Saw this before the original post, which feels correct

No disrespect to the very different and significantly cooler Santa Monica transmission line practical.engineering/blog/2021/9/...

Essentially, retailers are pushing dropshipped fast-fashion garbage, and ad-space-sellers have flooded search results with pages of random and irrelevant misinformation, all perfectly search-optimized to drown out any real, useful websites. Today, I will not be buying pants after all.

3) When searching to see if the brand was still in business, I found another AI-generated website full of information about the brand’s legacy. This site alleged that the brand’s main retailer partnership ended a few years ago, but that products could still be found at a linked website: the fake one

2) Another top result was for a website that seemed to match the brand I wanted, but the site contained no actual shop section. Instead, it had dozens of product category pages with AI-generated product photos and descriptions. The company address misspelled its city name. Fake website? Maybe.

1) Top results when searching the brand name appeared to link the brand’s sales pages on Walmart and Amazon. However, clicking those links opened pages that had nothing to do with the brand. Searching those sites for the brand produced random other sellers’ products.

When I tell you I’ve had that song stuck in my head all week