*Afterthoughts & Addenda* *Cat Flower SEO* - You're right, nobody should think those could possibly real, but consider: _Those product listings are probably clickbait_ - maybe the scammer has no intention of selling cat flower seeds, but all the people who click on the cat flower seed ad, out of curiosity, boredom or in order to laugh at it, are creating a pattern of traffic to the seller's website, and that traffic helps the site rise in search engine rankings and the like. *You Should Have Waited To Publish if You Wanted To Really Prove There Are No Blue Sunflowers* - No. The scam was happening while it is Spring in the northern hemisphere; the appropriate time for the scam warning is *always* ASAP. The results of the sunflower trial will be published in exactly the same timescale as they would have been if I waited to publish this video, but if I waited, the scam would no longer be happening for this year. You don't wait for your entire house to burn down before calling out the emergency services. This video wasn't really about _proving I am right_ - it's about discussing a type of scam, but on the subject of 'proof', this way is more scientific anyway - I have published my hypothesis in this video; the experiment is now underway; the results will prove or disprove it - I think the former but whatever happens, I can't go back and conveniently change the hypothesis published in this timestamped uploaded video to fit the actual results. *Crossing Borders* - it's probably not the best idea to even buy seeds from this sort of market, where they are almost certainly being flown or shipped in from who-knows-where; there are phytosanitary regulations about what sort of plant material you should and should not import, and I imagine these sellers completely ignore that.
@nefertitimontoya
4 ай бұрын
Would be cool to see a control test of regular sunflower seeds beside them
@Hacete
4 ай бұрын
Thanks for the video. My parents fell for a similar trick by a Chinese seller that promised them exotic flower seeds but sent them tomato seeds instead :(
@LucyWoIf
3 ай бұрын
People saying you have to proof the sunflowers arent blue are just trolls, you prove it in the video already
@kospingtan
3 ай бұрын
Why did you leave a tip?
@AtomicShrimp
3 ай бұрын
@@kospingtan I didn't. 10:12
@hmfoden
5 ай бұрын
Ugghhh I had a coworker who believed the blue coleus thing. I told him it was a fake picture, don’t order it. He ordered it anyways and basically treated me like I was the idiot. He got seeds, rubbed it in that it clearly “ wasn’t a scam” , and proceeded to grow some lovely…. Chinese cabbage 😂😂😂.
@Gloomdrake
4 ай бұрын
Did he back down after that or double down?
@Static-Static
4 ай бұрын
Surprised he got seeds at all
@poisonouspotato1
4 ай бұрын
Confidently wrong, serves him right
@fandroid6491
4 ай бұрын
They GREW chinese cabbage!
@howdyEB
4 ай бұрын
My neighbor thinks I'm stupid because I told him I am growing purple tomatoes created in a lab. I bought them online, 20 dollars for 10 seeds. I can't wait to give him some. It's actually real though🤣.
@gemstone108
5 ай бұрын
Those cute animal flowers would just freak me out if they were real. Like, how terrifying would they be when they start to wilt???
@Jake28
5 ай бұрын
jojo plant
@your_uncle_barry_6700
5 ай бұрын
There are some flowers that look a lot like birds. Unless they were ai or photoshopped. But I think they were real 😂
@iamjustkiwi
5 ай бұрын
I'm astounded that anyone would even find them cute, they fall DIRECTLY into the uncanny valley to me and make me feel a bit queasy
@desu38
5 ай бұрын
these snapdragons hit different lol
@patricialavery8270
5 ай бұрын
There is a thing called "cat face orchid" but it looks like an owl to me.
@MattRose30000
5 ай бұрын
"...but they MIGHT be blue!" if there were such a thing as genuine natural blue sunflowers, Instagram would be FULL of it.
@myusualnickwastaken
2 ай бұрын
One problem is that Facebook IS full of them (if Facebook has pegged you as being interested in AI-generated blue sunflowers)
@umrayquazashinyapareceu1672
2 ай бұрын
Unfortunate how there are no true blue flowers (not in deep blue shades anyway), since they would look absolutelly sick.
@FreeRadicals305
2 ай бұрын
Everyone of those pics are stock photos that, if searched, have identical pics in every color of the rainbow. . . . even rainbow colored : Q
@FallingPicturesProductions
14 күн бұрын
Don't worry, with AI instragram will be full of them in about two years.
@giulliadellasara1887
9 күн бұрын
@@umrayquazashinyapareceu1672 There are genuinely deep blue flowers with insane colors, but they are usually tiny or rare. Many flowers of the genus Veronica have bright, dark blue color, my favorite is Veronica syriaca, aka Syrian speedwell. The flowers look like paintings, but they are SO SMALL. Like you can put one on your pinky fingernail. Another blue blue flower that I love is Centaurea cyanus aka cornflower. It's gorgeously blue and very easy to grow. If you live in Europe, feel free to plant them in your garden! And possibly the weirdest blue flower is jade vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys). The color of this flower is surreal bright teal blue and flower stalks are purple. It's endemic to Philippines. (I'm a botanist, so I could talk about this forever, so here's a few other blue flowers you may like: Nigella damascena - love in the mist; Myosotis species - forget me nots; blue hydrangeas; blue delphinium and many many more)
@DanteTorn
5 ай бұрын
I appreciate how you make a point to repeatedly state that florists selling dyed flowers are legitimate so that people who pigeonhole these things don't start leveling scam accusations at them. This sort of consideration is too rare.
@gabrielleengel7476
5 ай бұрын
I had a phase where I bought a lot of seeds from Wish because I was just so curious what would grow. The results were mixed, but I did get a random six feet tall tomato plant.
@Nevernamed
4 ай бұрын
I mean, if it was just wasting money to see what would actually happen, I'd say a giant tomato plant is a win.
@tenyearsinthejoint1
3 ай бұрын
But they didn't grow cat heads?. Aww man...
@girlkisser
3 ай бұрын
@@tenyearsinthejoint1 no way yakuzer reference
@bitterlemonboy
6 күн бұрын
This is how you introduce invasive plants
@JamesChurchill3
5 ай бұрын
Im just waiting for my spaghetti tree to sprout, I planted it next to my money tree though so maybe they've strangled each other.
@gedreillyhomestead6926
5 ай бұрын
Might be under the shoe tree. 😂
@RichardWatt
5 ай бұрын
My brain: *The Good Word starts playing*
@oz_jones
5 ай бұрын
This is a cromulent conment
@gedreillyhomestead6926
5 ай бұрын
@@oz_jones 😂 excellent. Was the 'Conment' intentional ? It definitely goes along with cromulent and this vid. 👍
@wanderer7755
5 ай бұрын
Only 5.99 plus shipping!
@ledzep331
5 ай бұрын
My invisible orchid seeds I bought for £20 are looking exactly as described. I really can't see them!
@oneoflokis
5 ай бұрын
The emperor's new orchids? 🙂
@plumjet09
5 ай бұрын
Lucky, they just sent me regular ol’ orchid seeds.
@Crudely-Drawn-Cupcake
5 ай бұрын
Maybe you didn’t water them enough.
@jackelewish1568
4 ай бұрын
"_Meat eating orchids forgive no one just yet."_
@dieseldragon6756
4 ай бұрын
Sounds a bit like the old wardrobe of a Chinese Emperor I picked up for a _Steal_ at just £99,- (Including shipping)... 😉
@redsable6119
5 ай бұрын
Places like Amazon they get thousands of "this is a scam" reviews and you report the shit out of the listing but Amazon won't take the listing down. GRRRR!
@mdb45424
5 ай бұрын
Useally by the time amazon does the page get converted
@mr.x2567
5 ай бұрын
Then don’t buy anything from Amazon and encourage others to do the same.
