Seed Scams. There Are No Blue Roses, Blue Sunflowers, or Cat Face Flowers

[@AtomicShrimp]

*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]

Would be cool to see a control test of regular sunflower seeds beside them

[@Hacete]

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]

People saying you have to proof the sunflowers arent blue are just trolls, you prove it in the video already

[@kospingtan]

Why did you leave a tip?

[@AtomicShrimp]

@@kospingtan I didn't. 10:12

[@gemstone108]

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]

jojo plant

[@your_uncle_barry_6700]

There are some flowers that look a lot like birds. Unless they were ai or photoshopped. But I think they were real 😂

[@iamjustkiwi]

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]

these snapdragons hit different lol

[@patricialavery8270]

There is a thing called "cat face orchid" but it looks like an owl to me.

[@eddielikesfish7114]

10:47 the blue watermelon is incredible because that screenshot is from a really old tumblr post specifically about creating weird fake types of watermelon

[@bobisnotaperson]

Oh i have to see this

[@jockohomosexual]

​@@bobisnotaperson woah I love your art . Crazy to find you in the wild small world

[@eddie-roo]

Oh, I remember the ebony dark’ness dementia raven melon with purple streaks

[@ThirdyMeowy]

STOPPP I REMEMBERE THAT ONEEE

[@existenceispain_geekthesiren]

​@@eddie-rooalexandria's genesis-ass melon

[@hmfoden]

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]

Did he back down after that or double down?

[@Destiny-wolf69]

Surprised he got seeds at all

[@poisonouspotato1]

Confidently wrong, serves him right

[@fandroid6491]

They GREW chinese cabbage!

[@howdyEB]

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🤣.

[@MattRose30000]

"...but they MIGHT be blue!" if there were such a thing as genuine natural blue sunflowers, Instagram would be FULL of it.

[@myusualnickwastaken]

One problem is that Facebook IS full of them (if Facebook has pegged you as being interested in AI-generated blue sunflowers)

[@umrayquazashinyapareceu1672]

Unfortunate how there are no true blue flowers (not in deep blue shades anyway), since they would look absolutelly sick.

[@FreeRadicals305]

Everyone of those pics are stock photos that, if searched, have identical pics in every color of the rainbow. . . . even rainbow colored : Q

[@FallingPicturesProductions]

Don't worry, with AI instragram will be full of them in about two years.

[@giulliadellasara1887]

@@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)

[@everlastle]

I work at a plant nursery and it's not uncommon we get elderly customers showing us amazon listings for tropical plants or flowers that simply don't exist. They don't get short with us, they just keep holding out hope that our information is incorrect and a different garden center will carry them, which is the saddest part. One sweet woman comes in every year with the same highly-edited aglaonema and angel-wing begonia pictures, and tells us she'll just keep waiting for us to carry them instead of accepting our honesty.

[@emmahilburn1732]

It makes me sad to hear that happens, but thank you for being honest with those customers. A lot of other people may not have taken the time to explain to them that those things don't exist and can't possibly either. I just hope that the next nursery they go to does the same thing you did, and hopefully they learn.

[@justanotheryoutubechannel]

That’s so sad, gosh… I really hate what scams like this do to people. I’m glad you’re honest and try to explain what’s actually going on.

[@Gamerkat10]

Boy, I'm going to be the most skeptical old person ever if I live that long, lol.

[@jasond.b-w]

My wife works at a nursery too, and we just watched this together. She said she’s had similar customers, and she tries to tell them in the most simple language possible, “those pictures aren’t real. Someone made those on a computer and lied about having seeds to make money.” Some people have been receptive, but others tell her you can google the flower and find other pictures, or they look too real to be ‘paintings’, or simply that no one would do that, so they must be real. AI images plastered all over Facebook with fake stories to farm engagement really aren’t helping these days, because now they have a whole backstory that also ‘must be true.’ Her aunt has lost thousands of dollars to text scams just last year alone, and she called us in a panic after falling for another one last week. She always says it has to be real because the English is good, they used her name, they said it’s from (insert major corporation she banks with here), etc. and won’t accept that scams are getting better now. She constantly shares AI photos on Facebook, forwards us emails about opportunities she’s been given, buys dangerous knockoffs on Wish because the picture showed the real brand, and so on. Even after losing so much money she still thinks it’s riskier to ignore a text from ‘the bank’ or pass up a ‘great deal’ on name brand products, than to give a stranger all her personal information or write off an amazing photo as fake. She would buy these flowers. And if she ever actually got seeds at all and they didn’t grow what she wanted, she would blame herself and try buying them again from someone else. It really is that much more heartbreaking to actually SEE the real people these scams take advantage of.

[@Jaytee1765]

I’m glad my batshit grandma hasn’t come to your nursery. She’s obsessed with proving to me that a primary red Iris exists. Nope. They’re photoshopped. She acts like I’m the one gaslighting her and she will not hear me about AI and photoshopped flowers online. 😂

[@ledzep331]

My invisible orchid seeds I bought for £20 are looking exactly as described. I really can't see them!

