I Bought The Same Dress For $4, $30, $60, and $200

HELLO FRIENDS!! So, I found something… a few months ago, while we were trying to film a video where I let TikTok ads pick my outfits, I stumbled upon… this dress. It goes by a few names but it’s most commonly some version of the “floral midriff shaper corset sundress” – and after buying one for the video, my for you page started getting flooded with TONS of ads for what looked like the same dress – but all from different companies, and with wildly different price points. So, I decided – let’s buy a few of these bad boys and see what actually ends up at our doorstep – and find out, what the heck IS up. Where are all these dresses coming from? Are they all the same dress? Clearly someone is lying here – but who? I guess we’ll find out…

This video is NOT sponsored!!

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Our YouTube Shorts channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLKQoTgt5BwFJJKWyeXHbig

MUSIC
Via AudioNetwork

Executive Producers: Safiya Nygaard & Tyler Williams
Head of Production: Carey Fiock
Production Manager / Producer: Melissa Douglas
Junior Associate Producer: Ishara Mathews
Production Assistant: Aayanah McCreary
Content Promotions & Video Packaging Manager: Alaina Simmons
Short Form Producer: Myia Lambe
Editor: Andrew Lainhart
Editor: Mandy Padgett
Assistant Editor: Hailey Cox
Graphic Designer: Dayana Espinoza

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Intro
2:06 The Dress That Started It All: LarRobe
4:51 Scam Websites?? Buying From Infec And Viola & Lewis
7:07 Things Are Looking Fishy
9:49 Our Receipts
12:47 Stolen Influencer Videos
15:14 Ordering The “Control Dresses” For Our Experiment
17:04 The Arrival (Or Not) Of The Dresses: Infec
17:57 Try On Begins! First Up: House Of CB Dress
19:23 Testing The LarRobe Dress
21:47 Viola & Lewis Try On
23:22 Trying Our “Bad” Control Dress: AliExpress
26:37 The Dress Is Gone…But The Scamming Issue Isn’t
28:42 Outro

#fashion #dress #vlog

♪ This is Safiya’s new intro song ♪ – Hello friends, and welcome to another video. This week I’m gonna be buying the same dress for $4, $30, $60, and $200. How is that possible, you may ask? Well, welcome to the bizarre world of TikTok Ads.

So as you guys know, I’ve investigated many a targeted ad in my day from Instagram to YouTube to TikTok, buying things from ads that are shown to me on different platforms, to both see why certain ads are shown to me, and also if those products are even any good.

And though the internet ad landscape is certainly riddled with potholes and landmines, in my opinion, TikTok is the Wild Westiest of them all, serving you ads from companies ranging from world renowned designer fashion brands to nameless, faceless drop shipping websites. And wanting to further investigate some of the trends

In companies I’ve been seeing advertised on my TikTok, we decided we were gonna film a TikTok ads pick my outfits video, where I would try and build a couple of full outfits based on a variety of clothing company ads I’ve seen. And while collecting ads and buying items for that video,

I stumbled upon this dress. It goes by a few names, but it’s most usually some version of the floral midriff shaper corset sundress. And when I first saw it, I thought, hey, a popular ad from a company I’ve never heard of before. Let’s get it.

Little did I know how far things would unravel from there. As once I purchased one dress, I started seeing the same ad or similar ads or a different ad, but for clearly the same product from a huge number of different websites, selling what literally looked like the exact same dress,

But from different companies and for wildly different prices. What in the ever-loving (beep) is going on here Batman? So I decided to conduct an informal investigation and buy this dress from many different companies and see truly what the heck is up. Are these all the same dress?

