RIP to the Golden Age of Beginner Crafting

It's so much easier to pick up a craft in the age of the internet. There are thousands of tutorials, great resources for troubleshooting, and an online community. You can find and buy patterns online, you can take whole video courses from your home.

That stuff is all still true, but now everything is so saturated with AI generated patterns, videos, tutorials, advice, etc, that it's easy to get confused and harder to find the good stuff. The more experienced you are, the easier it is to spot AI. If you don't have knowledge of the craft, it's easier to get duped. Etsy used to be nice to find patterns and materials. Influencer-ing has an interesting impact on crafting communities.

There was a sweet spot there for a few years in the internet age before all of that. I miss it and I feel bad for the true beginners starting out now with the internet as their main guide. You don't know how good we used to have it 💔