[@oneoflokis]

The emperor's new orchids? 🙂

[@plumjet09]

Lucky, they just sent me regular ol’ orchid seeds.

[@Crudely-Drawn-Cupcake]

Maybe you didn’t water them enough.

[@jackelewish1568]

"_Meat eating orchids forgive no one just yet."_

[@dieseldragon6756]

Sounds a bit like the old wardrobe of a Chinese Emperor I picked up for a _Steal_ at just £99,- (Including shipping)... 😉

[@JamesChurchill3]

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]

Might be under the shoe tree. 😂

[@RichardWatt]

My brain: *The Good Word starts playing*

[@oz_jones]

This is a cromulent conment

[@gedreillyhomestead6926]

@@oz_jones 😂 excellent. Was the 'Conment' intentional ? It definitely goes along with cromulent and this vid. 👍

[@wanderer7755]

Only 5.99 plus shipping!

[@redsable6119]

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]

Useally by the time amazon does the page get converted

[@mr.x2567]

Then don’t buy anything from Amazon and encourage others to do the same.

[@Boogie_the_cat]

​@@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]

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]

I reported some impossible plants on Amazon and they honestly did not care.

[@DanteTorn]

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.

[@artsyscrub3226]

It's dumb because it's something you can do at home it's a common science experiments you know how it happens and they aren't telling you that they grew like that and if they are then yeah that is a scam but usually i see thrm sold as "dyed flowers" so that doesn't seem like a scam to me

[@gabrielleengel7476]

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]

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]

But they didn't grow cat heads?. Aww man...

[@girlkisser]

​@@tenyearsinthejoint1 no way yakuzer reference

[@bitterlemonboy]

This is how you introduce invasive plants

[@rankoss3437]

@@bitterlemonboyyeah, was thinking that

[@VintageJunior]

The catface flowers remind me of those medieval/early modern illustrations by people who thought cotton plants were actual sheep with roots.

[@gildedpeahen876]

put some respect on the sheep plant, marco polo said he saw one lol

[@folkmar00]

Do you mean Vegetable Lamb of Tartary?

[@Chiaros]

@@folkmar00 What the fuck did I just witness. Now the barnacle geese don't even seem weird.

[@folkmar00]

@@Chiaros Wait, barnacle goose? .... Oh damn.

[@No_True_Scotsman]

omg have you seen the elephant ones?

[@Keovar]

6:09 - I _loathe_ that 'jiggling button' effect. It's condescending. I'm not a toddler or pet eagerly awaiting some toy or treat. Sometimes there aren't other options, but when there are, I'll do business with the vendor who shows some basic respect for their customers (and themselves). Cheap tactics like a jiggling button feel like a warning flag for a potential scam.

[@AtomicShrimp]

Yeah, I think the shopping site template/framework they use must have a variety of such features, but the scammers have switched them ALL on. Jiggly buttons, expiring special offers, expiring carts, voucher popup, 'left in cart' reminders, configured to zero seconds, asking for tips, etc. But yeah, on any non-scam website, the jiggly button would make me click away and shop somewhere else.

[@hedgehog3180]

Stuff like that is if nothing else a pretty good way to recognize anti-consumer practices that aren't worth dealing with, even if they aren't outright scams, but most of them are.

[@tomkandy]

It doesn't work on *you* but I bet they've A/B tested it and shown it works on the average customer.

[@magical571]

@@tomkandy well, this may not work on them, but nobody is inmune haha, just overlooking what they are indeed falling for.

[@Anienem]

I wonder if it’s a deliberate tactic to make the customer stressed so they’re more likely to make a rushed decision and not look at the listings too closely.

[@soniashapiro4827]

I bought 40 pounds of black oil sunflower seeds for feeding birds. I paid only slightly more than what you paid for 60 seeds.

[@TheAechBomb]

will those seeds sprout?

[@Vesper8088]

​@TheAechBomb I've actually had bird seed sprout where i live a few times, but i do think it's not really *supposed* to. it's fun to have sunflowers pop up in weird places randomly though

[@technoman9000]

@@TheAechBomb Yes they can and do sprout. The birds and squirrels don't give them much of a chance, though.

[@Emeraldwitch30]

​@TheAechBomb I often sprout my black oil sunflower seeds on purpose for my chickens in winter. Just to give them some greens in the cold season. But on the ground the birds and squirrels tend to really wipe them out. I do occasionally plant out a few handfuls of the black oil sunflower seeds they mainly grow multi bloom stems. Like one big plant with many smaller blooms. Not like the big giant headed ones. But I do cut and dry them at the end of season to toss out for the birds in winter or to my chickens.