@Boogie_the_cat
5 ай бұрын
@@mdb45424I'm pretty sure Amazon doesn't ever do anything. Last time I got scammed on there I told the Amazon customer service person that instead of a refund, I'd rather them force the seller to put the correct specs on the product page. The rep told me: sellers are in full control of their product pages, and we don't have the power to make them alter the page info. As to how true or false that is... Who knows. Either way, they knew the product was lying about the specs, they don't care because they get 30% of all sales. The page is still up, selling a "100 watt" USB C cable that clearly says "33 watt" on the cable itself. Sigh
@kristin7146
5 ай бұрын
I have noticed that they recently added a note on some items that says "frequently returned item," so that's something I guess. But they allow sellers to fight negative reviews way too easily and sometimes not post them - I had a seller claim my review was violating guidelines when it wasn't and Amazon refused to post it.
@spamh0g
5 ай бұрын
I reported some impossible plants on Amazon and they honestly did not care.
@BronzeDragon133
5 ай бұрын
Fun fact--there actually is a Blue Boy dahlia (not rose), but it's a lavender-purple. It's a fun dahlia that's featured year after year in my garden here and it should grow beautifully through most of the US and UK (it will need lifting and storage in any place where the soil freezes for winter). "Black" dahlia are even rarer (really a deep, dark red-almost-black). If you really want cats in your garden, plant cat mint, cat grass, or other items that cats love. You'll attract plenty.
@Ensign_games
5 ай бұрын
thank you for the slightly usefull gardening tip even though I don't do gardening.
@BronzeDragon133
5 ай бұрын
@@Ensign_games Try it, you'll like it!
@Ensign_games
5 ай бұрын
@@BronzeDragon133 ye who doesn't like a kitty in their garden
@skeNGk
5 ай бұрын
I'll have to look for it! Blue is my favorite color and as you know is rare in many flowers. I had good luck with dahlias last year, just some plain simple yellow ones I grew from seeds I got on Amazon. I almost bought one of those dark goth dahlias from Eden Bros (I think it was them) for this year, chose the Pooh (red and yellow like the bear) instead.
@BronzeDragon133
5 ай бұрын
@@skeNGk Try ageratum; Hawaii blue, blue mink, or any of the other blue cultivars. They're true-blue and, treated well, blossom all season long on small bushy plants. While full sun to part sun is acceptable, I find that full sun produces the best plants and best color. Mine explode all season long on wide, short bushy plants that can reach 12"-16" across, but I tend to feed a lot. Collect the puffy seed balls at the end of the season, store in an envelope, and seed generously in April of the following year for free ageratum. The seeds are tiny, black, dustlike particles. Delphinium (gorgeous, but a short season bloomer), some Clemaits (a bit leggy and tall, but sometimes a repeat bloomer) and morning glory (invasive) can also be true blue, but I prefer things that bloom longer and don't try to take over.
@gothica64
5 ай бұрын
To obtain blue roses, you will need: 1 Nintendo Switch, 1 Animal Crossing New Horizons cartridge. Within the game, buy several rose seeds of red, yellow and white, follow the instructions found on any number of helpful KZitem videos, and with a lot of hard work (and maybe some time travelling) you too can have blue roses. 😀
@TheLobsterCopter5000
5 ай бұрын
Don't even need that. Flower hybrids existed as early as Wild World, so you can just run one of the older games on emulator and get your blue roses.
@RejectedInch
5 ай бұрын
that's right! So is for the money tree. :D
@akpsyche1299
5 ай бұрын
As a bonus, this method also comes with Animal Crossing.
@AppleIPie
5 ай бұрын
Doing that was one of my favorite parts of that game. Finally getting a possible crop of carrier red roses and testing them out for having the wrong genotype, multiwatering them with friends, finally getting blues... Good times
@MuzikBike
5 ай бұрын
Playing Minecraft Pocket Edition from 2011 to 2013 yields a comparable result.
@Nokaret
5 ай бұрын
In a few months you should write a complaint to the seller: you grew the seeds, but they don't look like blue sunflowers at all and more like kittens 😁
@socalgal714
5 ай бұрын
And sign it, the soul called Mr Barrister John Warosa 🤣
@dirremoire
5 ай бұрын
Excellent. Be sure to send then photo proof and offer to return the remaining seeds for postage reimbursement and a reasonable handling charge of say, $25.00.
@ChesterManfred
5 ай бұрын
And also, post their address so we can pay a "visit" to the cat flowers
@picahudsoniaunflocked5426
4 ай бұрын
@@ChesterManfred The drop shippers are passive income dumdums, not necessarily the people heading the scam. They may or may not know or care they get paid to ship scam products. The addresses of the real scammers are concealed bc they hire these middlemen. I believe passive income is a scam of its own & shouldn't exist, as is drop-shipping, but those are other issues beyond the scope of the current discussion.
@bobmcguffin5706
17 күн бұрын
Monica Flange: I wanted blue to match my recently hatched blue mice, but they all turned out looking like cats. They're scaring the mice!
@craftykit2242
5 ай бұрын
I remember the seed scams for blue watermelon or blue strawberries, they where pretty clearly fake if you knew enough about botany and image editing, but with ai generated images these scams are just getting worse. I feel bad for the less savvy people who don’t know what to look out for
@shanara99
5 ай бұрын
An important factor you didn't mention, Atomic Shrimp, is that seeds are HEAVILLY regulated as imports/exports, requiring an especial permit to do so. "To import plants and other items in the high-priority category, you will need to obtain a phytosanitary certificate." claims the UK government. So, of course, ANY "international vendor" of seeds is going to require an accomplice in the country of destination, which is why yours got to you from Birmingham, since they cannot sell them to you internationally.
@sarahstrong7174
5 ай бұрын
My Blue Moon rose is pretty close to blue, with a lilac tinge which I like.
@pattheplanter
5 ай бұрын
Most seeds (except common British crops) are in the Low Risk category, though from outside the EU this will still need a Phytosanitary Certificate. The Government have just decided to continue pretending we are in the EU forever with import of Low Risk category seeds. Though they are looking into not bothering for most seeds from the rest of the world, as most will not carry dangerous pests and diseases. And customs are overworked as it is. Growing plants are a far more serious risk, unless aseptically grown like some orchids in test tubes. There is another scam of pretending to have rarely available seeds for low prices in huge lists of improbable offers and just sending any old rubbish. My Blue Moon rose was lilac tending to periwinkle but the flowers hated full sun and seldom lasted long, so I had to get rid of it.
@hiddenshadow2105
5 ай бұрын
It could be that the scammmers just buy the seeds from the nearby of order and reap massive markup. That shop in Birmingham could be under the impression somebody really wanted just their plain sunflower seeds. I am surprised that Mr. Atomic Shrimp didn't investigate that shop and how legit it was.
@DjDolHaus86
5 ай бұрын
This is also why the price of certain exotic plants has gone through the roof in recent years
@KrazyKuul111
5 ай бұрын
@@hiddenshadow2105 That looked like a warehouse to me. I imagine if you try calling it, they can't help you with any of those questions. All they do is receive and send out. But I guess it is possible they may be able to provide some useful information to help understand this all better.
@splendidcolors
5 ай бұрын
My mother got a rose seedling as a "free gift" from her bank back in the day (1960s?). It was NOT a rooted cutting--it was a seedling. Probably culled by a rose breeder and nearly free to the bank. It grew into a miniature rose with tiny leaves, blooms about 2.5" (5 cm) across similar to Cecile Bruner except vivid magenta with white at the base of each petal and an incredible scent. It grew well as cuttings, and I still kick myself for not bringing cuttings when someone bought the duplex we lived in (mid 1980s). The blue roses, sunflowers, strawberries are obvious to you--and the hue rotation is obvious to me from learning Lightroom & Photoshop.