Who are these people trying to sell it to you? Clearly someone is lying here, but who? Gird your loins people, because I’m gonna try and figure this out. So our tale begins a couple of months ago when I first started seeing ads for this dress,

And the company that I noticed the most first was this one called LarRobe. The ads themselves were pretty innocuous, maybe a little pixelated, but nothing clearly suspicious with some models posing in various corset sundresses and some popular songs playing underneath. And once I clicked into the LarRobe website,

The site itself looked okay, not super legit, but not super suspicious either. As most of the models I could see in the listing photos seemed like the same models, and there weren’t any glaring red flags. The only thing was that on the dress listing itself,

They did mention that if you buy two items, you can save 3%, which is a pretty bad deal actually. But regardless, I thought we should order it and see what we would get, and bought the Pink Carmen Print Bustier Sundress for 36.99.

After that, the ads that I saw on my feed started evolving, mutating if you will, transforming from short montages of a few clips to longer videos of clearly cut together voiceover. – What? Isn’t that crazy? Oh my God, I found the ultimate summer dress as it comes in so many colors.

– Like, I’m not joking. I have never had a piece of clothing fit me this well before in my life. – [Safiya] Singing the praises of the waist cinching corset action – In the back there is functioning corset style ties and the shape that it creates is gorgeous.

– This all-in one floral shaper dress is all you need. – [Safiya] With text urging you to click now, buy now, there’s a sale going on today only. Hurry, hurry. – [Woman] If you buy one dress, you get one more for free. – [Woman] It’s so goddamn affordable.

Why are you trying to be a broke girl? Huh? This is like perfect, perfect, perfect. – And while some were posted by company names, others were posted by anonymous and generic accounts called things like Floral Corset Waist Shaper Dress, Print Bustier Sundress, and Midriff Dress.

And when I clicked into them, I was greeted by random websites I’d never heard of before: Clogclod, Cydertl, My Comfy Pajamas, Lurvia, Peachy Charm, Shapekitty. Something was truly up and I was more than suspicious. I was slightly terrified by the number of new ads I was seeing.

Sure I was engaging with corset dress content, but there seemed to be no end to the number of completely new companies and accounts advertising what seemed like the exact same dress with the same listing photos, the same descriptions, the same images and gifts on their website, the exact same clips in their ads.

Like for example, these are ads for four different websites. And these are ads for another four different websites. These are supposedly four unique websites, and these are four different listings across another four unique websites. And after scrolling and screen recording different ads that I saw for about four weeks,

We ended up finding 54 different ads from 32 different websites. Now, scam websites or scam listings for clothing items on the internet aren’t exactly anything new. We are all aware of the now very old what I ordered versus what I got in the mail meme,

But I had never seen such a concentrated tidal wave of scam listings from different websites, all using the same images and clips. So I decided let’s buy a couple of these bad boys and see what actually ends up at our doorstep. And out of all of the floral corset sundress listings

That we saw, two others stuck out to me to buy. One was this dress from a website called Infec. Now, nothing in the ad for Infec really stuck out. The ad seemed pretty much identical to the many other ads we had seen with text at the bottom

That said, where to buy fire dress under $5. There’s also a goat at the end, which is kind of cute, but the price certainly was an anomaly. On all of the other websites we saw, the dress was listed for about 20 to $40. Sorry, actually, the price was usually listed

As being originally anywhere from 60 to $130. But almost every single website had the dress on sale, usually for an in quote limited time only for about 30 bucks. But Infec was selling it for 3.99. In fact, it seemed like most of the inventory of their website was on sale for 3.99,

Which instantly made me curious. The general quality of all of these dresses was certainly still up in the air. But how could this brand be selling what would ostensibly be the exact same dress for about 10% of the price? Was it made of paper? Was it going to be Barbie sized?

Was it going to give me hives? All possibilities. So I purchased the Rose Print Bustier Sundress from Infec as our second dress. The other listing that stood out amongst the many was from this company called Viola & Lewis. Now this one caught my attention originally because it seemed a little more legit.

The ad was simple and featured just one model wearing the dress with some music behind it. My online shopping instincts were that simpler ads featuring fewer shots were more legit than ads with a bunch of clips chopped up together and lots of arrows and text on screen.