[@johntheherbalistg8756]

​@@TheAechBomb Oh my, will they ever. Feeding my chickens has bred out my native sunflowers. They're all different, now

[@BronzeDragon133]

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]

thank you for the slightly usefull gardening tip even though I don't do gardening.

[@BronzeDragon133]

@@Ensign_games Try it, you'll like it!

[@Ensign_games]

@@BronzeDragon133 ye who doesn't like a kitty in their garden

[@skeNGk]

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]

@@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.

[@Qualia.]

A woman I work with excitedly showed me a pic on her phone from a Facebook post of these cat flowers. She was so enthralled. When I told her they were not real she wouldn't have it. She told me "Look. It says here they ARE real!" All I said is "I just don't think so but if you do, you do." I couldn't argue with her. She was convinced. Lol

[@iamfish9223]

I wish you would have helped her.. poor woman

[@Qualia.]

@@iamfish9223 I initially kept telling her they are photoshopped but she wouldn't listen. What more could I do at that point?

[@iamfish9223]

@@Qualia. You said "I just don't think so but if you do, you do."

[@Qualia.]

@@iamfish9223 I also told her it was photoshopped. She's an older lady and my co-worker. I wasn't about to give her a lecture. You'd have to understand the context and the kind of person she is. If it was anyone else I'd push harder but with her it was a lost cause. She's kinda kooky but with a lovely heart.

[@Kahhru]

@@Qualia.if she really was convinced you two could’ve bet on it. Easy hundred dollars 😂

[@gothica64]

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 KZbin videos, and with a lot of hard work (and maybe some time travelling) you too can have blue roses. 😀

[@TheLobsterCopter5000]

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]

that's right! So is for the money tree. :D

[@akpsyche1299]

As a bonus, this method also comes with Animal Crossing.

[@AppleIPie]

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]

Playing Minecraft Pocket Edition from 2011 to 2013 yields a comparable result.

[@rolfs2165]

I'm really curious what they'd send you for those clearly and obviously AI generated kitten flowers. But not curious enough to throw money at scammers.

[@mikekuppen6256]

Toe beans, obviously.

[@irregularstuff5290]

Most likely nothing. If they didn't even resolved to photoshop - I doubt that they will make any effort to mockup seed package.

[@nomms]

​@@irregularstuff5290I suspect they'd just dropship some super cheap seeds. Prevents refunds, takes a long time for flowers to bloom.

[@ChesterManfred]

Hell awaits for those who scam. But, for those who do with AI, will be met with hell, plus unbearable pain, no breaks.

[@ImNotThatOneDude]

​@@mikekuppen6256I so desperately want to make little art flower decals for the toe bean seeds and cat flowers

[@thany3]

I was thinking you might literally recieve blue sunflower seeds. I mean, sunflower seeds that are dyed blue. Should be easy for them to do, and they can then claim the product matches the literal description.

[@sarahberkner]

I think it's easier for them to just send a random pack of seeds rather than manufacturer special blue ones just for the Facebook scam

[@somethingsomething404]

I ordered. That’s what I Got. Dyed seeds.

[@kalibbailey6219]

A friend bought 8oz of tea. He received 1 serving and was told its 8oz when you add water. This was on etsy

[@dakat5131]

NICK: That's right. "Red wood." With a space in the middle. Wood that is red.

[@MeemahSN]

@@sarahberkner Literally just chuck the seeds in a vat of blue paint and boom, blue sunflower seeds.

[@johnsheppard4428]

I had a friend spend hundreds of dollars on scam seeds a few years ago. I told him when he started showing me pictures that the plants were not real, he did not believe me and classified me as overly skeptical. The worst part is that most of the seeds sprouted, but his greenhouse blew over in a storm and most of the seedlings died. He then ordered more seeds online... the second time around it was pretty clear they sent random seeds when his roses all turned into lettuce. I found it very sad that he pretty much quit gardening after that.

[@Nulldron]

Huh. I wonder if you could gift him some seedling sprouts of vegetables or something to encourage him again? Like a good pepper or tomato plant. I feel so bad he can't enjoy it because of that experience.

[@SynthiaVan]

​@@Nulldronpepper plants are great - they look fun, there are always new varieties, and you can eat em.

[@craftykit2242]

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

[@Nokaret]

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]

And sign it, the soul called Mr Barrister John Warosa 🤣

[@dirremoire]

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]

And also, post their address so we can pay a "visit" to the cat flowers

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

@@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]

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!

[@iamjustkiwi]

The edited coleus plants are especially odd because well...coleus are already amazingly colorful!

[@augustoof13]

that's exactly what I thought! they look just as beautiful as they are in nature.

[@ares395]

I wanted to say the same thing. They are really pretty, you don't get many plants that have green and red leaves and are perfectly healthy that way.

