But how can you show them that you bought an overpriced shirt made by a child in Bangladesh?

Trick yourself out until you look like a NASCAR

My thoughts exactly. I stopped wearing conspicuously branded products when I was in highschool for this very reason.

The irony is that this is often true. I have always preferred shirts that have minimal advertising on them (preferably none, but a dime sized insignia is generally the best you get) but they are notably harder to find and when you do, they are more expensive. The happy medium I have found is looking for used Polo type shirts that were expensive when new, which I can generally find cheaply because collars aren’t a popular look these days.

Yeah, that’s why I won’t wear stuff like that

Now, there’s the adjacent, but not the same thing of band shirts or similar merchandise. The difference is that in theory, the band/artist is going to benefit from the purchase. It is still advertising that I’m paying for, but, because merchandise is often a big income stream for musicians in particular, I don’t object to being their billboard if I like them enough to get anything of theirs in the first place.

When it’s a clothing company? Hell no. If their label/logo is more than the size of a tag, I’m not doing it. I don’t mind the idea of a trademark/label/tag being present, that’s expected. It’s when the branding becomes the design that it’s a problem.

Every so often, I am willing to pay to advertise.

I just bought a shirt with a vintage PBS logo from the 1980s, which I did not buy from PBS since they aren’t selling it, but I would have paid to advertise PBS from a PBS store if they sold it with the 1980s logo.

So yeah, I pay to advertise public television- and public radio, since I really need an NPR shirt as well. We also give them money every year. And we get back really excellent journalism, so it’s worth it.

Now Nike? Fuck Nike. I’d never wear their fucking swoosh.

Conspicuous consumption

In sociology and in economics, the term conspicuous consumption describes and explains the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality, price, or in greater quantity than practical. In 1899, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption to explain the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury commodities (goods and services) specifically as a public display of economic power—the income and the accumulated wealth—of the buyer. To the conspicuous consumer, the public display of discretionary income is an economic means of either attaining or of maintaining a given social status.

This results in what may be known as Veblen goods, for which the demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve.

The bougie love advertising for free! You know how many yeti stickers I see on cars? It’s a fucking ice chest…

I admit I buy T-shirts at micro-breweries. I do support those that I actually buy. Additionally, it helps me keep record of my journey of visiting many breweries.

I’ve even turned some of my collection into a king sized quilt and a lap quilt. So, my shirts are very useful in more ways than one.

I even take the badges off my car. Nobody needs to know what brand I have.

No no you should get paid to wear them

I used to say this a cynical teen lol I still believe it, just don’t care to talk about it anymore

that’s why I don’t like buying t-shirt with brand logos on, I feel like companies are using me as means to reach out to new customers

This is true to a point. Once you go past brands Ralph Lauren, Gucci, or Versace to the “real” expensive brands, they become understated again. For example, this $555 blue T-shirt

I go pretty far to my way to make sure my branded t-shirts are from small to mid-sized online content creators that I enjoy. It works out because they usually put a lot of effort into making sure their stuff is unique