site is I believe less than $10. And they have skincare products for less than $10.

But is a $200 moisturizer as effective as a $20 moisturizer? Cue the YouTube videos. I would say yes. So why do people still give into the $200 moisturizer? Branding. Marketing. It sells. More than the $20 moisturizer? Maybe. But do they have the same active ingredients? Probably. So why do people still give into this trap? Because ethos. We all give into emotion, and overly promising promises, even if they don't deliver. Because we want some justification as to why we spent that much money. It's the whole ethos, pathos, logos model we loved and hated in high school. Just me? Keep reading, you'll figure it out.

That's why I never spend more than $30 on any skincare product. The most expensive has been this Vitamin E Serum from the Body Shop I got for $28 when I was obsessed with "natural" products. Hence, the $30 maximum.

For now, I look at three factors before purchasing anything. Do I actually need it? Can I live without it? Is the price easily justified?

There have been times when I really wanted something, but thought, I can buy this another day, when I really want and have an actual need for it. Living in a smaller apartment also helps me minimise the number of things I buy while maximising the things I do have and the space I have to put it. No, I don't live in New York, if that's what you're asking.

An example is the overly hyped Sand & Sky Australian clay mask. I decided to buy a pink clay mask from Skin&Lab for half the price just to try it out. I don't know if it was my skin or the type of clay, but it didn't work for me. I still have almost the entire bottle just sitting there. I mix it with one of the other Skin&Lab clay masks I bought just to use it up.

I did some more digging and listed a bunch of skincare products I use and calculated it to be a little under $10 per unit. So that's a very rough (take it with a HUGE grain of salt) estimate. A little under $10 per face mask, for every single pump of moisturizer, eye cream, serum, essence, whatever it is we use (yes, guys have skin too!). I've spent a little over than $500 on skincare alone. And that's in a span of two years. So I guess you could say about $250 a year. If you think about it, that's not too bad, but it sounds like a lot. So next time, before you buy a skincare product, think about if you actually need it, or are you just giving in to this marketing gimmick?

Now, I'm going to use my previous knowledge and pretend to sound smart. Companies sell products. They don't care if you pay $200 or $20. As long as they make a profit, even as little as $5 or $10. But in the real world, that's not true. It would be double the base price.

The whole ethos, pathos, logs. Companies live and breathe on these three rhetoric skills. Ethos. Branding. Overly persuasive language. Celebrity endorsements. Claiming a $200 moisturiser will improve skin texture when a $20 one will do the same thing. Pathos. We all give into feelings. Having someone tell a story of how a product helped them fight off their acne, when if you think about it, it could be a variety of different factors. Your sleep schedule. Environment. What you eat. Hormonal. And much more. Pretty packaging and really cool advertising. Logos. Actual scientific facts. Okay this, I can understand why, but $200 versus $20?!

Of course there could be the yes, the $20 product might contain harmful ingredients like alcohol which everyone has a different reaction to, but it's all about what works, not what's good for your skin, but is paying 10 times the price really worth it? I know it's a stretch, but that's the logic. Is it really worth all that branding, useless jargon, beautiful packing and questionable claims? For all you know that $200 cream could be just another "sugar pill". At the end of the day it's all about what's in the ingredients and what works for you.

I remember back when I was a cashier, I took a look at the invoice we just got for some product we were selling. The unit price was about a little over a dollar and we were selling it for more than twice the unit price. That's how companies make money. That's the cold hard truth. If companies just sold things for a little over or the same price as they got it for, no one would be making any money. It would be just like the olden days of trading rocks for gold. We wouldn't be as successful as we are today to put it in simpler words.

I wish I could explain why people give into these stupid gimmicks, but I just can't. I can just try to find a reasonable explanation based on my logic and what I think goes into people's minds before making a purchase.

This doesn't just go for skincare. I'm just using this as an example of what society tends to do to the average consumer. So next time you go (online) shopping for an item, ask yourself those three questions before adding it to your (virtual) cart.

Why I Don't Shop on Amazon

I watched this video called Amazon Employees React to Amazon Employees on South Park. And it got me thinking. The stigma behind how Amazon treats their employees really hit me. I don't know why or for what reason, but I felt like I had to say something.

I've never worked at Amazon so this might not be the point of view as expected, but I'll just share my part.

One of the main reasons I don't shop on Amazon is because you can find the same thing on other sites like eBay for so much cheaper! I also hear story upon story of how a worker got fired for something really petty, like taking too long to input something. Or how that one worker had to pee in a cup because she had to reach her quota for the day. Don't get me wrong, they have literally EVERYTHING, but at what cost?

So why is the same product on eBay cheaper than it is on Amazon? Simple. Fees. eBay has a different fee schedule than on Amazon. Sellers can list their own shit on eBay for little to nothing, whereas on Amazon, there's both things from regular people like you and I, and also from Amazon itself, which adds onto the overall cost of the item. A $20 water bottle on Amazon could easily go for as little as $5 on eBay. Yes, really. Unlike Amazon, you can literally list ANYTHING on eBay. Well, there are some exceptions, but you get the idea. New, used, broken, list it on eBay and make a few extra bucks!

I'm not just saying eBay is the only alternative when it comes to online shopping. It's a good example of what other options are out there.

Also, membership. What is this, Costco? Even then, you get things in bulk and for cheaper (per unit)! Don't get me wrong, I tried the free-trial membership, and it was cool and all for the 30-days it lasted. It was nice getting my stuff a few days after I bought the item. But is it really NECESSARY? The whole point of online shopping is a economically planned out decision.

Think of it this way. You get to spend the day relaxing at home, doing whatever you want, shopping ONLINE instead of driving to a crowded store, finding parking, and then frantically looking through aisles for that one item you wanted, and then waiting in line to get that item THE SAME DAY. You probably just wasted half a day doing that. Minus the unnecessary window shopping for things you wanted.

Instead, you buy the same item online in the comfort of your own home, on your favourite couch, watching some Netflix and then wait a few days for that item to come. Simple.

So why do I have to pay for membership if the trade-off is just waiting a few extra days to get the item instead of getting it the same day? See, it just doesn't make sense to me. The whole idea of online shopping is expecting things to come a little later than tomorrow. So why pay for that luxury of getting things two days after you order it? It's like the buzz about Apple. Why pay for a $1000 "luxury" phone if you can get the same thing with similar if not better features for half the price?

This dives into the deeper question of the bigger the corporation, the shittier you get treated. Take Disney, for example. We all know of their infamous minimum wage, and how it just recently got pushed to $15 an hour. And how long their hours are with very minimal benefits and horrible standards. We've all heard those Disney horror stories.

So there you have it. Why I don't shop on Amazon. You could find things somewhere else. It's the 21st fucking century. Everything's online nowadays. You just gotta know where to look.