[@michaelold6695]

We need to de-stigmatize and eliminate the culture of shaming people who fall for scams. Scammers use this to protect themselves as people don’t want to admit that they have been scammed so they reduce their chances of getting their money back or prosecuting the scammers. Also just talking about it brings the scams in to the light and shows how they operate and educate people who might have fallen for the scam. Also high pressure sales use a lot of tactics that scammers do (time pressures, creating a sense of rarity etc) so talking and learning about scams can help in other aspects of commerce.

[@SlartiMarvinbartfast]

"We need to de-stigmatize and eliminate the culture of shaming people who fall for scams. " Funnilly enough the same applies to politics - look at Brexit for example and how Brexit supporters were verbally 'attacked' for their stupidity. So what did they do as a response? Simply doubled-down and made absolutely sure that they WOULD vote for the most damaging political and economic upheaval to happen to the UK for a very long time. The same happened in America when that orange child was originally voted for - his supporters just doubled and even tripled down when their 'stupidity' was called out.

[@hedgehog3180]

@@SlartiMarvinbartfast It's a bit harder to apply this to politics though since you can't just stop criticizing those you disagree with entirely, not to mention the fact that while someome falling for a scam doesn't affect me so it's easy to distance myself from someone voting for a reactionary politician does very much affect me.

[@PippetWhippet]

@@hedgehog3180You absolutely can stop criticising the people who in all likelihood want the precise same things as you - the best for them and the community they live in - and just disagree slightly as to how to achieve that. Maybe concentrate on setting out why your ideas, or the ideas you support are good.

[@notNajimi]

@@PippetWhippetthis mindset falls apart when they really don’t want the same things as you, though. I’m all for bridging an artificial political divide but there are actual disagreements here, particularly where it comes to minority rights

[@oneoflokis]

💯

[@MrMojo23100]

Roses are red as my heart bleeds. I just found out, you can't grow cats from seeds.

[@joannpelas5101]

Well if you plant catnip, you'll think you grew cats.

[@theflyingspaget]

​@@joannpelas5101can confirm, planted catnip and now have five cats who regularly visit me

[@patrickdix772]

You can also say that cats are grown from seeds, though that's usually sourced from male cats and planted in female cats.

[@complex_city]

roses are blue*

[@DeXyfero]

@@complex_citybeat me to it lol

[@ohmydinosare]

By the time we got to the middle portion there I'd found myself learning the same lesson just from watching the video, because when I saw those AI cat flowers I was straight into "scoff at anyone who thinks these super fake AI pictures are real" mode, only to then be faced with those blue sunflowers that if you hadn't pointed out and explained the problem with I think I would have been pretty accepting of those as legit. So a quite quick and humbling lesson of "obvious is not universal." I think it's useful to be reminded of that, it never hurts to be a little more understanding.

[@AtomicShrimp]

Chalk that up as a win - you have the emotional intelligence to recognise when things are outside of the limit of your knowledge - that's something everyone needs (we all have limits, but some people find it hard to admit they have them, and it's a weakness even though they think they are strong)

[@ohmydinosare]

@@AtomicShrimp Absolutely, it's never a bad thing to have a little reminder to be thoughtful and not take the existence of my own limitations for granted.

[@lost4468yt]

At least the blue is potentially feasible with modern genetic transfer.

[@ohmydinosare]

@@lost4468yt I have a really nice blue flowering plant in my front garden, not sure what type it is, but it has small flowers and they're a very vivid blue, so the notion of some flowers being impossible to get blue versions of wouldn't have occurred to me. I find blue and indigo flowers are the ones bees get most excited for.

[@shaunbarrie2263]

My wife is constantly bombarded on Facebook with ai photos of intricately decorated "cakes" that drive her crazy! So many people falling for them in the comments and praising the artistry of the "bakers". But my wife used to be a cake decorater so she has much more intimate knowledge of the art than some random average person on facebook. It's really sad how easily some people can be fooled online if they don't have knowledge of ai or cgi artwork. It's disgusting that people try to profit off of this naivety.

[@Tim.Weaver]

Misleading photos of plants pre-dates the internet - although obviously not to the extent seen in those crazy examples you showed here. Back in the seventies, when a lot of plants were bought from mail order catalogues, I remember listening to an episode of Radio 4's "Gardeners Question Time" where a grouchy old panellist (with the splendid name of Bill Sowerbutts) was warning people about the unnaturally vibrant colours seen in their photos.

[@solinus7131]

I'd be interested to see a scan of one of those catalogs

[@buckyyyb]

Omg I knew I vaguely recalled seeing something like this as a kid!

[@Ellie-rx3jt]

Yep. Even 18 odd years ago, when we moved to our current house, we ordered a lot of plants after looking through the physical catalogues sent by Sutton's, T&M etc. The number of clearly edited images was crazy. Tomato plants would have the same vine of tomatoes copy pasted multiple times to increase the apparent yield. And they regularly sold "blue roses" where the leaves were oddly blue coloured in the photo 🤦🏻‍♀️

[@tsm688]

people act like scams are some modern thing, they are definitely not, they were found aplenty in any cheap publication for a goddamn century.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

Bill Sowerbutts is truly a blessed name!

