Yikes on bikes, nail polish edition
Apr. 27th, 2026 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyWho likes niche hobby drama? It's you, I know it's you! Please join me as once more the nail polish world continues to baffle. It's just never-ending. I'll be honest though, it doesn't hit the same spot as doll drama but here we are.
Little things before we get to the main event:
A brand I'd only briefly heard of, and then forgot, Gearshift Glam was using car paint in their nail polish and only stopped once people rightfully squawked in protest. But it still took awhile and gave us these assorted gems:
Posting about trying these formulas on themselves and having itching/burning without a basecoat.
Making a gel formula. (For those who don't know, if you get an allergy to whatever the fuck [HEMA? Acrylates?], it'll fuck you up for dental work and other medically important things you might actually NEED since you're now allergic to the ingredient(s) in those possibly necessary treatments.) With car paint.
Admitting to not doing research on why you don't use FUCKING CAR PAINT in nail polish, despite being able to use the same pigments. Not really doing much research at all, really.
Freaking out because people were being 'mean' to them over their political beliefs. Yeah, the wife at least is MAGA. I saw the Reddit posts; they were being dragged to hell and back for the safety shit well before the political leaning cropped up.
They also use generative AI. Poorly.
*Linked to one of the Reddit posts which should give you more detail if you're interested. Linry on youtube has a video about this as well, if you'd rather listen than read.
Speaking of GenAI, people were waiting to see what Zoya's Earth Day sale would be this year. There was genuine excitement because in this hellscape, pretty polish can do wonders for your daily dose of dopamine. Prior to it, some of us noticed that at least one of their posts was giving serious AI vibes. (Upon closer inspection, it was all but proven to be AI, btw.) BUT they quadrupled down for their Earth Day post and used the most headache inducing wavy/watery/melted bottle looking AI images and when they got called out for it, they ignored all the AI comments and focused on the few people who were all, "ew, this endorsement of overconsumption is not it" for the sale aspect.
To those people, I must ask: are you new to the sale? I'm pretty sure they have always had a minimum for how many polishes you've gotta purchase for the sale to kick in. I don't actually blame them for that because it would be even WORSE for the environment to ship a thousand orders of just one or two polishes at whatever the discount was.
That said, the way the post was worded/set up was also a dumpster fire anyway, so it was courting a bad faith take on the sale itself. People were also missing the part where Zoya was doing their trade-in, which is... weird since that's the second image in the post? It's the image that gives me an actual headache if I even think about the picture, it's so poorly done.
Nope, my issue, and a lot of other people's issue, was that they used AI for the thing in the first place. It was even WORSE because later they post a short of polishes people have sent in for trade-in and like... just fucking use that? Who the fuck uses genAI on EARTH DAY when they're a brand whose biggest sale in consumer's memories is their Earth Day sale? WHY? Who is this fucking stupid? Zoya, apparently. They did try and show how the first image in their post was done, but it just proves that at best they took an image and ran it through really shitty AI and it's actually worse that way since... they could've just.. not done that. (first link is to the Reddit post about it, second is to the brand's IG post. They also have a FB one if you'd rather go there but FB hates me and I don't feel like spending another half an hour trying to get it to work/find the right post.)
But our main event is the return of Mooncat's shitty bottles and the culture of stan wars on the internet. Ooh, ahh.
I've mentioned MC before, and I think I even mentioned their exploding bottles a couple of years ago. If you don't remember, or I'm misremembering, here's thevery short version:
Mooncat's bottles are unusual. They aren't the standard square bottles (think Essie) or round (OPI); they're rectangular. But they also have a weird cap on top and they're unique to the brand. Other brands do use this shape but it's usually one they move away from eventually. A couple of years ago they had a big release and afterwards, people got their orders and there were reports of the bottles exploding. Not because someone dropped them. People would be opening them and they'd explode, cutting them and ruining their furniture/rugs/whatever. People did go to the hospital. They'd also explode in their boxes, unprovoked, so it wasn't even just trying to use them that was the issue. I think the general consensus was that either they switched bottle factories and the new one's recipe was shit, or that their old factory changed their recipe and it was shit. Add to that the fact that MC would overfill their bottles (they promise a certain ML and would fill past that) and the combo created glass bombs.
