Temu was first introduced to the world through a series of advertisements during the Super Bowl and since then has become a trend of its own online, with influencers and YouTubers using the platform to buy and promote ridiculous products for ridiculous prices. Temu is just the latest peak in our world of unbridled consumerism, but its meteoric rise has much bigger implications than just another cheap knockoff website. Temu, to summarize, for those not fully in the loop here, is a discount online marketplace that sells stuff for hella cheap prices. This is the newest and craziest version of Alibaba, Wish.com and stuff like that. It's basically the sketchy version of Amazon and it makes me sad. Temu’s slogan ‘Shop like a billionaire’ is because you can find dupes of luxury products for just a couple of dollars. And it's not just clothing and stuff that you would get on Shein or something like that. Temu sells electronics, kids stuff, home goods and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff that we had no idea even how to categorize because it's really just random shit. Were you looking for the perfect jumbo earbud for the big eared people on your wish list? Because Temu got you covered along with a whole bunch of weird gifs that nobody ever wanted. Now, before you go over there to Temu and buy 27 products for $35, please let us tell you why Temu is the literal worst and no one should ever shop there. So Temu was launched in the US in 2022 by a company called PDD Holdings Inc, which is a Chinese owned company headquartered in Shanghai. A couple of months later, they launched in Canada and aired a fancy Super Bowl ad, and then just two months after that they had launched in Australia and New Zealand and all over Europe. So in literally just six months, this company went from obscurity to a global phenomenon. By the end of 2022, the Temu app was the most downloaded free app in America. One of the reasons why Temu skyrocketed in almost no time is because these PDD holdings people knew what they were doing. They launched a similar platform in China called Pinduoduo, where this whole business model started from. This is kind of like when Mountain Dew released Mountain Dew Code Red. They knew that what they were making was a bad thing, but they knew that if they made more of it, people would buy it. And in both cases they were right. Temu prices put Amazon to shame, and this is completely on purpose. In fact, I wouldn't even say that these two companies are in the same category because shopping on Temu is crazy. I went onto the website for the first time when we were researching for this video, and the landing page alone is unbelievable. Lightning deals ending today 90% off electronics and home sales down to $0.39. This big, bold, high pressure sort of sale tactics is what Temu is built on. Below every product there's a notification showing when somebody last bought them and this is the lowest price in 30 days or whatever. Like it's all designed to make you feel like you should buy it right now. The design of the website is to get you to buy something that you didn't need or don't need, only because it's a great deal. They're working with a lot of classic gamification and that idea of treasure hunting that you feel when you get a discount on a product, you know, and that rewards system in your brain makes you want to keep coming back because you feel a certain kind of excitement when you're able to get 77 items for $100. So of course, people are going to come back for more. And of course, people are now addicted to shopping on Temu. Another reason why Temu is everywhere is because they are hardcore with their ads and sponsorships like these guys do not hold back. Future Proof, this channel, gets a ton of sponsorship requests from Temu, which is ironic to say the least, because I don't know if they've seen a single video that we've made, but like it's not really the place where we're going to be promoting $5 smartwatches. And of course, we are not the only YouTubers who are getting these kinds of emails. They are known to harass YouTubers and creators with emails, even finding new email address to spam them when they've been blocked at the first one. But a ton of influencers don't seem to mind this because they partner with them anyway, which is why you can't be on the internet for more than a few minutes before running across a Temu ad or sponsored content. But we'll get into that later in the video. First, what I want to talk about is the prices, because that's kind of what this whole thing is built on, right? Any business whose sole mission is to be the cheapest supplier of a particular good should be treated with a certain level of scrutiny right off the bat. If you're getting a great deal like a like a great deal, chances are there is someone along that product's life course that isn't getting a great deal. Now listen, here at Future Proof, we we do our best to look at all sides. You know, of course, we're still biased. We're just people here writing scripts and making videos. But sadly, there is not a lot of nuance with this one because Temu is a nightmare for everyone involved. Temu works similar to how Amazon does in the sense that manufacturers put their products on Temu and sell their stuff directly to the consumer, which is supposedly how they are able to keep their prices so low because they eliminate the middlemen or whatever. But that is just complete bullshit. Consumers are getting bad products, vendors are being exploited, manufacturers are being inhumanely treated. And don't forget that all of this shit is coming at the expense of the planet that we live on as well. How can I say this with any kind of confidence? Well, all you need to do is look at the prices. As the OG Hank Green pointed out, there is simply no way an e-commerce site can price products that low without doing something shady. So how do they get those prices so cheap in the first place? Well, as we said, when influencers are promoting Temu, explaining away the price has just been the warehouse price without up charges of regular stores, etc., etc. That is not true. Temu is purposefully losing money on their orders in order to become the go to Marketplace for cheap garbage. It's similar to what Amazon did when they lost money selling cheap books to undercut the rest of the book market to become the top bookseller in the world. Yeah, that happened too. Bookstores are great and we shouldn't buy books on Amazon because Amazon's the worst. Do we have to make a video about Amazon? I feel like everybody knows all the terrible things that Amazon does, right? We don't have to make that video. Like this video if we don't have to make that video because I don't want to get mad again. Temu is losing an average of $30 for each order because the products are marked down so low, which means somewhere along the line people are not getting compensated for their labor. And what would you look at that? We're right. It turns out that Temu essentially