[@splendidcolors]

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]

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]

@@Amy_the_LizardSounds like the Florida Rose root stock, small flowers, less petals, leggy, faint if any smell and heat tolerant.

[@picahudsoniaunflocked5426]

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!

[@danielrhymes4593]

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.

[@customsongmaker]

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.

[@freddywondercat1362]

You ht the nail on the head with the whole "who falls for this stuff, anyways?" bit. I know many people who like plants and like to grow them but aren't anything more than a novice who would see listings like the ones shown in this video and would probably buy them in a heartbeat. THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO!!!

[@grassnake7able]

I ordered a bunch of seeds from a store called Yugenbonsai, the idea that the seeds could've been tampered or fake never even occurred to me when I had blamed myself for improperly trying to germinate that. Exceptional example of how you can potentially fall for one scam even if you are well versed in something else. I'd never consider myself likely to fall for a scam relating to computer hardware but cannot even tell if the above was or wasn't a scam. Very good video.

[@andrewwebb917]

The store seems legitimate enough- but bonsai are just tree seeds, tree seeds have a remarkably low germination rate, which is why trees have so many seeds. Regardless, you cannot get saplings for a bonsai - only for a tree. It's work that makes a bonsai, not a tree. Bonsai, along with most tree growths are usually done from cuttings. Fruit trees are unlikely to bear fruit within the first few years- up to 10, unless you grow from a cutting. It may not be an explicit scam, but it's not sold in good faith to be helpful.

[@shanara99]

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]

My Blue Moon rose is pretty close to blue, with a lilac tinge which I like.

[@pattheplanter]

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]

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]

This is also why the price of certain exotic plants has gone through the roof in recent years

[@KrazyKuul111]

@@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.

[@ticklme]

Coleus don't need photo shopping, they already look fake

[@Magical-unikitty]

Agreed

[@whatthefridge1o1]

Fr i work in a garden center and whenever i see a pretty or weird looking plant, itsa coleus!

[@SMtWalkerS]

I love coleus and their weird patterns and colors.

[@yossarian00]

I am in the aquarium / aquatic plants hobby, a very common scam along a similar line to this that I see newbies falling for often are "aquatic plant seeds" specifically advertised as "carpeting plants", that aren't ever what's advertised, or even aquatic. What ends up happening is the newbies plant them in their tanks, they germinate and grow for a little bit before starting to rot and messing up their tanks.

[@bcostin]

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]

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]

​@@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]

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]

its a bit more fin to laugh at them though

[@tsm688]

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. KZbin is just giving them the fuck away apparently.

[@Meanie010]

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]

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]

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]

​@@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]

@@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]

@@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.

[@KyleRDent]

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]

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]

@@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]

Even without knowing the signs of AI editing you can tell the cat flowers cant be real

[@Luigicat11]

@@eightcoins4401 MFs tryna sell SCP-1513 seeds as though they were real.

[@blinkingbat7447]

@@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

[@bartrainer3916]

I bought black sunflower seeds. It worked, at night.

[@antaguana]

Pretty sure the seeds were black.

[@katdrexed]

we have a special tree in our garden that grows sausages but only between 12 - 13 o'clock on a Sunday

[@cafes5610]

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]

that is indeed true and all of my bottany experience was just growing a single watermelon plant and it took a lot of time

[@bristolrovers27]

Fortunately I never fall for a scam, although my banana, apple and rose all in one tree seed is struggling to germinate 😂

[@kensmith5694]

You have to use the special plant food.

[@L0rdOfThePies]

Amateur mistake. You have to send the seller another 20 quid for it to work

[@niceguy191]

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]

​@@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]

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

[@solistheonegod]

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]

But are they blue?Magic or not, if they are not blue it is a scam. Maybe we should ask the golden goose?

[@dieseldragon6756]

Doesn't matter how „Magic“ they are, their rate of growth will *never* outpace that of British inflation... 🎈🇬🇧😉

[@Aaa-vp6ug]

Assuming the aeroplanes didn’t hit it first.

[@dieseldragon6756]

@@Aaa-vp6ug I wonder if magic beanstalks come with TCAS?... 🙃

[@beccacoleman498]

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]

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)

[@the-inatorinator]

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).

[@haleyw5677]

It’s sad to think about people trying to get into gardening and being disheartened and thinking they did something wrong because the seeds didn’t turn out how the website said they would

[@RhizomaticAssemblage]

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]

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... 😥

[@ingeleonora-denouden6222]

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]

Yeah, there were seed catalogues that used to have heavily edited imagery. Bakker was one of them.

[@ingeleonora-denouden6222]

@@AtomicShrimp Exactly! (I wasn't sure if Bakker was known in England, but it sure was here in the Netherlands)

[@tsm688]

mailorder scans have existed for as long as mailorder. It's a pretty obvious kind of scam to do. Free money!