@Amy_the_Lizard
5 ай бұрын
My mom had a similar situation with a rose. She'd bought this fancy pale grayish purple rose (she no longer remembers it's name - this went down in the late 80s) that had been grafted onto some hardier rootstock rose. After planting it, the fancy part died, but the rootstock lived on. My mom has migraines, and one of the reasons she'd selected that specific fancy rose was that you had to lean really close to smell it, so she didn't need to worry about being bombarded by rose smell and getting a migraine every time she went near that end of the house. Since the rootstock was a complete unknown, that might not be the case with it. And thus began her campaign to kill the rose bush. First she dosed it with weed killer, then when they failed she tried several more weedkillers. After those failed, she poured bioling water on it. When that also failed, she cut the whole thing down, then buried it under rocks. When that also failed, she resigned herself to the fact that the mysterious rootstock rose (which she dubbed "Old Thorny") was apparently equipped to survive environmental disasters beyond her ability to produce. A little less than a year after her final attempt at killing it, the rose bloomed. Luckily, it turned out to be only moderately stronger smelling than the fancy rose, as most people need to be within a foot of the flowers to smell anything (I'm a freak, do I can snell it from 3 feet away, but it's by no means a strong smell). Because it turned out to not hurt her, my mom stopped trying to kill it, and eventually renamed it Old Faithful. Appearance wise, it has very dark leaves, and is tall, leggy, and sprawling, as if it decided to grow a bunch of thick flexible stalks instead of forming a bush. It's flowers are slightly larger than a silver dollar, and have fewer petals than most roses, but are a deep pink color that darkens to almost black as they age, which paired with the dark leaves makes quite the display. Do not approach it on windy says though - the stalks whip around but rarely break, and the thorns HURT if one of them smacks you. It's most recent accomplishments include when a parasitic vine started trying to grow on it, and the rose somehow killed the vine. We don't know how, but it fits with Old Faithful's track record. It also seems to have produced a small child with more petals and a paler color, but the same leaves and sprawling growth habit - which is why we initially mistook it for just another stalk until it started blooming. It has yet to be seen whether it posses the same refusal to die as its parent. We believe the other parent to be the Julia Child rose we got a few years ago, as that would explain the lighter color and increased number of petals
@annamossity8879
4 ай бұрын
@@Amy_the_LizardSounds like the Florida Rose root stock, small flowers, less petals, leggy, faint if any smell and heat tolerant.
@picahudsoniaunflocked5426
4 ай бұрын
Oooh! You just made me realize if I taught my artistic Mom some Photoshop basics, she'd prob learn to see scams from seeing what's possible just pottering around the program. Thanks!
@bristolrovers27
5 ай бұрын
Fortunately I never fall for a scam, although my banana, apple and rose all in one tree seed is struggling to germinate 😂
@kensmith5694
5 ай бұрын
You have to use the special plant food.
@L0rdOfThePies
5 ай бұрын
Amateur mistake. You have to send the seller another 20 quid for it to work
@niceguy191
5 ай бұрын
You can buy some fruit trees that produce a few different fruit. The difference is they are going to be an already decent sized tree with branches from other trees grafted onto it, not something that can be done from seed and only with varieties that are botanically compatible for grafting.
@MxchiefMaykr
5 ай бұрын
@@niceguy191stone fruit and citrus are great for this! You can graft different varieties of cherry together pretty easily, and have trees that produce multiple different citrus fruits. It's mostly just based in how closely related they are, if they can successfully cross-pollinate each other they can generally be grafted
@Essiggurke-r2h
4 ай бұрын
actually you can graft trees, alot is possible with plants that would be insane to do in animals. you cant get it as seeds though
@Locutus
5 ай бұрын
When I was growing up, there used to be a shop called Horseplay, and they sold gifts that would be appropriate for the name. Stinkbombs, novelty gifts, etc. They even sold "special seeds", where it would sprout an attractive man or woman if you plant it. The seed packets had instructions and pictures of the results. These seeds remind me of these.
@Ensign_games
5 ай бұрын
*insert homosexual botany joke here*
@iKadaj
4 ай бұрын
named "horseplay" followed by "gifts appropriate for the name" had me thinking of bondage and bdsm first, equestrian supplies second, and then you reveal it's actually stinkbombs and gag gifts lmao
@Locutus
4 ай бұрын
@@iKadaj Yes, gaggifts were the word I was looking for! Thank you!
@dieseldragon6756
4 ай бұрын
The difference between what Horseplay sold and what these DropScamShippers are selling is that Horseplay only took a small amount of money for these, and the seeds themselves were labelled as British origin Cress. Either way, you at least wound up with something tasty you could put in a sandwich. 😋 Having me pay 50p for a false promise of a handsome man in my life but a fresh and healthy sandwich filling: Reasonably OK. Having me pay £50, for a false promise of „unique“ plants that will make my social media blow up? Probably not...
@Locutus
4 ай бұрын
@@dieseldragon6756 Of course there is a difference between what Horseplay seeds would sell, and these scam seeds. When people bought Horseplay seeds, people didn't really expect a gorgeous person to sprout from the seeds. The packaging clearly said and showed you what you would get if you grew them. I doubt many did. It was a novelty gift. 🙂 With these scam seeds, we don't know what we would get!
@bartrainer3916
5 ай бұрын
I bought black sunflower seeds. It worked, at night.
@danielrhymes4593
5 ай бұрын
Ahah, that watermelon one threw me way back to 2012 - it was a big misinformation joke on Tumblr that there was a rare variety of watermelon that was bright blue - and it's THE SAME IMAGE.
@KyleRDent
5 ай бұрын
I'm absolutely not a plant person at all, so I can admit that I could see myself falling for blue roses. The face ones not so much, but only because I know the signs for AI / editing.
@Jenna2k
5 ай бұрын
Same. My line of thinking would be that other flowers are naturally blue so why not? Obviously that sounds really not smart when typed out but people don't question every single thing they ever think. Not something that not important at least.
@Luigicat11
5 ай бұрын
@@Jenna2k That is a good point, though. I know _that_ roses, even when genetically engineered to be blue, can be a pale lilac at bluest (I read Wikipedia about it long before I watched this video), but I wonder _why_ genetic engineers haven't managed to get roses that are actually blue, since it's so easy for other kinds of flowers.
@eightcoins4401
5 ай бұрын
Even without knowing the signs of AI editing you can tell the cat flowers cant be real
@Luigicat11
5 ай бұрын
@@eightcoins4401 MFs tryna sell SCP-1513 seeds as though they were real.
@blinkingbat7447
5 ай бұрын
@@Luigicat11 Oh I might be able to answer this one! Simply: It's too expensive. I'm from a town in the Netherlands which is really big on flower export (yes it's a lot of tulips but also other flowers). These days specifically rose growers are struggling a lot, there's not the same demand for roses as years ago. There's no money for them to invest in an expensive, experimental project that might not even see the light of day. Especially since blue plant dye exists and is a lot more straightforward. Like look at 'Hoven & de Mooij' and look at their painted flower selection, it's all dye beside the glitter and wax ones. To be fair the rainbow ones are a trade secret as to how they do it exactly, they're the only company in the world that know how to, but a uniform color is just buying the specifically made dye and following instructions
@x948
4 ай бұрын
An anime I watched recently called "The Apothecary Diaries" actually had artificial blue roses as a plot point in one section. An antagonist character gave the mc the task of growing him blue roses since he knew it was impossible, but she took the challenge and used the dyeing method, in order to complete it. (Super good show btw, I highly highly recommend)
@bcostin
5 ай бұрын
Thank you for encouraging patience and sympathy toward the victims of these scams. It's not that those people are dumb, it's that they're naive or uninformed. They might just expect Facebook or Amazon to review their ads and product listings and aggressively police fraud; which is not really unreasonable given the world most of us grew up in.