MC went radio silent on this and people noticed. Their behind closed door reactions to the people who needed medical attention was not universal- one person had their medical bills paid and another was hung out to dry. Overall, this was unusual since MC's customer service is really highly spoken of. People were not happy about how the company basically didn't do a damn thing or say anything for far too long and then tried to victim blame a bit before backpeddling and then promising to change the bottles again. Only I think the non-stan side of fandom was wary that they were just going to sell through the old bottles and not switch until the old stock was sold via their twice yearly sales. Warnings were issued by the fans and it's possible the company really did take the bad batches off the warehouse shelves since the exploding bottles did stop.
Last year, MC pissed everyone but the die hards off by jacking their prices up to insane levels that only the truly die hard can claim aren't luxury prices. (I mean, yeah, they aren't Hermes prices, but $18 for a nail polish is bonkers.) They misrepresented the price increase by saying that prices would go up $1 or $2 and then it turned out that the buck increase wasn't even for polish, I think? Most, if not all the polish, which is what most are there for, went up $2. People were NOT happy. MC stans continued to overcompensate, as is their way. But to this day, even after most brands have raised their prices or altered their sale models, people hold MC up as the example of what NOT to do.
Okay, background out of the way! MC dropped their new Deadly By Nature collection recently and it's actually one that if not for the prices, I might've been tempted by. Hell, if not for what's about to happen, I'd still be tempted for a sale price. Their moodier 'swiped this straight from the Black Moon arc of Sailormoon' aesthetic is my jam.
Once more, orders come in... and there's an issue. On Reddit, someone posts shots of their Deadly Nightshade and Black Widow and the bottles have what could be hairline cracks or pigment lines. OP mentions they shook the bejesus outta their bottles and the lines didn't move. Other people chime in that their DN has this same issue and for awhile it's just people going, yeah, multichromes/shimmers have this issue. Black Widow is left entirely out of this conversation for the most part, which is fascinating for me but whatever. Someone, possibly OP, chimes in that they went into the bottle with something (later some will use toothpicks or metal blackhead scrapers) and they were, in fact, scratches/cracks.
Everyone proceeds to lose their minds because, remember, MC has a history of their bottles being fucked up. Only now it's $2 more for this shit! The stans are like, you guys are being ridiculous, why is everyone so upset? It's just pigment lines! Ignoring the people who did scratch away (dafuq) at these lines and did report back they didn't budge. Some people did have good luck and theirs were just pigment lines. But others did not have the same luck, and honestly, some of the pictures shared really did look less like pigment lines and more like really fine cracks. There are a few starburst ones that are pretty damning.
I don't frequent the MC sub, but I did peek in and I can get why people probably got really tired of a thousand and one posts flooding in asking if their bottle was okay or not. But, y'know, when the brand has a history of SENDING PEOPLE TO THE HOSPITAL, maybe accept that when bottles start looking sketchy, there's gonna be an influx of panic that this is possibly happening again. (To be clear, to my knowledge, no bottles have exploded/broken fully this time around.)
I did miss this next one as it happened, but the internet doesn't forget quite that fast. Someone posts a new PSA about how they also were worried about their bottle of DN, but they shook the absolute shit out of it and it's fine and THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT AT ALL, GUYS. People react... nicer than I would've thought but basically it's like, "everyone who has had this issue and shared about it has said step one was shaking it up. That doesn't fix it. Even those with vortex shakers had said it didn't fix all the bottles that were affected. It's the polish version of "have you tried opening your eyes to see?" OP is all offended that they were not greeted with welcome arms. This post is eventually deleted, but Reddit's funny about deletions so it lives on and is linked.
After someone else scrolls back far enough in their posting history (or searches the name) and realizes that this OP either used to or does work for MC. They definitely used to when MC was Live, Love, Polish, and if you told me we'd found Michelle's alt account, I'd believe you. Michelle is the owner, btw. So an employee, or former employee, is trying to minimize things while not disclosing their affiliation (and you do have to disclose former affiliations) with the brand. Great. That doesn't look at alllllllllllllllllll suspicious.