[@wendypeterwendywendy]

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.

[@axellycan5070]

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.

[@no_no_just_no]

I'm imagining a wizard, desperately trying to get his custom flower business going, in tears of despair and confusion over why his business isn't taking off coming across your video. Are you proud of yourself Mr Shrimp? Weird wizard man has to work shifts at boohoo now!

[@mr.jitterspam9552]

Wizard can make a money tree no?

[@no_no_just_no]

@@mr.jitterspam9552 I'm pretty sure that would be illegal, not to mention bad for the economy.

[@theapexsurvivor9538]

​@@no_no_just_noyep, very illegal unless he works for certain major banks such as the federal reserve, at which point it's just called a harmless hobby...

[@sourhour3403]

Suppose that they're getting their funding from the one, singular Nigerian prince who is actually going around giving people money?

[@ShadeATV]

That wizard does NOT exist

[@Locutus]

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]

*insert homosexual botany joke here*

[@iKadaj]

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]

@@iKadaj Yes, gaggifts were the word I was looking for! Thank you!

[@dieseldragon6756]

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]

@@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!

[@dominicharvey6048]

£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]

That's probably where they're making their money

[@AtomicShrimp]

It's possible that the shipping might not be refunded so readily as the item cost

[@CaptainPupu]

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]

They also asked for a tip 😂😂😂😂 what the hell?

[@dominicharvey6048]

@mikeirwin2183 Haha, I didn't even see that 😅

[@wildblackberry9164]

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 😅

[@bwooee]

Scams aside, there is a pretty big industry in selling weird and hard to grow seeds online dressed up as gimmicky gifts for amateurs. I often receive them because people know i like gardening - it's often something incredibly painstaking to germinate like carnivorous plants/orchids, or they promise fruits that i know will never materialise in a UK climate (like dragonfruit). Tellingly, the care instructions are often very light on details and don't go beyond the germination stage. Not quite a scam but a bit of a grey area.

[@cphilips502]

Thanks for calling attention to this - I have gardened for years, but still have my head turned by the less obvious scams on occasion, particularly when it comes to claims of unusual varieties. I know a little but not enough. I love the photo of you and Eva- she looks like your supportive side-kick in your scam-fighting buddy cop show.

[@HolldollMcG]

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]

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]

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]

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

[@Galerak1]

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]

As a gardener, all being well, the sunflowers should flower this summer late July into August 🌻

[@official-obama]

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)

[@x948]

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)

[@nikolthomas2544]

Blue roses are part of japanese myth or folklore-if you get a blue rose you can make a wish for anything.

[@tcaldwe]

It's like getting sea monkeys. They were promising a wonderful undersea adventure but instead you got dried brine shrimp. You got the fantasy of blue sunflowers. and we got an entertaining video.

[@derrmeister]

13:09 you failed to mention Eva's knowledge as a professional tax collector though

[@Rei-Rei]

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]

I've gotten that a few times

[@Marestea_]

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]

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]

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]

Watch out for calls from "Revolut", your bank and also HMRC!

[@SierraNovemberKilo]

Scammers also turn up at Plant Fairs for certain horticultural organisations. I've been conned buying seeds there. I won't even attend now.

[@AlissaSss23]

Oh no! 😮

[@AlissaSss23]

That's horrible! They should vouch sellers!

[@theninja4137]

I made that mistake buying stuff at a street stall in Amsterdam. Felt like it wouldn't be a scam if it was a physical store. Been wrong.

[@BagelRats]

I am so happy someone is covering this, this kind of scamming has been around since I started gardening a decade ago

[@FerrexShelby-ed9hg]

THERE IS NO TOOTHFAIRY, THERE IS NO SANTA, AND THERE IS NO CAT SEEDS

[@multipleSpiders]

my favorite is the “Slurperon” or “Enchantress” plant, which just uses a stolen image of a sculpture of a piranha plant

[@456puff]

I needed a good giggle today, thanks!

[@alexwright6816]

one thing to note, I could totally believe blue sunflowers exist, they'd HAVE TO BE GMO however and due to their proud "nongmo" announcements (and the fact that there isn't any news about it, I'd expect some news agency to pick that up) makes me quite confident that they are not going to produce blue flowers.

[@andremeIIo]

That's not necessarily true, exotic varieties are more often produced by old fashioned artificial selection and cross-breeding, which isn't genetic modification.

[@lawabidingcitizen5153]

@@andremeIIo The genetics are still changed, just by chance instead of controlled, so not necessarily much different and definitely not better

[@Nevernamed]

@@andremeIIo While this is usually true, you can't cross breed and select flowers into being a colour that they don't appear as in nature. Roses literally do not contain genes that would allow them to be blue. You can't conjure new genes out of nowhere just by cross breeding- you would have to directly edit the plants genes. I would expect sunflowers are the same way.