And when I clicked into the website, it looked pretty clean overall, the model and the listing photos matched the model in the ad, and the price was notably much higher. So I for a split second thought, this might be the original dress that all the other companies were trying to copy.

It isn’t, and I will talk more about that in a bit, but at the time I thought it might be. So I purchased the Carlotta Floral Sundress for $65. So we had three different scam dresses to compare and contrast against each other purchased and ostensibly heading our way. Now, I have asserted

That these websites are scam websites a couple of times, which might sound like a harsh term. And I do concede that a lot of what I’m saying here is conjecture. But I feel like most people here will agree that at the very least, someone out of these 32 different companies

Is probably lying about something. But after doing a deep dive into all of the screen recordings that we gathered, I found some pretty compelling evidence to back up my claims. So here are my receipts, if you will. So on the softer side, there are some general indications

To me that these websites are questionable. Like there are some typos that just make them seem hastily or shoddily put together. And bizarre claims like that their dress is one of Oprah’s favorite sundresses. I have no idea where that came from. And some just write publications names in a row in the hopes

That you won’t notice that they’re missing the as seen in part like this website, My Comfy Blouse just wrote Vogue, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan. My favorite part about this is that they keep going, claiming their dress was also featured on the BBC. No, actually I think they’re trying to say one

Of their payment methods is the BBC. And some of these websites seem like they’re barely websites like for one of our ads that we found posted by the account Sun Dress. After clicking into the site, I realized that it didn’t have an actual name or URL, like the URL was

Just a generic Shopify generated default one. And there were only a couple of other products on the entire website. Besides our Sun Dress, there were three separate listings for the same shapewear dress and one listing for a curly Bob Wig with no photos, almost as if the dress listing

Was never meant to be navigated to from anywhere else, but directly from a TikTok ad. And they’re just hoping you don’t try and explore the rest of the site. And then on TikTok itself, I mentioned earlier that most of the accounts that posted these ads

Were either just company names or generic product names, but there were a few that I found that were posted by actual TikTok accounts that you could click on. Here we have Kate Rose, Nicole Perry and Julia Claire. But when you get to their actual TikTok page,

You can tell that these aren’t actually people, even though they have people’s images in their profile pictures, all of their videos just cycle through different random ad videos for viral TikTok products. – TikTok made me buy this eyebrow pen, and I do not regret it.

– [Woman] This is a must have for all iPad owners – [Safiya] Like that pheromone perfume or the shapewear swimsuit or that damn lace up sticky bra that’s been floating around the internet for like eight years. – Why don’t me go from this to this?

– So it seems like they are like shell accounts for these types of websites that sell these products, hoping they can fly under the radar as influencers doing a sponsored post. Even some of the comments on these posts are just other shell accounts. So those things are all fishy,

But the more damning evidence comes from tracking down the people who appear in all these different marketing materials. So of over 90 people that we tracked who appeared in these ads or on these websites, we were able to identify 36 of them. And of those 36, 32 of them indicated

That they were actually wearing this dress. The Carmen Rose Print Bustier Sundress from the House of CB, which goes for $225. It seems like most of these people are fashion creators or just people who got the House of CB dress, wore it in a video,

And then their image was stolen many times over. Like this is Richelle Zhang who posted a short try-on video with the House of CB dress on her TikTok, which was then stolen and used at least 29 times in these ads and on these websites. This creator is Rhiannon

Whose video wearing the House of CB dress was used 13 times. Here we have Essie Dennis, whose videos were used 10 times. This trio is a musical group, JJM, whose video is recut as a gif and used on different websites at least 16 times. This is Bunni whose video was used 18 times.

And this is Victoria Shaz whose video was cut up and used in a variety of ways, at least 36 different times with the audio track from her video used as a voiceover in 19 different ads. – I’m obsessed I will be wearing this all summer,

All summer, all summer, all summer, all summer, all summer, all summer, all summer, all summer, all summer. – And these two are Mia Ortiz and Rona Mahal, who are both Ford models hired by the House of CB for their original listing photos and marketing materials.