Someone else posts about creases in MC's glass bottles and cross posts to the MC subreddit and I swear, my first thought was the Ghost "you in danger, girl" gif/line. I've included the link to this one because it goes about as well as you'd think, with people who claim to have backgrounds in manufacturing and the like chiming in on both sides (some are like this is no big deal and others are like, why is a brand that charges $18 for polish selling factory seconds?) and it's just... a cluster that devolves into three camps:
-MC stans. Everyone is being too mean, they're just picking on this poor little baby small business (whose owners appeared on Top 30 Under 30 lists and are um, stupidly well off), nothing MC does is ever going to be right for SOME people, and the MC hate is SO OLD.
- The hypercritical of MC people who are, well... you get the idea. I gather there was (is?) someone who is taking this to the extreme and being racist, but I didn't see those comments before they were deleted. I don't doubt it though since people are awful. This group also has the people who hate MC and will gleefully chime in anytime MC so much as breathes.
- The few, the proud, the middle ground who are pointing out that there's a history here that explains the raised concern, and who are we to tell people what their own bottles do or don't have (cracks vs pigment lines)? It's also not unreasonable to expect your bottles to not look weird when it's a brand new release and you're paying MC's prices. This group does tend to include those who like and might even have bought MC but aren't brainwashed into thinking the brand can do no wrong and yes, yes I do fall into this one.
The stans pushing back about the joke (and it was mostly a joke except maybe from the one person who deleted their account) that if you're not careful, a MC employee will swing by to tell you to shake your bottle and that'll fix everything is wild. Even more wild was at some point, and I don't remember which thread, someone got SO FUCKING BUTTHURT about someone maybe calling or insinuating that MC stans were weird. My good person of the interwebs, that is MC's ENTIRE SHTICK. They are the embodiment, in their own mind anyway, of the Craft's "We are the weirdos, mister." They are at their absolute best when they're embracing this and it's something fandom has long acknowledged. What the fuck are you on about crying about it? God I wish I weren't too tired to look it up right now because that bugged me and I couldn't figure out why until later.
Oh, cheese, another bottle breaking in someone's hand. Not from the new collection either. From the new collection, we have a new crack.
Well. I'd say it's officially safe to call this Bottlegate 2.0. What's even more wild to me is that these are days old so... the fuck.
Clearly I went ahead and linked things for your entertainment and because I do enjoy falling down rabbit holes. If you need me, I've got 537 tabs open and I should do something about that.
Little things before we get to the main event:
A brand I'd only briefly heard of, and then forgot, Gearshift Glam was using car paint in their nail polish and only stopped once people rightfully squawked in protest. But it still took awhile and gave us these assorted gems:
Posting about trying these formulas on themselves and having itching/burning without a basecoat.
Making a gel formula. (For those who don't know, if you get an allergy to whatever the fuck [HEMA? Acrylates?], it'll fuck you up for dental work and other medically important things you might actually NEED since you're now allergic to the ingredient(s) in those possibly necessary treatments.) With car paint.
Admitting to not doing research on why you don't use FUCKING CAR PAINT in nail polish, despite being able to use the same pigments. Not really doing much research at all, really.
Freaking out because people were being 'mean' to them over their political beliefs. Yeah, the wife at least is MAGA. I saw the Reddit posts; they were being dragged to hell and back for the safety shit well before the political leaning cropped up.
They also use generative AI. Poorly.
*Linked to one of the Reddit posts which should give you more detail if you're interested. Linry on youtube has a video about this as well, if you'd rather listen than read.
Speaking of GenAI, people were waiting to see what Zoya's Earth Day sale would be this year. There was genuine excitement because in this hellscape, pretty polish can do wonders for your daily dose of dopamine. Prior to it, some of us noticed that at least one of their posts was giving serious AI vibes. (Upon closer inspection, it was all but proven to be AI, btw.) BUT they quadrupled down for their Earth Day post and used the most headache inducing wavy/watery/melted bottle looking AI images and when they got called out for it, they ignored all the AI comments and focused on the few people who were all, "ew, this endorsement of overconsumption is not it" for the sale aspect.
To those people, I must ask: are you new to the sale? I'm pretty sure they have always had a minimum for how many polishes you've gotta purchase for the sale to kick in. I don't actually blame them for that because it would be even WORSE for the environment to ship a thousand orders of just one or two polishes at whatever the discount was.