pressures their manufacturers to sell their products at extremely low prices. A team who sets for them some sellers have anonymously reported that they make no money selling their stuff on Temu just in order to break into the US market. Again, we have seen this business model of selling stuff at a loss. It's not uncommon when a business is first starting out, but we rarely see it done to this extreme. Probably the most frustrating part about this whole site and the popularity of it is just how purposeless and poorly made these products really are. Like, I want to believe that people would be able to recognize that you do in fact get what you pay for. And basically anything on this site is going to be in your garbage can in a week after you buy it. But sadly, that is not the case. A recent Wired article described how Temu steals the exact photos, product descriptions and even test certifications from Amazon sellers and lists them as their own on Temu. The test certifications even have the seller's business address on them, so Temu is doing nothing to cover its tracks. They know that it would take a lot of time, money and energy for a small seller to go after a giant corporation like Temu, which is how they can rip off their entire Amazon storefront and get away with it. They also get away with it because of this new dupe trend that has emerged. We made a whole video about dupes. If you want to watch that. It's pretty interesting. And this video is a perfect follow up to that one. If I can say that there is anything perfect about Temu. To summarize that one, a little bit, people would almost rather be seen wearing knockoff Gucci than they would wearing the actual thing. Now, just to be clear, backing up a little bit, we understand that buying low priced items is a necessity for some people. We're not here to shame that. But the vast majority of the consumers who are shopping on Temu are not buying low cost necessities. They're buying low quality shit that they don't even need. Just because it feels good. Now the list of sketchy shit that this company gets up to is too long to include into a reasonably lengthed video, if lengthed is even a word. So let's just summarize a few of them. Temu is not accredited with the Better Business Bureau. Orders often end up late or don't show up at all. Temu is definitely selling your data on the black market. These claims have been verified, but it is also worth knowing that Temu sister app Pinduoduo has been pulled from the Google Play Store for Data Risks, and Temu itself was temporarily suspended from the Apple Store for violating privacy rules. Just for a fun fact. They found loopholes to avoid tariffs on imported products, which means that these products also hurt local businesses within North America who can't compete on this level. They have also been linked to the oppression of the Uyghur people in China who are currently under attack by the Chinese government in ways that vaguely meet the definition of a genocide. So if you can imagine a scammy, shady business practice that would fit in to some kind of Blade Runner 1984 dystopia, then this company is the Tyrell Corp. of the real world that we're living in right now. Do you feel sad? Then like this video and make sure you subscribe for more. Because that's what we do, apparently. All right. So let's try and shake off some of those gloomy gloom. All right. Let's let's let's bring it to the finish line here, because I think that what you need and what I need is something to go off of, and that is more depressing shit. So what does this mean for the future? I can imagine a lot of you are thinking, Hey, low prices aren't the end of the world. If team who wants to lose money to gain market share and that's their choice, Fine. Make hay while the sun is shining. Right. But here's the thing. Those artificially low prices create a expectation for people. That has a big ripple across the entire industry. If somebody can buy five pairs of smiley face slippers for $10, then they are slowly becoming conditioned to that kind of standard. Now, the forced labor exploit in retailers, the emissions in the environment and the trash in the landfill, they become expected. What Temu's success says about us as a society is that we've entered an almost dystopian like culture of consumerism, where we expect to get whatever we want, whenever we want it, and for the best deal possible. And we're willing to overlook pretty much any logical thinking in order to get it. And with companies like Temu, getting the best deal means spending even less than what the products are worth to make, which is just not how anything works. In the race to make it to the top of the 1%, these corporations are stuck in a race to the bottom. They have to promise more and more to consumers just to stay competitive with absolutely zero consideration for the consequences. So now we've been trained to expect this from everything adding on to this whole rip off dupe culture that Temu operates their entire business model on and we're destroying the opportunities for makers and small businesses to succeed because not only can they not compete with prices on Temu, but their stuff is getting straight up, ripped off. Now, look, I know the buying shit is hard. That's why this whole channel is successful, because we try to explain the products and the companies that are making the stuff that we have to buy in order to live our lives. Right? These days, just buying a tomato at a grocery store means that you are unwittingly supporting toxic pesticides, exploiting labor, contributing to global warming. Humans think that they're making one choice, but they're actually making dozens of choices they don't even know they're making. But when we see sites like Temu pop up and we see their popularity, we have to consider more than just the good deal. What does this Web site mean for society? If we want a future that's thriving instead of drowning in cheap garbage. We need to think about what we're buying and where our money goes and what purchases we make actually mean for the world around us. Now, I know we're just a few weeks shy of the most consumerist time of the year, and we can only imagine that team's sales are going to skyrocket out of control as people buy stuff that they think they're supposed to buy for the people that they love. We are going to be making some more content about Christmas heading into this wonderful holiday season, which hopefully you you're excited about. But please, if we can give you one little bit of unsolicited advice, it's to not shop for things on Temu this year because you're just wasting your money and probably making somebody's life worse in the meantime. God, that was a grim ending. Is that really where we're going to cap this video? We should have said something like, you know, buy local and like support small businesses and, you know, maybe buy experiences instead. But no, we're going to end on whatever the hell that was. See you in the next one, everybody.
