OpenAI's New Merch Line Is Proof that Tech Bros Are Stuck in 2022
Type “create a streetwear campaign that looks fire to people stylistically stuck in 2021 who also love tech” into an AI image generator, and the result would be the newest product drop from OpenAI’s Supply Co.
For those blissfully unaware of Supply Co., allow me to hereby apologize for ruining your day: it's the merch arm of OpenAI, a former internal apparel site for the tech company’s employees that escaped containment and has now spread into wider culture like a diarrhea-inducing lettuce.
Supply Co. recently debuted a sweaty new attempt at being cool, this time by way of a slick “photoshoot” of its new merch, which includes everything from a quarter-zip with the word “Research” in cursive to a T-shirts that (seemingly unironically) say “Good Research Takes Time” to logo-embossed ribbed socks (in Yves Klein blue, curdling any semblance of cool left in the famous hue).
I put photoshoot in quotes because, well, I’m not entirely convinced the product shots weren’t conceived by an algorithm.
They look as if an OpenAI employee came across old lookbooks from J.Crew or GAP or one of the many “cool” streetwear brands that emerged and just as quickly tanked within the past five years and didn’t realize that aping the supremely played-out Aimé Leon Dore aesthetic does not, in fact, bequeath the same qualities that made the original interesting.
This tracks, given that’s literally how AI works, but it also underscores just how dated this look is. It’s so free of personality that the end result feels supremely bland. Then again, that’s also literally how AI works.
OpenAI isn’t the only tech giant to throw its branded hat into the streetwear ring with culturally stale merch drops. Palantir made waves earlier this year with the most demonic take on the bleu de travail in the garment's history while Anthropic opened a paradoxically titled “Zero Slop Zone” pop-up in New York last year that featured a cap stitched with the word “thinking” — a play on the “thinking cap” idiom, which has the same energy as Jeb Bush asking a crowd to “please clap” after one of his bad jokes.
There’s a tad of insipid schadenfreude in major tech companies, whose entire modus operandi is predicated upon being one step ahead, failing to look anything but washed. Sure, this new round of Supply Co. merch is selling. The ChatGPT Basketball is already sold out, and other items only have one or two sizes left in stock. But popularity is not a prerequisite of quality. The aesthetic feels flat because it’s mass, not niche. And no surprise that crowds of swagless tech bros would not only find this stuff appealing, but actually swarm to cop.
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