from the Watercooler:

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I love those so called ‘genuine’ things that so obv aren’t. I bought a Genuine US Army Water Bottle when I was in my teens. It was plastic with a cloth casing which had KOREA stamped on it. Then when I actually took it on a trip and put some water in it, the word KOREA transcribed to be in water based ink and smudged on the fabric.

And then when I was in Jordan a guy named Ali whom I hired a horse from tried to sell me a ‘genuine Roman coin’ which was just a stone he’d carved a face on!!!

— MarkH, February 16th, 2007.

i bought bootlegs of the tintern abbey and syndicats ‘crawdaddy simone’ 45s

I used to live in Hong Kong, where people would buy fake designer goods down The Lanes all the time. I think I’ve still got a couple of broken fake Rolexes in an old jewellery box somewhere.

The only time I have ever been duped into buying something fake was when I was on a weekend trip to Macau with some friends, and I won some money at the casino. I immediately went to one of the jeweller’s shops in the casino complex, and bought myself a gold bracelet, but within a week or so all the gold colour had worn off it to reveal it as some awful fake tat. I was really upset and had intended to give it to a policeman friend of mine to take back and complain about it next time he went to Macau, but in the end I never bothered and just threw it into Hong Kong harbour in disgust instead.

....and a fish wears it to this day.

I once bought a nicely packaged and obviously NOT FAKE boxset of the Leone/Eastwood spaghetti Western trilogy on VHS from Greenwich Market. Every tape finished 10 minutes before the film ended.

Also Diesel trainers from eBay that were a REAL BARGAIN that looked really nice but fell apart within two months.

i am wearing a fake prada shirt.

There was this girl who said her name was Patti, but it turned out to be “Gaye”.

WTF is this, lying season or something???

I love those so called ‘genuine’ things that so obv aren’t.

I get irrationally annoyed by advertising-speak that goes overboard with “subjective” terms like this. The 99-cent bottom-shelf tomato sauce is not “gourmet.” There is no reason to pretend it us, unless you are actually trying to make your customers feel bad about having to buy lying crap.

I live in Malaysia—bootlegged DVDs/CDs galore. I also have a couple of fake Coach and Gucci handbags that look pretty real until you look inside at the crappy lining.