That said, the way the post was worded/set up was also a dumpster fire anyway, so it was courting a bad faith take on the sale itself. People were also missing the part where Zoya was doing their trade-in, which is... weird since that's the second image in the post? It's the image that gives me an actual headache if I even think about the picture, it's so poorly done.
Nope, my issue, and a lot of other people's issue, was that they used AI for the thing in the first place. It was even WORSE because later they post a short of polishes people have sent in for trade-in and like... just fucking use that? Who the fuck uses genAI on EARTH DAY when they're a brand whose biggest sale in consumer's memories is their Earth Day sale? WHY? Who is this fucking stupid? Zoya, apparently. They did try and show how the first image in their post was done, but it just proves that at best they took an image and ran it through really shitty AI and it's actually worse that way since... they could've just.. not done that. (first link is to the Reddit post about it, second is to the brand's IG post. They also have a FB one if you'd rather go there but FB hates me and I don't feel like spending another half an hour trying to get it to work/find the right post.)
But our main event is the return of Mooncat's shitty bottles and the culture of stan wars on the internet. Ooh, ahh.
I've mentioned MC before, and I think I even mentioned their exploding bottles a couple of years ago. If you don't remember, or I'm misremembering, here's the
Mooncat's bottles are unusual. They aren't the standard square bottles (think Essie) or round (OPI); they're rectangular. But they also have a weird cap on top and they're unique to the brand. Other brands do use this shape but it's usually one they move away from eventually. A couple of years ago they had a big release and afterwards, people got their orders and there were reports of the bottles exploding. Not because someone dropped them. People would be opening them and they'd explode, cutting them and ruining their furniture/rugs/whatever. People did go to the hospital. They'd also explode in their boxes, unprovoked, so it wasn't even just trying to use them that was the issue. I think the general consensus was that either they switched bottle factories and the new one's recipe was shit, or that their old factory changed their recipe and it was shit. Add to that the fact that MC would overfill their bottles (they promise a certain ML and would fill past that) and the combo created glass bombs.
MC went radio silent on this and people noticed. Their behind closed door reactions to the people who needed medical attention was not universal- one person had their medical bills paid and another was hung out to dry. Overall, this was unusual since MC's customer service is really highly spoken of. People were not happy about how the company basically didn't do a damn thing or say anything for far too long and then tried to victim blame a bit before backpeddling and then promising to change the bottles again. Only I think the non-stan side of fandom was wary that they were just going to sell through the old bottles and not switch until the old stock was sold via their twice yearly sales. Warnings were issued by the fans and it's possible the company really did take the bad batches off the warehouse shelves since the exploding bottles did stop.
Last year, MC pissed everyone but the die hards off by jacking their prices up to insane levels that only the truly die hard can claim aren't luxury prices. (I mean, yeah, they aren't Hermes prices, but $18 for a nail polish is bonkers.) They misrepresented the price increase by saying that prices would go up $1 or $2 and then it turned out that the buck increase wasn't even for polish, I think? Most, if not all the polish, which is what most are there for, went up $2. People were NOT happy. MC stans continued to overcompensate, as is their way. But to this day, even after most brands have raised their prices or altered their sale models, people hold MC up as the example of what NOT to do.
Okay, background out of the way! MC dropped their new Deadly By Nature collection recently and it's actually one that if not for the prices, I might've been tempted by. Hell, if not for what's about to happen, I'd still be tempted for a sale price. Their moodier 'swiped this straight from the Black Moon arc of Sailormoon' aesthetic is my jam.
Once more, orders come in... and there's an issue. On Reddit, someone posts shots of their Deadly Nightshade and Black Widow and the bottles have what could be hairline cracks or pigment lines. OP mentions they shook the bejesus outta their bottles and the lines didn't move. Other people chime in that their DN has this same issue and for awhile it's just people going, yeah, multichromes/shimmers have this issue. Black Widow is left entirely out of this conversation for the most part, which is fascinating for me but whatever. Someone, possibly OP, chimes in that they went into the bottle with something (later some will use toothpicks or metal blackhead scrapers) and they were, in fact, scratches/cracks.