@AtomicShrimp
5 ай бұрын
I think that blaming scam victims, apart from adding insult to injury, is bad because it just drives a wedge between people and honest information about the scams. People are getting scammed because they're too timid to ask if it's a scam, for fear of being mocked.
@kg6801
5 ай бұрын
@@AtomicShrimpAnother problem is there are many "amazing/interesting" etc "photograph" pages on Facebook that churn out a lot of fake images, including these you've shown, repeatedly, and if anyone mentions they're AI or photoshopped or fake, even in response to someone asking in the comments, they're jumped on in various ways for pointing that out (often posting the policy that using such words in the comments flags their page or something and causes problems with FB). Often people do a basic search and of course find the pictures everywhere including these scam sellers, some take that as proof of reality and counter people trying to call out the fake stuff, and I'm sure some people who are very interested in them being real would then get drawn in to ordering them, or at least sharing the sites to others who might. I'm becoming increasingly suspicious that this may be the purpose of some of these "photo" sites because often that whole circus just seems a bit dodgy, though I can also see how many people would just post random odd stuff innocently. I would've thought they'd be keen for people not to be potentially scammed due to the images they put up, but many are pretty nasty about it including shaming people with a screenshot showing that the "complainer" hasn't posted anything even though that may not be required to be in the group, threatening to kick people out, and calling it virtue signalling, when all many people are trying to do is just stop people potentially being scammed. It seems many, many people aren't able to tell that even some of the quite obvious stuff isn't real, and it's understandable that there are a lot of reasons for that, but being unable to help is pretty disheartening. If I was more internet savvy and up to it I'd consider making a page to circulate the images along with their debunks or something. I wonder how that would go. I suspect badly, but I don't know.
@Ellie-rx3jt
5 ай бұрын
Whereas in reality you can report adverts to Facebook that have 50+% of comments saying they've had their money taken and nothing sent, and they'll sent back a message saying that the advert doesn't go against their policies 😒
@pastelpurpledeathbed
5 ай бұрын
its a bit more fin to laugh at them though
@tsm688
5 ай бұрын
Shady ads always existed in cheap dodgy places like comic books and the national enquirer. No, you cannot truly obtain a spider monkey for fifteen bucks. But the dodgy ads are everywhere now. There's no barrier to entry for any ad. KZitem is just giving them the fuck away apparently.
@customsongmaker
5 ай бұрын
Several years ago, a woman told me she had ordered those rainbow rose seeds. I explained to her that those roses require the stem to be split 3 ways, with different dye absorbed by each of the 3 segments of the stem. She didn't believe me.
@Meanie010
5 ай бұрын
Your aside about the garden center made me think, maybe you can do an anti-video to this, where you explore some of the amazing possibilities to be found in regular, off-the-shelf seeds, like purple carrots, ornamental corn, and other wacky but real seed options.
@splendidcolors
5 ай бұрын
The multicolor corn (normal corn colors like yellow, white, deep red, deep blue) is where Barbara McClintock discovered transposons, the "jumping genes", and won a Nobel Prize.
@Farimira
5 ай бұрын
Where I live there seems to only be predominantly one company that sell seeds in stores and you have to go online for any of the many things they don't sell.
@kwarra-an
5 ай бұрын
@@splendidcolorsI love it when seemingly "humble" things lead to such incredible discoveries. I feel the same way about a common local frog species, the platanna (Xenopus), which was the first vertebrate to be cloned and won John Gurdon a Nobel Prize.
@hedgehog3180
5 ай бұрын
@@kwarra-an A lot of antibiotica is derrived from bacteria that just lives in regular soil, university labs would literally just go outside and dig up a bit of the front lawn to find new anitbiotica. Nature is really strange and diverse even in the places we don't expect, hell we're still constantly discovering new and weird stuff on the human body itself.
@foxgloved8922
5 ай бұрын
@@kwarra-anfun fact about Xenopus: in the 30s-50s there was a common (and legit) pregnancy test which was done by injecting the urine of the suspected pregnant person under the frog’s skin and if they were indeed pregnant it would cause the frog to ovulate. This is because of the presence of hCG hormone.
@solistheonegod
5 ай бұрын
They look like magic sunflower seeds to me, pretty sure they’ll grow into a sunflower stalk and you can climb it to the golden goose
@adamrak7560
5 ай бұрын
But are they blue?Magic or not, if they are not blue it is a scam. Maybe we should ask the golden goose?
@dieseldragon6756
4 ай бұрын
Doesn't matter how „Magic“ they are, their rate of growth will *never* outpace that of British inflation... 🎈🇬🇧😉
@Aaa-vp6ug
3 ай бұрын
Assuming the aeroplanes didn’t hit it first.
@dieseldragon6756
3 ай бұрын
@@Aaa-vp6ug I wonder if magic beanstalks come with TCAS?... 🙃
@Aengus42
4 ай бұрын
I found "Egyptian Walking Onion Seeds" on eBay. Now, the genetic mutation that makes these onions "walk" is that the flowers don't produce seeds, they make bulbils instead (really tiny onions) and its5tge weight of these bulbils that make the flower stalks fall over and the bulbils grow where they land. Thus "walking" across your garden. I reported them via eBay on Twitter. Listing taken down. Although the seller had sold nearly 200 packets!
@wendypeterwendywendy
4 ай бұрын
Coincidentally, I reported just such a scam on Amazon recently. The seller used the cat picture as the appetiser. Then, when you looked at the rest of the pics they eventually showed clover growing in an untidy pot. Surprisingly, lots of the cat flowers had been sold despite having only one star. That Amazon allowed the scam is really bad.
@dominicharvey6048
5 ай бұрын
£7.99 delivery for something that is as small as a seed packet? There's no way they are paying that much for shipping.
@the_newt_nest
5 ай бұрын
That's probably where they're making their money
@AtomicShrimp
5 ай бұрын
It's possible that the shipping might not be refunded so readily as the item cost
@CaptainPupu
5 ай бұрын
I had a webshop on Etsy. I used to sell rare seeds of Hungarian vegetables such as Kalocsai pepper ( which is used to make thr famous Hungarian paprika of Szeged) etc. Shipping was in just an envelope with a stamp so cheap for me, free for the customer. Albeit, they couldn't track, but it always arrived. Even on the rare occasion they asked me to fast ship, i didnt pay more than 2-3$ for a faster shipping, so charhing 8$ for it is ridiculous.
@DiamondCake2
5 ай бұрын
They also asked for a tip 😂😂😂😂 what the hell?
@dominicharvey6048
5 ай бұрын
@mikeirwin2183 Haha, I didn't even see that 😅
@the-inatorinator
4 ай бұрын
Another great tip for spotting scams is looking at the pictures. If every listing has the exact same product image, or if some listings look like an entirely different product, it's probably an altered photo and likely a scam/misleading product (or at least VERY low quality and not worth your effort).
