If instagrammers want to spend hundreds of dollars on plans, who the hell am I to judge. Not any different from collecting magic the gathering cards or a million other things that people collect.
I don't think this article was really demonizing people buying expensive plants so much as it was pointing out how certain actors in the industry are a little dishonest about the long-term viability of the plants that they artificially dye, and how that affects horticulturists looking to cultivate them and people hoping for a lil leafy companion of a certain hue
Definitely not but I find myself automatically hating on something when I hear terms like "Plantfluencers" and instagram trends. Kind of reminds me of koi fish collecting.
That's not entirely fair - koi breeding has a 200-year history and a well-established network of breeders and professional societies. The point here is that in the wild wild west of social media, that network of professionals, aficionados and other experts is entirely lacking and opportunists have jumped into the gap. Thus are the "plantfluencers" hoist on their own petard. These are the same people that think they invented houseplants. They're annoying as fuck. I'll say this for the koi crew - I've never once run across them in all my years of aquaria and gardening.
I don't know a lot about houseplants and such, but I do know a few people that work in green houses and they tell me things about exclusive strains and patents and exclusivity contracts and such and it's all bizarre to me. I can't imagine certain plants commanding so much attention and money. They even have had people going through their trash and compost in hopes of finding more expensive plants to take home and try to revive. The whole expensive/rare plant thing creates some crazy behavior. Sometimes, I think people let enthusiasm and passion take them so far, it kind of overrides sensibility.
There's something hilarious about the moderator of /r/proplifting talking about "ethical behavior." Here's the thing: without social media, this shit is hella less stupid. SoCal deals with cyclical Sago Palm theft rings and orchid people have always been crazy (which is really what The Orchid Thief is about) but ain't nobody paying fuckin' $200 for a goddamn laceleaf monstera without instagram dipshits involved. Social media has gamified everything and we're always looking for the cheat codes.
I think just beyond gamification. Cause you know, enthusiasm leads to collecting which leads to price speculation. With social media and the internet in general, whether we're talking plants or cars or sneakers or whatever, suddenly mode people are being exposed to these desirable items, which creates a bigger audience and market, which drives up demand which drives up prices.Social media has gamified everything and we're always looking for the cheat codes.
OHHHHHH SHIT THIS STARTS AN ECONOMICS DISCUSSION So... what's the value of a plant? The article mentions tulip mania because of course it does but whatever plant we're talking about it's just a plant. The intrinsic value of a tulip is very close to nothing. The intrinsic value of a human being is less than a dollar. It's the extrinsic value where things get interesting. An upside down plane fascinates us because we don't understand why a typo should be worth a million and a half... except we do. It's worth it for the same reason we anticipate our odometers rolling over every ten thousand miles, or when the hour and the date form a pattern, or Mars and Venus in conjunction or whatever. It's out of the ordinary and we're hardwired for that shit. Rarity is its own reward for humans. But in order for that rarity to have extrinsic value, someone else has to value it. Watchmakers are the worst. They're hoarders. Relentless hoarders of odd little tools nobody can understand but since it's a watchmaking tool, you can sell it to other watchmakers for way way way more than you bought it for (because you probably bought it as part of 300 other things you barely understand as part of an estate sale). Fortunately "way way way" in this case means $7 for some thingamajingus in a ratty yellow box that nobody needs because one well-placed grenade on a well-timed Saturday morning would wipe out every watchmaking enthusiast in a city of twelve million people. There just aren't enough people who need your mildewed yellow box to drive prices up. Enter Instagram. I just typed "plantfluencer" and found four thousand likes for this thing. 40,000 followers. Frickin' House of Garrard only has 140,000 followers and they've got some pretty potent influencers. So what we're looking at is a "market" where 40,000 people give too much of a shit about a plant while 140,000 people give too much of a shit about the literal Crown Jewels. Note that none of these 40,000 plant people have to know anything about plants. It's probably better if you don't. After all, the currency is impressing other people with a shallow experience of plants. And as the actual involvement in those plants starts and ends with "take pictures with your iPhone" the actual expertise with those plants starts and ends with "is it in focus." Yet the likes are real. Thus do we get people paying $300 for monstera where five years ago it was $6 a pot at Home Depot. Because there's a market. There are people who will buy, which means there will come people who will sell, and when the people who buy aren't discriminating the people who sell aren't either and here we are, with a fake plant scandal on Instagram.Cause you know, enthusiasm leads to collecting which leads to price speculation.
The postal clerk who sold the sheet later said he did not realize the image was inverted because he had never seen an airplane before.
Not going to happen for, again, economic reasons. The horological market is well-developed. The Swiss moved 40 million watches last year, for an average price of a thousand dollars. High end is over a million. The "luxury" category starts at about $14k. A healthy high end suppresses the low end. Nobody is going to spend $8k on a $2k Fortis because $8k will buy a reasonable Rolex. And yeah - there's certainly speculation (I still regret not buying a UG Ferrovie dello Stato for $400 'cuz they're at like $800 right now) but there's enough weird old stock that I can buy an Ardath Long Distance for $20 or an NOS Genta movement out of a $12k model for $350. My whole point is that Instagram is creating an artificial market. If Sotheby's has been auctioning your shit for 100 years you can be assured that price discovery is healthy.
There is, though - if there's already "crazy" then "new crazy" can't take root. I can get up on eBay and find a dozen orchids for sale right now for $500 or over. That's the sort of price you can see on the more exotic orchids out there - they go for that at orchid shows, they go for that at orchid societies, they're expensive but someone is gonna buy 'em. The market for crazy expensive orchidsis mature. But if I get up on Instagram and cruise "#plantfluencer" I see two orchids after scrolling through pages and pages and pages of listings. They aren't hyping it to the moon because orchids are already steady-state. But I can look for Prayer Plants and see dozens and lo and behold, a couple dozen for $50 or more on eBay. I buy Prayer Plants for $3 from non-crazy people. And that is my point - social media allows for weird little subcultures of self-referential weirdness to build up, which is what we're looking at here. They're actively in violation of the larger community that gives no shits about Prayer Plants because they've already got Hochstetter's Butterflies. When Antiques Roadshow, Sotheby's, Christies and Phillips all know that your Oyster Cosmograph Daytona is worth more than the average office building, no amount of #watchfam bullshit is going to make your Fossil worth a fuck.