Anomie and Etsy: A sociological approach

Student quote of the day:  "Dr. Mazhan Khan discussed the felt and pitfall when my grandmother is an emergency room."

Yeah, that has no relationship to anything, I just had to share.  Anyway.

The Slate.com article from Friday's post and my recent rumination on the site's weird pricing competitions make me think of anomie, a concept in the theory of criminality I was recently explaining to a student.   Basically, the idea is that deviant behavior results from a disconnect between a.) that which society teaches as worthy goals and b.) that which society offers as methods to achieve them.  Much of the time, b. doesn't accomplish a.  At this point, the individual can either continue to strain themself psychologically by continuing to accept both a. and b. (conformism), refuse to accept a. or b. or both (ritualism, innovation, or retreatism), or replace both a. and b. with more suitable alternatives (rebellion).  In other words, when you are told what to want and how to get it but the "how" doesn't give you the "what," you have a couple of choices as to how to cope with that.

On Etsy, the teaching of the weird little internet subculture is a.) to live on the profits of an Etsy shop is a worthy goal and one we should all strive for; and b.) the way to achieve this is through creating unique, high-quality products and selling them with diligent work.

The problem is that these aren't as cause-and-effect as the Etsy Success newsletters would like us to believe.

Consequently, we have a number of options:

1. Conformism: We blame ourselves for our inability to reach the goal, and keep at it like the little Skinner-boxed hamsters we are.  (For an interpretation of the Skinner box, see here for the history, here for the interesting applications).
2. Ritualism: We reject a.), saying in effect, "I can't quit my day job.  Whatever," and continue going through the motions of listing and relisting.
3. Retreatism: We reject both a.) and b.).  We close our shops.  We give up.
4. Innovation: This is the insidious one and the one that causes both brilliant and deviant Etsy behavior.  We keep a.) but reject b.), saying, "I'm quitting my day job, damn it -- and I'm doing it my way."  This can range from finding a totally wild product (dog butt covers, anyone?) to assembling products poorly and relying on volume to cover the poor result to selling mass-produced Chinese wedding dresses and pretending they're handmade in your little studio.
5. Rebellion: We say "To hell with all of this."  We reject a.) and b.) and replace them with new ends and means of our own  We go start doing IRL craft shows again or, alternately, move to Artfire.

Hopefully this will help my fellow crafters: Next time you find someone on Etsy who makes you want to solder yourself to the wall and end the misery, think pityingly, "I see you're rejecting society's legitimate methods in pursuit of its prescribed goal -- but in an unintelligent manner.  Poor silly thing," and feel the urge to kill drain from your body, leaving you light and free and sociologically educated.