@katdrexed
2 ай бұрын
we have a special tree in our garden that grows sausages but only between 12 - 13 o'clock on a Sunday
@RhizomaticAssemblage
5 ай бұрын
The use of 'I can tell from the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time' has flung me back to 2010, when that meme was everywhere. Classic stuff from the Shrimp
@dieseldragon6756
4 ай бұрын
Sadly: Come 2030 the presence of super-high-res images and greater capacity for AI processing will eliminate JPEG corruption as a tell-tale sign of a doctored image... 😥
@cafes5610
5 ай бұрын
Damn, that's like the worst kind of scam because growing is flower is like 10% initial investment into seeds and then 90% energy spent to grow it. Usually when someone gets scammed a scammer just takes 100% of the value, but here they take 10% and 90% is just...gone Basically a scammer is hurting the scamee way more than they are enriching themselves
@Ensign_games
5 ай бұрын
that is indeed true and all of my bottany experience was just growing a single watermelon plant and it took a lot of time
@ingeleonora-denouden6222
5 ай бұрын
I remember this kind of lies were already told before there were online shops. In the past the blue roses a.a. were in ads in newspapers and magazines.
@AtomicShrimp
5 ай бұрын
Yeah, there were seed catalogues that used to have heavily edited imagery. Bakker was one of them.
@ingeleonora-denouden6222
5 ай бұрын
@@AtomicShrimp Exactly! (I wasn't sure if Bakker was known in England, but it sure was here in the Netherlands)
@tsm688
5 ай бұрын
mailorder scans have existed for as long as mailorder. It's a pretty obvious kind of scam to do. Free money!
@MsQjoe
5 ай бұрын
I really appreciate your work here. You give thorough, well considered explanations, you don't assign blame to those that are peripheral to the scam and you give a great breakdown of the different layers. I helped to create a website designed to teach seniors about scams, so it's a topic close to my heart, and this is great work.
@MsQjoe
5 ай бұрын
I also just reported a bunch of these shops on Etsy for selling fake products. Maybe a few listings will get taken down ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@valid_sound_and_furious961
5 ай бұрын
I can understand people believing blue roses or sunflowers are possible, but HOW do people send money to someone claiming to have bred a flower with the face of a monkey with FULL ON DOLL EYES? How??
@Rei-Rei
5 ай бұрын
Scam I've noticed recently is getting SMS messages telling me that I have a package to be delivered but it has somehow been damaged and they can't read the address, so they want me to click on this entirely innocent link and give them my address. Which leaves me wondering how they have my phone number to contact me but not the address that goes with it, particularly since I think with most places I would receive packages from it would be the other way around. And could they not just contact the place they are supposedly delivering for? I think they might have the address they sent the package to. I was almost fooled the first time I saw this, but did some checking to see if it was a known scam, and it was. I find I am a much less trusting individual these days.
@FadedHeroFound
5 ай бұрын
I've gotten that a few times
@Marestea_
5 ай бұрын
I'm pretty sure its the same format that scammers use in call scams. They would try random numbers in the hopes that its used by someone and that the person would fall for their trick. Good thing you did your research though!
@mr.personalspace7831
5 ай бұрын
Well, it's cheaper to send out thousands of text messages asking for info than thousands of letters to the same respective physical addresses. They just cast a broad net- send the same message to big chunks of phone numbers at once and hope they snag at least one person who will follow that link.
@AlissaSss23
5 ай бұрын
I got that years ago about having to pay £2,50 for a Royal Mail parcel's delivery. Every time I tried it jumped at £200 😮
@AlissaSss23
5 ай бұрын
Watch out for calls from "Revolut", your bank and also HMRC!
@HolldollMcG
5 ай бұрын
Thank you for always having a compassionate, empathetic, and humble attitude towards scam victims. You're right, no one knows everything, and scams come in all varieties. Anyone can be targeted and fooled of the right scammer comes along and targets a vulnerability or area of uncertainty/inexperience.
@AtomicShrimp
5 ай бұрын
It's not always easy - because sometimes, things that other people believe seem so obviously wrong, and our human nature compels us to point and laugh, but it's much more useful to point the finger the other way and consider: is there something else that *I am prone to doing*, which seems as wrong as this, to other people?
@iKadaj
4 ай бұрын
thus the moral of the story is the same as "write what you know" for authors: only buy stuff that you actually know what you're buying. if you have to buy something you're unfamiliar with, the internet is way too broadly available and accessible to use ignorance as an excuse, go google it.
@FukaiKokoro
3 ай бұрын
It's getting extremely scary and concerning what people are falling for. Before I could understand. But people are falling for clearly fake things. The amount of comments I've seen that are extremely concerning that somebody thinks what they are seeing is real and not staged is terrifying
@iluv_nana
5 ай бұрын
Those cat face flowers are the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen, how does AI make things look so uncanny?
@Ensign_games
5 ай бұрын
In really short their code is wired to make pixels look a certain way around other pixels which can result in uncanny results.
@Galerak1
5 ай бұрын
I can see a follow up video opportunity here, something along the lines of "... and after nearly 12 months these are the lovely multicoloured sunflowers those seeds produced". Of course, this would have to be a video that gets posted at the very very very beginning of April next year 😉
@catsmother4556
5 ай бұрын
As a gardener, all being well, the sunflowers should flower this summer late July into August 🌻
@official-obama
5 ай бұрын
he owns davinci resolve, he has demonstrated the ability to make a fake video, he should just recolor them blue (with lots of yellow objects in the scene)
@derrmeister
5 ай бұрын
13:09 you failed to mention Eva's knowledge as a professional tax collector though
@jadeceridwen93
5 ай бұрын
"One with the snows of yesteryear" is a beautiful phrase
@jadeceridwen93
5 ай бұрын
and the when pigs fly visual joke at the end is inspired
@axellycan5070
4 ай бұрын
I really like that you went through to make sure people don't fall for the self-flattery of intelligence, I feel like that's such an important aspect of not falling into traps more than anything else.
@ruthiewitter569
5 ай бұрын
Content aside, (which is incredibly well researched and tested from what i can see), your editing is lovely. It makes me smile and it’s very interesting. Thank you for making these videos.
@keprince6590
5 ай бұрын
Those seed packet displays have also gone crazy in price. I have packets from 5-10 years ago, that were $0.20, and now are $2.99, $3.75 etc. Some really insane inflation and price gouging, especially since they most likely reduced the amount given as well.
@wakefieldallan
5 ай бұрын
Yeah I was shocked! This year the wife and I decided to grow a garden and bought some seeds cause some things cannot be bought from seedlings and we started kinda late, also we learned some things don't transplant well like carrots. Holy cow those packages were expensive. 4 dollars for 20 ish seeds. The peas, tomatollos, and some flowers were ridiculously priced as well being 3.25. the last time we had a garden seeds were around a buck. Stagflation is a b*tch.
@cosmicpeaches
5 ай бұрын
I work at a garden center! And I will tell everyone most local garden centers will not sell you product we don’t know or trust. We will never sell invasive species and only buy from reputable sources! Also it’s always just nice to support your local garden center!
@minimumsky5
5 ай бұрын
For those who like to say "but who could could fall for that?" I'd like to raise my hand up as a possible victim. I'm a university grad in my 20's, who grew up on an internet surrounded by scams and bad actors, and so I can identify some of the warning signs of common scams, but I'm very new to gardening (just 3 windowsills of pots at the moment), and so lack the knowledge needed to avoid some of these. Sure, I would have seen that the animal faced flowers are clearly fake, but I'd also have said that the corrected image of the Begonia was also fake, and I didn't know that blue roses or sunflowers were impossible, or that roses were never sold as seeds. The more convincing rose images might well have caught me. I also just bought a packet of blue flower seeds ironically today, but it was from my local Asda so I think I'm safe!