Everyone proceeds to lose their minds because, remember, MC has a history of their bottles being fucked up. Only now it's $2 more for this shit! The stans are like, you guys are being ridiculous, why is everyone so upset? It's just pigment lines! Ignoring the people who did scratch away (dafuq) at these lines and did report back they didn't budge. Some people did have good luck and theirs were just pigment lines. But others did not have the same luck, and honestly, some of the pictures shared really did look less like pigment lines and more like really fine cracks. There are a few starburst ones that are pretty damning.
I don't frequent the MC sub, but I did peek in and I can get why people probably got really tired of a thousand and one posts flooding in asking if their bottle was okay or not. But, y'know, when the brand has a history of SENDING PEOPLE TO THE HOSPITAL, maybe accept that when bottles start looking sketchy, there's gonna be an influx of panic that this is possibly happening again. (To be clear, to my knowledge, no bottles have exploded/broken fully this time around.)
I did miss this next one as it happened, but the internet doesn't forget quite that fast. Someone posts a new PSA about how they also were worried about their bottle of DN, but they shook the absolute shit out of it and it's fine and THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT AT ALL, GUYS. People react... nicer than I would've thought but basically it's like, "everyone who has had this issue and shared about it has said step one was shaking it up. That doesn't fix it. Even those with vortex shakers had said it didn't fix all the bottles that were affected. It's the polish version of "have you tried opening your eyes to see?" OP is all offended that they were not greeted with welcome arms. This post is eventually deleted, but Reddit's funny about deletions so it lives on and is linked.
After someone else scrolls back far enough in their posting history (or searches the name) and realizes that this OP either used to or does work for MC. They definitely used to when MC was Live, Love, Polish, and if you told me we'd found Michelle's alt account, I'd believe you. Michelle is the owner, btw. So an employee, or former employee, is trying to minimize things while not disclosing their affiliation (and you do have to disclose former affiliations) with the brand. Great. That doesn't look at alllllllllllllllllll suspicious.
Someone else posts about creases in MC's glass bottles and cross posts to the MC subreddit and I swear, my first thought was the Ghost "you in danger, girl" gif/line. I've included the link to this one because it goes about as well as you'd think, with people who claim to have backgrounds in manufacturing and the like chiming in on both sides (some are like this is no big deal and others are like, why is a brand that charges $18 for polish selling factory seconds?) and it's just... a cluster that devolves into three camps:
-MC stans. Everyone is being too mean, they're just picking on this poor little baby small business (whose owners appeared on Top 30 Under 30 lists and are um, stupidly well off), nothing MC does is ever going to be right for SOME people, and the MC hate is SO OLD.
- The hypercritical of MC people who are, well... you get the idea. I gather there was (is?) someone who is taking this to the extreme and being racist, but I didn't see those comments before they were deleted. I don't doubt it though since people are awful. This group also has the people who hate MC and will gleefully chime in anytime MC so much as breathes.
- The few, the proud, the middle ground who are pointing out that there's a history here that explains the raised concern, and who are we to tell people what their own bottles do or don't have (cracks vs pigment lines)? It's also not unreasonable to expect your bottles to not look weird when it's a brand new release and you're paying MC's prices. This group does tend to include those who like and might even have bought MC but aren't brainwashed into thinking the brand can do no wrong and yes, yes I do fall into this one.
The stans pushing back about the joke (and it was mostly a joke except maybe from the one person who deleted their account) that if you're not careful, a MC employee will swing by to tell you to shake your bottle and that'll fix everything is wild. Even more wild was at some point, and I don't remember which thread, someone got SO FUCKING BUTTHURT about someone maybe calling or insinuating that MC stans were weird. My good person of the interwebs, that is MC's ENTIRE SHTICK. They are the embodiment, in their own mind anyway, of the Craft's "We are the weirdos, mister." They are at their absolute best when they're embracing this and it's something fandom has long acknowledged. What the fuck are you on about crying about it? God I wish I weren't too tired to look it up right now because that bugged me and I couldn't figure out why until later.
Oh, cheese, another bottle breaking in someone's hand. Not from the new collection either. From the new collection, we have a new crack.
Well. I'd say it's officially safe to call this Bottlegate 2.0. What's even more wild to me is that these are days old so... the fuck.
Clearly I went ahead and linked things for your entertainment and because I do enjoy falling down rabbit holes. If you need me, I've got 537 tabs open and I should do something about that.