[@lost4468yt]

​@@andremeIIosure, but getting a new gene that produces a blue colour is extremely difficult if that requires several (or several dozen...) here changes - in fact if you can't do it step by step that's statistically impossible. But with genetic editing you can potentially take genes from entirely different species or even more extreme and insert them directly into a plant. E.g. they've done this all the way from Poppy seeds to yeast. And then you can get yeast producing morphine or similar. Or bioluminescence to seemingly everything.

[@chaoticjexak]

HANG ON, i have a mysterious parcel (not adressed to me,bizzarely) FROM THAT EXACT PLACE! now, i happen to live in birmingham. I could totally investigate for you!

[@XPimKossibleX]

I think he concluded that the shipping centre is likely innocent. But I saw a comment mentioning that importing seeds is a hard process, and yes it says straight from birhmingham, so there must be a local colluder.

[@chaoticjexak]

@@XPimKossibleX thats true, though it is suspicious (to me at least) that the same place that sent these seeds also sent to me something not adressed to my name but to my address. could be a coincidence, but thats 2 odd coincidences from the same warehouse. not impossible by any means, but it does shed a little bit of doubt. I'm also familiar with the exact industrial estate that the warehouse is within, due to a bizzare twist of fate.

[@XPimKossibleX]

@@chaoticjexak crazy. it'd be cool if you asked around, but idk what you'd ask to get any info... and also stay safe, bring a couple friends in the car idk

[@tsm688]

@@chaoticjexak just means that they send a lot of stuff. I doubt they're the root of the scam, though an essential part of it.

[@456puff]

What did you do with the package?

[@Tata-ps4gy]

That bit of timeless wisdom in the literal middle of a scam debunking video enchanted me

[@naomijoyamena4483]

I am learning to crochet, and those kitten flowers gave some ideas I would like to make when my skills develop

[@keprince6590]

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]

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.

[@kensmith5694]

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]

Self defence tree sounds interesting though…. 👀

[@kwarra-an]

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]

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.

[@kensmith5694]

@@ixchelkali It seems you are correct. I will edit my coment

[@tsm688]

@@kwarra-an Fluorescent tetra are not GMO... They have fluorescent dye injected into them. The dye slowly fades, if they live.

[@ExplodingDarth]

The little blurb at around the 14:00 mark is spot on, I wish everyone had the chance to hear this, it might make us both more vigilant to scams and more compassionate and protective of victims

[@Acidfunkish]

Thinking you're impervious to scams makes you more vulnerable to them. 👍🏻

[@crystal4o681]

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.

[@cosmicpeaches]

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!

[@iamjustkiwi]

We have come a long way from the cacti they sell at big box stores with straw flowers glued onto them...which I also hate. Cacti dont need to be gussied up to be beautiful!

[@pattheplanter]

They now spray-paint cacti, succulents and heather in various horrific and metallic shades. If the plant survives long enough it just starts growing green, of course.

[@iamjustkiwi]

@@pattheplanter ugh, why?! Just get fake plants at that point! I've never understood that tacky stuff

[@pattheplanter]

@@iamjustkiwi There is a common cactus scam where an Astrophytum is treated with a small amount of weedkiller, making the new growth devoid of chlorophyll. This makes a star shaped "variegation" that draws in many buyers. Eventually the plant recovers from the poison and goes entirely green again. Some people just don't want to do an honest job, they have to feel they are getting one over on the customers, I suppose.

[@splendidcolors]

@@pattheplanter That is so sad! And it's plausible to have variegated plants. Lots of plants have striped leaves (including a variety of iris) and striped camellias have been a thing for ages, striped roses for maybe 3 decades. (I just took photos of a few varieties in a city rose garden, but I don't remember the dates they were introduced.) So a cactus with a star-shaped stripe pattern isn't implausible like bright blue roses are.

[@geordieghoulette7142]

Poor plants :(

[@semomonkey]

Cat flowers are real! You just have to grow them in cat litter not dirt!

[@CarsandCats]

Been watching litterbox seeds for years and nothing has grown yet!

[@marylynne9104]

@@CarsandCats- my cat grows weird brown logs in hers.

[@DjDolHaus86]

I'm still waiting for my dog eggs to hatch

[@jesterdays]

And water them with cat pee

[@felicityc]

I found some, but they don't taste like cats, or flowers. what am I doing wrong?

[@ellenorbjornsdottir1166]

Challenge accepted: grow white sunflowers/roses/whatever, build a centre-pivot irrigation system, and introduce food colouring into their garden bed by centre-pivot. Negative side effects include groundwater discolouration which may poison those allergic to blue food colouring, and prolonged contamination of the soil with the same colouring.