@Ella-iv1fk
5 ай бұрын
There are so many wonderful blue flowers out there so what a weird thing to bother faking! I hope your windowsill blooms spectacularly
@bethenecampbell6463
5 ай бұрын
Blue poppies are real. They are grown at garden near me called Lakewold. I think they're native to the Himalayas.
@PhyllisGlassup2TheBrim
5 ай бұрын
And that's the problem. You grew up believing that knowledge was to be found online. Had you bought some cheap books, all the charity shops have gardening books, or borrowed from the library, or even talked to some old people, you'd have learned. I have younger friends who come to me for advice on gardening and animals as those are what I know about. Oh and cooking, baking, making sweeties. I work on the principle that knowledge is worthless until I pass it to someone who needs it. There are also lots of great gardening magazines available in any supermarket, or websites like RHS, and Facebook groups. There's *loads* of information to be had. Sadly, younger people think that doing research is too hard, too much effort. In internet connected world, ignorance is a choice.
@michaelold6695
5 ай бұрын
Good for you to have the humility to realize that you might get scammed. And the courage to share that with all of us
@mechadeka
5 ай бұрын
@@PhyllisGlassup2TheBrim You think a book has never been wrong? lol
@beccacoleman498
Ай бұрын
I recently found a shop on Etsy selling supposed crochet patterns for numerous amigarumi things...but the photos were sooooo perfect, that when i looked closer at this picture that had "crochet hooks" in the background, what i saw was a wooden handle and then a tapering metal section that ended in a round ball ontop, not a hook. That led me down the rabbit hole of AI generated images. There was quite the number of poor sods who actually ordered from the shop, some putting in something like 75 dollars, just to receive a half written pattern to make a flat rectangle, or a randome pdf to print out that turned out to be someone's backside or a very grainy image of the mona lisa or whatever. Be careful out there people
@AtomicShrimp
Ай бұрын
Yeah, AI generated garbage is flooding a lot of online marketplaces now; this week's Friday video is going to be about fake AI-created foraging books on sale on Amazon (which contain 'information' that could lead to someone getting poisoned)
@kensmith5694
5 ай бұрын
I was growing some blue sunflowers but my pet unicorn ate them all. If there wasn't the "NO GMO" thing then someone may be able to make a blue sunflower but that would cost massively and I don't see much return on it being likely unlike Canola Oil or the Ruby Grapefruit. **** What is below is incorrect read the correcting comment below *** Ruby Grapefruit is a bit of an interesting story because it was made by irradiating a massive number of grapefruits and growing fields full of them and then selecting the mutant that they liked. Fortunately in the process they didn't make trees that eat people or anything like that.
@techheck3358
5 ай бұрын
Self defence tree sounds interesting though…. 👀
@kwarra-an
5 ай бұрын
Yeah, I feel like the stupid "non-GMO" label makes it a lot LESS believable. In another life, I might see blue "GMO" sunflower seeds for sale and think, "well, they do have those crazy-looking GMO tetra fish, so maybe...?"
@lorscarbonferrite6964
5 ай бұрын
Yep, the practice is called atomic gardening, and is still used today, albeit to a much lesser degree due to modern genetic modification techniques subsuming much of its utility. Interestingly enough, plant varieties made through atomic gardening (or other methods of intentional mutagen exposure) are not actually considered GMOs from both a technical and legal perspective, since no genetic engineering is involved in their creation.
@ixchelkali
5 ай бұрын
Your story about Ruby grapefruit has wandered so far from the facts that's it's inaccurate. Both Ruby (and its Redblush cousins) and Star Ruby grapefruits started as natural sports on lower branches of trees which had suffered from a hard freeze the previous year. Ruby was from a Thompson tree frozen in 1929 and like the Thompson was naturally seedless. It was very popular. Star Ruby was a sport on a Foster tree which froze back in the early 1930s. It was very seedy (40-60 seeds) so it wasn't grown commercially. But in 1959, Texas A&I Citrus Center irradiated a bunch of seeds to see if they could make it sterile; that is, seedless. Which they did. A seedling from one of the irradiated seeds was named the Star Ruby and was put into commercial production in 1971. But then there was a problem with some 65,000 unpermitted and diseased trees being shipped to Florida, infected with ringspot, which had to be destroyed. They finally tracked down the infected budwood, and in 1977, healthy, permitted trees were finally put into production. The Star Ruby pulp and juice are more intensely red and sweeter than the Ruby or Ruby Red.
@kensmith5694
5 ай бұрын
@@ixchelkali It seems you are correct. I will edit my coment
@etaoinshrdlu927
5 ай бұрын
If Narrator Shrimp is from the future, why is his beard not longer? Also he should have a cool robot eyeball; that's how the future works.
@wildblackberry9164
Ай бұрын
This reminds me of the “Sea Monkeys” I got when I was a kid, which were depicted on the ad to be underwater creatures complete with tridents and crowns. Biggest disappointment of my young life 😅
@CineMiamParis
5 ай бұрын
Side note. I’ve been buying my seeds on eBay every year for about 20 years now. There are all kinds of scammers there. So when I try a new seller, I pick one in my own country, look for reviews spanning several years, and I read all of them. I’ve been lucky so far. Why eBay, I don’t know. I spend weeks researching, online and in shops. I live in a big city where garden centers are a dime a dozen. eBay has consistently given me the best deals: local varieties, good amount, fresh seeds, clear instructions, for the best price. This year, new seller, every single seed has bloomed and my seller and I have been corresponding regularly, long after germination. Just a nice honest bloke. So of course, Mike is right. Scammers are everywhere. Even in online garden centers where they show you pictures of a 10-year-old plant to sell seedlings. Those pictures make me really angry. Gardening is not for Instagram. No blue flowers, no rainbow fruits, no magical growth in European weather. But I’ll be growing roughly half my fruit and veg this year, on a balcony in the city. For me, that’s the true magic.
@kwarra-an
5 ай бұрын
The pictures of the decade-old plants grind my gears. I've noticed it particularly in "bonsai kits" where they sell you the seeds for a tree and show a finished bonsai on the picture. The worst offender was a white cedar (Thuja occidentalis), whose picture featured a tree that must have been at least 40 years old.
@CineMiamParis
5 ай бұрын
@@kwarra-an Absolutely! I don’t do bonsai, after having murdered a couple and figured out I was having more fun with Mediterranean and tropical plants. If you do, you have my utmost respect. I grow roses, however, and I swear I recognized decades-old trees I had seen in French castle gardens on some reputable websites. I can see in some of my friends how this over promising, under delivering scheme turns off beginners who want instant results. There should be warnings, just like for food. You will not obtain that fabulous cake from this pack of dry yeast without technique, dedication and experience. Ranting, sorry. Nice to find a like-minded gardener.
@customsongmaker
5 ай бұрын
Amazon is also full of these fake seeds
@tsm688
5 ай бұрын
Ebay used to be the place to sell crap. It connected people to people without a lot of middlemen. Now ebay takes huge fees off everything, and nearly everything is a storefront for someone in china.
@iKadaj
4 ай бұрын
i never buy from less than 98% feedback, but there's a lot who constantly make new accounts when their feedback starts to drop so they may have 100% or whatever but only sold like 10 things so far, so I go for 98%+ with 1k+ sales. selecting "usa only" to eliminate all china listings wipes out about half the scammers and then you just have to sort out the "pretending to be US sellers" who always have their "US SELLER!!! AMERICAN FLAG AMERICAN FLAG AMERICAN FLAG!!!!!" on their listings (then their shipping time is 3x longer than it should be for the state they claim to be in). they also almost never show up for "used" stuff, only "brand new" things. i pretty much only buy from ebay unless i need specialty item stuff they just don't have there, but when recommending it to people i have to also mention this long list of "but do this to avoid scams" which has become a reflex for me that I don't even think about anymore, and i'm reluctant to buy from other sites (amazon, etsy, etc) because I would have to learn how to buy there the way I've already learned how to shop ebay. it's pretty ridiculous that the place I feel most confident/safe buying from requires this much education before shopping there, though I do like their buyer-protection no-questions refund policy (but even then, you have to know how to tell that the thing you got is not what they said it was in order to even file for a refund in the first place).