In fact, of the four creators we were able to identify who were not wearing a House of CB dress, three of them specified that they were wearing an Amazon Dupe of the House of CB Dress. Amazon Dupe are a whole other kin of worms I know.

But we were able to check the exact Amazon listings they linked and they seem to have nothing to do with the websites that we found, and one was identified as wearing a commenced dupe of the House of CB dress. So once again, not a dress from any of the websites we encountered.

So I think that implies that these websites are not showing you a single image of the product that they are actually selling. So even if the dress they’re selling is almost exactly as good as the House of CB dress, it’s not pictured here because oh yeah, these reviews down here

That sometimes have pictures, it doesn’t seem like those are real either. Of the over 100 reviews in our screen recordings that contained images, 51 of those contained an image that was seen across multiple websites attached to different names each time. We were actually able to identify some of these people too.

Like this creator’s real name is Christine Tran Ferguson. And her image is featured across 11 different websites where she has identified as Agatha, Sam, Teresa and Sandra. And following a lead from one of the reviews that said, I don’t usually buy dupes off of Amazon,

We were able to find that a whole bunch of these images that look more like traditional customer review images were stolen from the review section of an Amazon dupe listing. So these images may be of a House of CB dupe dress, but not one from these companies.

Now, I understand that the existence of dupes of popular products is probably inevitable, but I think it’s troubling that so much of the material on these websites is straight up stolen and that there are no verified images of the actual product that these websites are selling. If they were going to use images

Of the original House of CB dress at all, I would expect for them to maybe show it next to their dress to show how good of a dupe they were actually selling. And not only is that concerning for the potential customers who might encounter these ads, but these companies are also stealing videos

And images from people who were not paid to appear in these ads, did not consent to appear in these ads, and actively do not want to be in these ads. For example, Lucy Dawson is a TikTok fashion creator whose videos appear in five different ads that we found.

– Only did these brands not pay me for the usage of my content or ask if they could use it. This is a dress that I bought with my own money to review for my fuller bust girlies from House of CB. – [Safiya] And she rightfully made the assertion that

Because of her appearance in these ads against her will, it seems like she’s promoting these products when she has no affiliation with these companies and has no idea about the quality of the products they’re selling. – I know for a fun fact that anyone who orders from these websites

Either isn’t gonna get anything show up on their doorstep or they’re gonna get something absolutely rubbish show up. And then what happens? It looks like I recommended you guys terrible product. – And I do wanna circle back to the idea that these are not just random videos

That are being posted by these accounts. These are sponsored posts. So TikTok is accepting money from these companies in exchange for placement in potential customers’ feeds. I’m not necessarily implying that TikTok knows that these companies are doing these things while they’re accepting that money,

But they may be turning a bit of a blind eye. In fact, Victoria Shaz has said in a video on her TikTok account that she is not happy that she’s featured in these advertisements and that she is contacted TikTok multiple times about her content being stolen. – Here’s my problem.

I’ve reported all of these videos, I have reported dozens on TikTok, I have reported dozens on Instagram and the platforms are doing nothing and I don’t know what to do. – So it seems like TikTok is just letting it slide and Instagram as well.

I’m not trying to let Instagram off the hook here, I just wasn’t aware this was happening over there too. Okay, so those are my receipts. I think that was pretty exhaustive, but this video sort of turned into an onion. We just kept finding more ads and more inconsistencies.

But I guess the question now is what’s next? First off, I think the only thing we can do is buy the original House of CB dress and try it on next to our three dupes that we purchased to see how they measure up. So that will be like our good control dress.