[@Mastair-t4h]

This is a great video! A few years ago, I was browsing impossible seed listings on Amazon to amuse myself, but it was sad to read the reviews. So many people left 5 star reviews, saying things like "I can't wait for them to germinate!" I remember one person wrote about how his late wife loved a certain type of flower and he was excited to grow a new type or color as a way of remembering her. Even looking now I can find a 5 star, verified purchase review for a listing for rainbow-colored rose seeds saying "Beautiful rose I have not planted my rose"

[@jadeceridwen93]

"One with the snows of yesteryear" is a beautiful phrase

[@jadeceridwen93]

and the when pigs fly visual joke at the end is inspired

[@mxes5938]

I'm already looking forward to the follow up video in a field of vibrant blue sunflowers

[@birdbird5337]

Aren't there a bunch of creepypasta stories that start like that?

[@mikekuppen6256]

I´m just waiting for the first video on his at-home GMO efforts.

[@Iotuseater]

@@birdbird5337in blue sunflower fields?

[@sophiaschier-hanson4163]

Lmao riiiighhht? That’s what I’M thinking!

[@Iotuseater]

@@birdbird5337 my comment got removed for some reason ??? so ig I’ll comment again LOL What story?

[@CineMiamParis]

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]

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]

@@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]

Amazon is also full of these fake seeds

[@tsm688]

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]

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).

[@BananasGoMooDev]

the meme at 2:36 was such a throwback lol i havent seen that meme in maybe 15 years. Also I really enjoyed how much random things I learned in this video totally unrelated to the topic, like that apparently apples are related to roses.

[@lolwutizit]

Same, it's been a billion years since I've last seen "this looks shopped" with that specific wording

[@yagirlsheila7705]

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.

[@etaoinshrdlu927]

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.

[@minimumsky5]

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]

There are so many wonderful blue flowers out there so what a weird thing to bother faking! I hope your windowsill blooms spectacularly

[@bethenecampbell6463]

Blue poppies are real. They are grown at garden near me called Lakewold. I think they're native to the Himalayas.

[@PhyllisGlassup2TheBrim]

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]

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]

@@PhyllisGlassup2TheBrim You think a book has never been wrong? lol

[@owentheslug]

i do wish you'd ordered some of the animal faced flowers. i had assumed that the outlandish colored flowers would be normal or maybe even variants that do occur, they would just fob you off with "well seeds can have recessive genes" or some bunk. the animal faced things though i have no idea what they would send.

[@tsm688]

Same. It'd be hilarious how different they turned out.

[@spencersworkshop7624]

Great production, best part for me is the sunflowers changing colors to music. Didn't know that I needed that to start my day

[@hannahyamauchi839]

The rabbit feed we had for our pet rabbit had sunflower seeds in them, and I guess one of them fell on the ground, because we had a lone sunflower grow right next to the rabbit pen. Watching a plant grow and flower really feels special, even without the gimmicks and rarity.

[@ve2vfd]

"Slightly sour cucumber and sadness" The story of my life :)

[@Nokaret]

At least you have cucumbers 😏

[@Erewhon2024]

I actually like Melothria scabra, because I don't mind acidity (good size for pickling anyway) and in my climate it is less prone to fungal diseases than are real cucumbers (& muskmelons, including "Armenian cucumbers," same genus).

[@Emeraldwitch30]

​@@Erewhon2024my grandkiddos love the mouse melons lol I grow them about every other year. But if you don't care for cucumbers then I'm sure it would be sad lol I know Mr Shrimp does not care for cucumbers 😅 he's mentioned it often 😉

[@Gugernoot]

Makes great pickle and relish.

[@johnsheppard4428]

Whenever a white person says ethnic food doesn't taste good, I take it with a grain of salt; they probably ate it wrong.

[@eloquentsarcasm]

Wow, out of this entire video, you referring to your postman made me flashback hard to my childhood. We had the same mailman for the entire time I was growing up, and after I left for the Army, he still kept delivering to the neighborhood. Turns out both of us ended up in Colorado, he lives about an hour south of me today, and Randy was the greatest Postal guy I ever knew, he could get a package to the correct address with half a label every time. Excellent episode Mike, I never got into the scam stuff before, but as time has gone on I've kind of gotten snared by all your content, lol. Please give Eva a treat and a hug, she's the best girl.

[@williamdeveson2673]

I feel like this is the perfect intersection of all of your work on KZbin. Love it!

[@HotelPapa100]

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.

[@wendyheatherwood]

Off topic, and this was a very interesting video and all, but this is the first video of yours I've seen and I just wanted to compliment your taste on that very pretty tile pattern when you were opening the package.

[@ShinK_319]

I can confirm. I bought a few seeds thinking they were cat seeds. A dog germinated instead.

[@HerRoliness]

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]

Yup. For international shipping, it's one of the best.

[@MetalheadAndNerd]

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.

[@awesomepossum4375]

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.

[@ParuPParuu]

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

[@Delikett]

I've missed you!!! Haven't seen any videos of yours in a while. I'm so glad I found this one!