@multipleSpiders
5 ай бұрын
my favorite is the “Slurperon” or “Enchantress” plant, which just uses a stolen image of a sculpture of a piranha plant
@456puff
4 ай бұрын
I needed a good giggle today, thanks!
@lisanelson9979
5 ай бұрын
My wee rats saw those seeds, and wee scrabble hands on the screen. Mummy mummy I don't care about the colour. GIVE ME DA SEEDS!
@slo3442
5 ай бұрын
Lovely comment thanks for sharing
@spacemeers1511
5 ай бұрын
Give your rattie babies lots of love for us!!!
@picahudsoniaunflocked5426
4 ай бұрын
@@spacemeers1511 Tickle da ratties! Tickle da lil' fuzzballs!
@peasmehasselberg975
3 ай бұрын
🥺
@yagirlsheila7705
5 ай бұрын
I agree with what you said. Everyone can fall for a specific scam if they're not cautious enough, I've seen it happen to freelancers whose customers ask for a job without paying upfront, or even claiming to have overpaid, asking for that money to be returned and then the app will take the money since the clients account was most likely a stolen account.
@readmore8974
11 күн бұрын
Hey I really appreciate you putting the updates in the description of this video! Most youtubers wouldn't go through the trouble.
@HerRoliness
5 ай бұрын
Chiming in to say that 17track is definitely legit, I use it all the time for checking international shipments. Excellent video as always Mr Shrimp!
@fellenXD
5 ай бұрын
Yup. For international shipping, it's one of the best.
@jimbabwe3246
27 күн бұрын
Reminds me of the time I planted a milk bottle and grew a dairy cow.
@kraziecatclady
3 ай бұрын
Out of morbid curiosity just like you, I ordered some seeds that were supposedly rainbow colored roses. I ordered them off of Amazon and they weren't super expensive. They sent them out right away and I was able to track the order via amazon. They sent me seeds just like they sent you seeds. I have roses in my garden and I know what rose seeds should look like even if most people do not use them to grow roses. These seeds looked a lot like oversized greenish brown sesame seeds. I'm not sure what kind of seeds they actually are, but whatever they were, they did not grow. I also noticed not long after placing my order, Amazon started making all kinds of recommendations for all sorts of other flower seeds like the ones you showed us in this video and it was a while before they stopped doing that.
@awesomepossum4375
5 ай бұрын
It's really sad that this is happening because I seen an old woman on our Facebook garden community buy one of these scam seeds not knowing that it was a scam, and then her being confused when people were telling her that this wasn't real, the worst part about it was that the page was taken down and she couldn't get a refund after that.
@williamdeveson2673
5 ай бұрын
I feel like this is the perfect intersection of all of your work on KZitem. Love it!
@HotelPapa100
5 ай бұрын
True. I normally skip the scambaiting ones; I don't have patience for that. (Though, weirdly enough, I think scambaiting is how I discovered Mike.) But we may get a tuournesol out of this.
@bluecat2741
5 ай бұрын
I've once bought seeds for multicolor roses, because they were really cheap and I wanted to see what came out. Well, it was the ugliest yellow wild rose with more thorns than everything else 😂. Probably I'm guilty of cultivating a foreign crap plant in my garden now.
@Foundations01
5 ай бұрын
I remember seeing all these kind of fake seed listings on eBay a few years ago. One thing that concerned me is the potential for harmful or invasive plant species to be shipped from foreign countries, and then some clueless soul just wreaks havok on the local ecosystem because they don't know what they're doing 💀
@tsm688
5 ай бұрын
that sort of thing is tightly regulated. which is why they sent him bog-standard sunflower seeds from a boring warehouse in his home country.
@alexanderleuchte5132
5 ай бұрын
Another less obvious scam on ebay is selling seeds that are so old that literally none of them sprout, while everything else is doing fine under the same conditions. I fell for several packs of less common squash and pumpkin varieties three years ago and none of the flowers i also ordered sprouted either
@bazzatron9482
5 ай бұрын
Shrimp, I gotta congratulate you on your impeccable taste in vintage memes.
@jaloswaggons2182
8 күн бұрын
I just want to say thanks for educating people on all this. I just prevented my mom spending a lot of money on fake cat-themed sweaters (some ai generated/photoshop thing I think) but I noticed how much effort they put in the fake site. It had fake trustpilot reviews embedded on the site, a clean ui, a (invalid) dutch chamber of commerce registration number and a whole backstory on their brand.
@WillWilsonII
5 ай бұрын
It's almost a rite of passage for a gardener to say "Wait a minute - there's no such thing as a BLUE strawberry!"
@MetalheadAndNerd
5 ай бұрын
This was a thing on AliExpress a few years ago. They even had seeds for rainbow colored fruits amd trees that grow into the shape of a garden bench.
@williamwilshere3251
5 ай бұрын
This particular scam feels distinct from the rest. Despite the similar implementation, the idea of selling something to beginners (assuming anyone believing in the possibility of blue sunflowers is probably not a seasoned gardener), at a somewhat reasonable/affordable price point, with tracked delivery and seeds as promised, means any possible suspicion at this point of a scam can equally be dismissed as a gardening skill issue, both by the scam victim and anyone they inquire with. Love these vids, not just the 'is it a scam' question but the when, how and why analysis is very valuable.
@itsgonnabeanaurfromme
4 ай бұрын
13:34 thank you for this. These scams are so obvious for some of us but i imagine what if was my grandmother or even my mom. Being older and seeing so many new technologies that are challenging for me to understand. I probably would believe it if someone told me they were able to breed blue melons and sunflowers.
@SpookyDeerArt
5 ай бұрын
i'm unsure if it was an international issue, but at least in the USA, there was a huge problem with unverified, unlabeled seeds appearing in people's mail unmarked a few years ago. seeds, like the pined comment says, are highly regulated as invasive species can quite literally wipe out native flora and decimate the landscape for fauna. i remember countless news stories about it and requests from the government to send in all seeds recieved with unknown origins. i don't know what ever happened with it, but i have a sneaking suspicion that the seeds were being sent through amazon drop shippers hoping to get POD with cheap bulk seeds. i can't share the source of my belief for privacy reasons, but what i saw pretty much convinced me-- especially when it suddenly seemed to disappear from the media. obviously it's just a theory i have though, there might've been a regular explanation that doesn't seem as sinister.
@glenmorrison8080
5 ай бұрын
11:51 In botany we call this "glaucous" color. Whitish bluish color, usually associated with waxes of various sorts.
@manleyt6273
5 ай бұрын
There are no blue roses, there are no blue sunflowers, and there are no cat face flowers.
@skeNGk
5 ай бұрын
The cake flower is a lie 😞
@felicityc
4 ай бұрын
when Jerma had his sunflowers he said he got one of those packs where they could be any color and when one of them opened up finally, it was.. yellow with a brown striped circle pattern (basically a sunflower pattern). it had a nice pattern but I don't think he realized what happened lol
@xyztbh
5 ай бұрын
Exciting! I've noticed these ads before when I was looking for actual seeds and it's nice to see someone bringing it up!