The second thing I think we should do is try and see if we can find a bad control dress. Now this is just a theory people, but my hypothesis is that these companies are reselling or doing some form of drop shipping with really low quality, cheap versions of this dress,

Which is why they refuse to show any of their own listing images. And though I certainly don’t know where these dresses would be coming from, I thought they might be coming from somewhere like Alibaba, which if you don’t know, is like the wholesale version of AliExpress,

Where you can buy cheap fast fashion type products like watches, suitcases, shark slippers, and dresses in the hundreds and thousands of units. And after very little effort, we found multiple listings for these types of dresses featuring a surprise, some of the same listing photos as the House of CB dress,

As well as a video or two that looked eerily similar to some of the TikToks we had been seeing. Now, unfortunately, because of the nature of Alibaba being like a wholesale website, you mostly can’t buy just like one or two dresses. So even though it wasn’t a perfect test,

I figured we could buy a version of this dress from AliExpress, the like consumer facing version of Alibaba to see if that dress was similar or the same quality as the other dupe dresses we had bought. And after finding a bunch of listings for what looked like our dress on AliExpress,

We decided to buy this one, 2023 Best Sale Print Bustier Sundress Summer Pure Color Fashion High-end Suspender Dress Women French Style for $11. So with that, yes, all of that, we finally have five of these same dress for us to try on and compare and see exactly

Where on the real versus fake spectrum they slot. So the next time you see me, I’ll have my haul. Alright, so it’s been a while and I have now all of my packages. You will notice however, that I only have four packages, not five, because Infec never came.

Now I suspected that these dresses would take a while to come in, but we did give Infect a fair amount of time as we placed our order on June 15th, and we filmed our unboxing in October, but yep, never came. So we did in fact get scammed out of $4 for the dress.

I bought a backup dress, so $8 plus $7 for shipping. So 15 bucks. Additionally, Infec seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet. So I couldn’t ask them any questions or reorder the dress even if I wanted to because the site is now gone.

I guess I mean that’s sort of like part of the test, right? We bought a dress for $4. The result was we got no dress, there was no dress. They came, they took 18.97 and they left. But without further ado, let’s open the dresses we actually have.

Starting with our control, the House of CB dress. – The real thing. – The actual dress, the dress, the dress in all the pictures. Ooh. – [Tyler] That was a nice box. – [Safiya] This is a nice box. – [Tyler] Look at the ribbon. – So that’s what that lump was.

Now, House of CB is a legitimate reputable brand, so we’re not really here to judge the quality of this dress. We’re here to judge other dresses against this one. I mean it, I think it looks nice. The fabric is nice and thick for sure. It is definitely an expensive product,

But based on my quick touch, it does feel pretty high quality. It kind of surprised me how satiny and sturdy it felt, especially for a sundress. Maybe that’s because it’s like almost like supposed to be like a hot shapewear, but it’s supposed to like cinch you in.

– Right. – You know what I mean? – [Tyler] Yeah. Don’t forget the cinching. – [Safiya] I do Tyler. On the back here, see the famous corset ties. – [Tyler] It is famous at this point. – They’re pretty famous. The dress is also lined, which gives it some serious heft,

If you do like the electronics test- – Right. – Like there’s some weight to this fabric. You know what I mean? So overall it feels pretty luxury and swishy. Okay, ready? – Yeah. – I’m doing the TikTok thing. Okay? – [Tyler] Yeah. In real life. – Can you tell?

And there’s also some boning in the front of the bodice to add to the cinching action. Yeah, I’m feeling cinched, I’m feeling supported. Okay, so now let’s see how the other dresses measure up. This is our control. Here she is. – [Tyler] Scientific method, meet TikTok ads. – Is this science? Alright, so next up is our LarRobe dress. Drum roll please. Let’s see what this looks like. I’m like nervous. I’m like scared. I’m like my heart’s racing. Okay, ready? And right off the bat, this one looked wrong. (laughs) Okay, now I double checked because this had me doubting myself.

But we did order the pink floral dress from LarRobe, but I did not get the pink. I didn’t get the pink. And the pink did not come. Now when we do videos like this, I usually do order like two of the dresses we’re reviewing to have a backup size in case one of them doesn’t fit. And usually I gloss over or don’t really show the second size, but I got two completely different dresses.