@adamcake7
5 ай бұрын
Of all the types of content you create on this channel, I wouldn't have thought it possible for you to create a crossover between scams and gardening, yet here we are.
@Acidfunkish
5 ай бұрын
Thinking you're impervious to scams makes you more vulnerable to them. 👍🏻
@phoenixfritzinger9185
5 ай бұрын
Ah the moonmelon What a classic Over here across the pond my grandma tried to buy some blue roses from what is actually considered to be a pretty reputable gardening catalog At least she got cuttings Ended up chalking the difference in color up to the color printing in the catalog being off or the lighting in the photo of the roses being weird
@nr289
5 ай бұрын
When the gardening content and scam content combine, really interesting stuff!
@ThisHandleIsNotAvailable.
5 ай бұрын
The sheer volume of seed scams Ive seen is mind boggling. Best to go to a nursery or order online from a reputable nursery.
@arnoldmmbb
5 ай бұрын
I always hated those fake flowers or plants ads, I know they are fake but so many people fall for them
@MissusAnon
5 ай бұрын
I saw these fake seeds like even over 16 years ago when I browsed ebay as a tween for fun. I remember they were 'rainbow roses'. And there was no way to report the sellers for clear deceptive scamming really, I scoured.
@crystal4o681
4 ай бұрын
I collect rare plants, many of which come from trusted sellers on Ebay, and I can't tell you how MANY obviously fake seeds show up in my recommended, but there's nothing I can really do to report them unless I try to order them first. It's very frustrating, so I'm glad someone is trying to spread the word about it.
@jeancanestri5572
5 ай бұрын
there is a cucumber that is red on the inside here in Brazil. My father got some from a friend, and I have pickled it. When we were going to eat it, I was surprised it was red inside. After some research I have found the name of the species.
@DragonsEatTofu
5 ай бұрын
I appreciate how you always find a way to poke fun at scammers but are so respectful and compassionate towards people that are scammed. Your videos are always thoughtful and delightful. Thank you! Also cool to see that you watch fruit explorer videos. Both of your wholesome channels make the world feel more full of wonder.
@daltonwither5246
5 ай бұрын
I really like the hexagonal blur effect you used
@oliverg6864
5 ай бұрын
It's really quite satisfying when you buy stuff online from obvious scams. It's interesting to see what happens, it scratches an itch I have of wondering what happens... without having to risk my own money and personal information. Stay safe out there Mr Shrimp! How did you come up with that name by the way?
@ParuPParuu
5 ай бұрын
To be honest, I don’t really know too much about plants, but your channel seems really neat! I like your voice a ton. I listen to your stuff while I draw sometimes
@PliniusSecundus
4 ай бұрын
It amazes me that there are people out there (and not only a few) who fall for this. Especially the "Face Plants" Kinda scary for society as a whole.
@DragoNate
5 ай бұрын
I appreciate the message that ANYONE can fall for scams, it's NOT "just stup!d people." I see so much of the negative mindset. It's victim blaming, which does absolutely nothing to help anyone ever, besides the scammers in making their life miserable.
@tsm688
5 ай бұрын
I fell for a credit card scam... It could have been much worse. They lucked out when I got the idea that this must be a parcel for a friend, which of course they were 100% behind once they realized what was up. This was during the pandemic panic when shortages were everywhere and I didn't want him to miss an important shipment because they got his credit card info wrong... The friend was "the hell are you talking about" and that's $100 I'll never see again.
@DragoNate
5 ай бұрын
@@tsm688 i'm sorry to hear about that, that really s u c k s. i hope that $100 wasn't "make or break" for you. the best that can come from that situation is that you are more aware and more easily able to spick out red flags because of going through it once.
@alltherestofit8109
5 ай бұрын
This is all very odd. There are hundreds on eBay, even a green rose! It can't be good for genuine seed sellers because they will be losing business to these scammers. Charity shops are another good place to find seeds by the way. I did have to double check the blue cornflower seeds I ordered last month but as you know, blue cornflowers do exist!
@AtomicShrimp
5 ай бұрын
Yeah, I've ordered seeds for regular stuff on eBay before, but after doing the digging for this video, I had genuine problems deciding who I could trust to order from. In the end, I decided to check if a seller is *not* selling blue roses, before ordering what I want.
@bewilderbeestie
5 ай бұрын
It's not even like real seeds are expensive!
@splendidcolors
5 ай бұрын
Under the right growing conditions (cold but not freezing), some white/cream roses will express enough chlorophyll in the petals to blush a light green. It's common in Northern California coastal areas that stay mostly the same temperature day or night in the springtime. I took a nice photo of one on my patio that was cream in the center shading to chartreuse at the edges and it placed in a photo contest. But the same roses will be white or ivory in the summer when temperatures are warmer and chlorophyll is suppressed in the petals. (I guess the enzyme that tells the petals "No chlorophyll here, we need to attract bees by contrasting with the leaves!" only works properly in temperatures over 70-75F or so. (I think that's about 22C?)) However, there are true green varieties of orchids, including whatever it is that people grow in their yards in Northern CA. They're a yellowish chartreuse type of green, not an emerald or Kelly green.
@erikjohnson9223
5 ай бұрын
I think there is an unattractive mutation of Rosa chinensis that has doubled sepals and no petals, thus a green (small and leafy looking) rose, but probably they were showing white roses in a vase with green food coloring. The mutant isn't worth growing.
@tsm688
5 ай бұрын
A green rose is actually physiologically possible at least... other parts of the rose are green
@OgreRamProductions
5 ай бұрын
But can I hatch a clutch of differently colored mice from eggs? (edit: i noticed it was missing "of")
@gingernutpreacher
5 ай бұрын
Errrrr no
@dorota_rej
3 ай бұрын
0:57 animal crossing lied to us..
@xdashlydia
4 ай бұрын
11:14 I'm surprised they didn't call those implausibly rainbow-striped pastel kernels "uni-corn".
@kermitthepog7063
5 ай бұрын
17 track is legit, quite useful too.
@AdamWang19
5 ай бұрын
I actually fell for this "scam" almost a decade ago, I wanted to plant some osiria roses (you'll know it when you google a pic of one, it's the red and white rose that was everywhere on social media) and I could only find seeds. They never germinated, and I had followed the instructions to fake a winter and such. The actual flower is beautiful, but social media folks edited the photo to make it seem impossibly red/white or they change the color to some impossible combination. Now I know these roses are real, but it's incredibly hard to find a trustworthy seller to sell you either clippings for a graft or proper osiria rose seeds. I have yet to find a seller of the actual plant. (If you know of a trustworthy US seller, let me know!)
@christajennings3828
5 ай бұрын
Thanks for spreading this information. As a nursery professional, I get people asking for impossible plants they've seen online frequently.
@glenecollins
4 ай бұрын
Presumably GMO sunflowers would require a lot of testing and licensing etc because it is a potential food product. It is pretty common for people studying plants in labs to introduce different coloured or fluorescent proteins to study where specific genes get turned on so if someone unscrupulous wanted to it presumably wouldn’t be too hard to produce some of those colours into plants particularly in places without chloroplasts.
@kaymo225
5 ай бұрын
The sunflower music is a BOP
@BeTheAeroplane
5 ай бұрын
Based on the pink package you're opening at 16:55, I believe the website creators are the scammers and in this case the shipped product is real but mislabelled. This looks like something to be given out at a baby shower and the reason there's no contact info is because the people you would be contacting is the soon-to-be parents who gave them to you at the shower.
@brennab2577
4 ай бұрын
Yeah… I totally made a whole cart of peony seeds. Then read up about it and realized those Etsy shops were scams. They also had blue roses when I checked
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