So I think we should open both of ’em. One of which seemed to be the navy version of the dress and one which seemed to be the jade version. Oh, the fabric is very thin immediately. Not scratchy necessarily, but like sort of, is powdery the right word like dry. It feels very dry.

Now I think we can safely say that regardless of the color, this dress is not that similar to the House of CB dress. It is way lighter, way lighter. There’s no lining at all. There is no structure to the cups whatsoever. And drum roll please. There are no corset straps in the back.

– Damn. – Zero, none. – [Tyler] That’s an anime betrayal. – No, no straps. No straps. Now I wouldn’t say LarRobe’s ads fixated on the straps the most out of all of the ads we saw. But there are corset ties on the dresses in the ads here and on their website here.

So that’s pretty bad. Can you believe that? – If there’s no straps, you send it back. But to who? – To who? To where? (both laughing) Just launch it into space, launch it to the edge of space on Tom Scott’s weather balloon. And on the body you can tell there’s no boning

And the fabric is kind of floppy. I’m certainly deprived of cinching action. – Pretty flossy. – Pretty flossy. Also interesting to note that the cups are here, but my boobs are here. Also, this second dress was not the navy version of our sundress, but rather it’s black and a completely different dress.

– What (beep) is that? – Actually it looks like a dress that I might wear. It’s literally a completely random v-neck maxi sheath dress. So I don’t even know how to evaluate this. – [Tyler] How do you think that compares to the House to CB dress? – But I’m pretty sure I’m losing. Alright, so next up is Viola & Lewis, our expensive dupe dress, shall we? So right off the bat, this dress did seem to be the colorway that I ordered. Pink floral. So that was a first test passed, but even though there were pink flowers on it,

They didn’t look quite as nice as the House of CB ones did. As you can tell immediately, it doesn’t really match, but it’s in the ballpark, I guess. And once out of the bag, it didn’t feel quite as nice either. It feels pretty similar to the LarRobe material.

It’s thin, it’s a little stretchy, it’s not lined. And drum roll please. – [Tyler] Does it corset? – No. – [Tyler] Son of pitches. – I think LarRobe sending us the completely wrong color, kind of impeded our ability to say that the Viola & Lewis dress was the same as the LarRobe one, but they are markedly similar. Like the cut of the dress is basically the same.

– [Tyler] Congratulations, it’s Grandpa Joe’s wife’s bed gown, right? (Safiya laughing) It’s kind of bucket. – I was about to like be like, her name is this, but I realize I have no idea what grandpa Joe’s wife’s name is. I dunno grandma Joe. I don’t know.

Another thing to note is that just like Infec, sometime in between us ordering our dress and now the Viola & Lewis website vanished without a trace. We did at least get our dress. But clearly Viola & Lewis either always planned to disappear after a few months or they had gotten enough complaints

That whoever operated it just decided to move on. But regardless, I think we can safely say that this dress is not the same as the one that we saw in the advertisements. I thought I was buying the same dress. These are all completely different dresses. – [Tyler] Click bait, dude.

– [Safiya] I click baited. Yeah, I did. So next up was our bad control, the AliExpress dress, which upon first glance coming out of the bag actually seemed like it might be nicer than the other two do at least in terms of how it looked. This pattern looks more similar, doesn’t it?

– [Tyler] It does actually. It’s the same like size of flower. – The fabric certainly wasn’t as nice to the touch as the House of CB dress. It still feels thin. It does feel thin, but it does not feel any worse than the other two dresses that we bought for 36.99 and $65.

And once again, drum roll please. – [Tyler] Is it corseted? – No. – Oh, damn. – Wait, hold on. These are the drawstrings, those are not corset ties. No, it’s not. Now based on the fact that the pink floral pattern on the AliExpress and Viola & Lewis dresses were so different,

I don’t think we can say that our AliExpress dress is the same as our other dresses, but the fabric and cut are very similar across all three. – [Tyler] Once again, it’s very bucket. – You mean like it’s like a 90. – Yeah. – What you’re trying to say. – Okay. (both laughing)

Now taking a closer look at our AliExpress listing that we purchased from, though their listing photos were certainly stolen pictures from House of CB, they actually very subtly photoshopped the back of the dress to no longer have the corset ties, which I didn’t notice when I purchased it.

And had I noticed, I probably would’ve tried to find one with the corset ties. I’m once again corsetless. But that bizarrely means that AliExpress, which is a company that I never want to get within a mile of endorsing, was the most honest out of all of these dupe listings. Wow.

Now obviously I can’t speak to the dresses of all 32 different companies that we found. Based on looking around AliExpress and Alibaba, it does seem like there may have been some of these dup dresses that did have corset ties in the back.

And I almost wish I had bought even more of these dresses to test a larger sample size. But based on the ones that we did receive, I think we can safely say that these dup dresses were all about AliExpress level, cheap, fast fashion quality,

And did not get close to emulating the House of CB dress. Like I said earlier, the existence of dupes of popular products is probably inevitable. And though I agree that dupes in general are a whole other can of worms, my current bone to pick is not with dupes like the commence dress

Or some of these Amazon ones, as long as they are actually showing you images of the product they’re selling and are not fabricating reviews or stealing other people’s content and images to advertise. But the dupe/scam companies, like the ones we found on TikTok are just false advertising,

Showing you one thing, a stolen thing at that, tricking you into buying it based on what you were shown and then delivering you something different. And let’s be honest, a lot worse. Now, I’m not saying you should go start shopping at AliExpress, there are a lot of reasons

To not buy from cheap, fast fashion websites like Temu, Wish, Shein or AliExpress. There are concerns of item quality, unethical workplace conditions, environmental concerns amongst many others. But if you still choose to shop on one of those sites, at least you have some idea of what you’re getting into.

Someone who would never choose to shop at a site like that shouldn’t be tricked into paying $65 for a product that is really just an $11 AliExpress dress. And these dupe companies are even going as far as saying that they are carbon neutral or sustainable when they most likely are not.

But the great TikTok corset sundress scam of 2023 came and went. It is now November, and I no longer see ads for these companies or these dresses on my feed, but this story is far from over as these companies seem to either move on or they disappear

And new companies and websites spring up and start flooding our feeds with a new product. A few weeks ago I saw a huge wave of different ads for dupes of a Levi’s denim jumpsuit. And recently I’ve been seeing a ton of ads for rip-off versions of a SKIMS lounge set.

So I guess my question is, what can be done to stop the scam tsunami? Now getting ahold of or tracking down these companies is pretty difficult, TikTok’s about this ad page didn’t give me any leads whenever I clicked on it. Nor did I find much info on these companies on the websites themselves.

So it seems like the solution is that TikTok needs to vet who is advertising on their platform more thoroughly. But as Victoria Shaz said, she reported dozens of these ads across TikTok and Instagram and they didn’t really seem to care. Now, I’m not saying all this because I hate TikTok. I like TikTok.

I make videos on TikTok and I know that there are plenty of legitimate companies that do advertise on TikTok, but there is also a free booting and content stealing problem across TikTok that the platform generally just seems to let slide, which really crosses a line when companies steal people’s videos and use them

To advertise their products in sponsored posts, whether it be scam companies who steal Rochelle Zhang’s content to advertise their knockoff products or even legitimate brands like Steven Madden who steal market pliers likeness to endorse their boots in a sponsored ad. – This right here is my favorite thing ever

In the history of forever. – [Safiya] Because it’s a meme and that’s just what you do on TikTok, I guess. – I think about this every day. I think about this all night long. – And yes, I know for a fact that Mark wasn’t asked if they could use his likeness

Because I asked him and he didn’t know anything about it. So I guess until the platforms themselves cracked down on these ads and advertisers, the solution is just buyer beware. If you smell something fishy in an internet ad, do not buy it. Or you too may get duped by the dupes.

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