Have you ever been to the mall and noticed those kiosks that sell phone cases and t-shirts? Look at the t-shirts themselves, what kind of designs do they have printed? I’ve seen the TikTok logo, Dragonball Z characters, Backwoods; brands that are so integral to our pop culture, they’ve become household names. Who cares if it’s not licensed? Most of the trademark images I’ve seen printed onto shirts at the mall are owned by companies that are so huge, they will probably never give a damn – they have enough revenue streams. The drawback however, is the brand’s ingenuity. This type of business model entirely depends on the preexisting notability of certain logos / designs and their current relevance. There’s no real scalability either, considering how already liable the business owner is to copyright infringement.

This is where the Internet comes into play. Through the introduction of memes, print-on-demand services and the hysteria of modern-age consumerism, anyone can be the mall kiosk guy – without even leaving their home! Except it’s not quite that simple. It’s a gold rush, so there’s a lot of competition. It’s a very saturated market. So we need to be more niche. How do we do that? We’ll intentionally brand ourselves towards a demographic that has little competition. We’ll gain an understanding of the demographics’ ethics / morals and mimic them as a way to whisper sweet nothings in their ear. We’ll raise the price of the t-shirt to allude it bears quality materials and powers of social influence. Finally, maybe make the branding a little sensational and zany, after all this is the internet.

For Foulplay, that’s pretty much exactly what they’ve been doing for the past 7 years, I think. Honestly I’ve never heard of these guys until I saw this shirt they dropped on their website and was like ‘wow, way to copy FTP’s steeze in the worst way possible – fuck these guys’. So what shirt am I talking about? Well, allow me to try and recap the entire situation:

So last week, December 4th 2024; the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was assassinated by, supposedly, a man called Luigi Mangione. UHG had previously been criticized multiple times for their active interest in denying insurance payment for non-critical visits to hospital emergency rooms, as well as the use of AI to automate claim denials. If anyone’s watched Saw VI, the UnitedHealthcare CEO is characterized comparatively to William Easton. In most people’s eyes, this is a true tale of martyrdom. This is probably going to be a big turning point for our society, as people are already calling for a ‘class war’ and comparing our current world affairs to that of the French Revolution.

With something like this, LOTS of bootleg merch started popping up online, especially on Etsy and eBay. Which is more or less what you’d expect with a significant event like this. This is what I was trying to explain in the first paragraph, like yeah something like this oughta happen, you’d expect the retard at the mall kiosk to hop behind his Windows 8 thinkpad and whip up a BADASS DALL-E 5.0 Canva design. You would think the guy who’s been trying to establish his own fashion brand for the past 7 years to not be so tasteless.

Image above is the original listing of Foulplay’s ‘Class War’ T-Shirt. What side is Foulplay on in the ‘Class War’? Let us know in the comments.

I will give props to Reddit user ‘Convicted_Vapist420’ for this solid quote I saw in response to this product’s launch:

This is like the third tee shirt I’ve seen involving this guy. Nothing says fighting back against corporate America like selling landfill t shirts for personal gain

I did personally reach out to Foulplay for a comment but to no avail.. They’re just too nonchalant and aura-maxxed for a guy like me 🙁 So I took to google to get a deeper understanding of who is behind Foulplay. Apparently it’s led by a man named Adam Ariagga. From my 2 minutes of research, he seems like he handled merchandise fulfillment for $uicideBoy$, in conjunction to mimicking FTP and Fuct in his own clothing line. So contextually, you can already make an assumption on the type of artist this dude is. This man is the absolute GOAT of culturally appropriating NWO conspiracy theories for his shopify page. I also uhm.. found this.. This is the only video I could find directly related to him on YouTube:

Lol this guy is insufferable. ‘Woah, I found a NWO site written in basic HTML!! How Y2k!!! I’m gonna screen record me reading it up and down so people think I know about ARGs n shieeet.. I hope they don’t find my Pinterest account and realise I’m a TOTAL HACK JOB’

I wanted to end off this article by pointing your attention to a clothing brand that I personally believe is able to create garments inspired by pop culture figures but in a transformative way that feels more gracious and less exploitative. I’d like to introduce you to d3vur. They’re very notable for their TempleOS Collection, showcasing different embroidered garments that aim to pay tribute to internet legend Terry A. Davis. As per request of Terry’s family, 30% of the sales profits are donated to the NAMI Foundation, which is the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Take note; I’m not sponsored and I’m not trying to sell you a product here. I’m just saying, if you’re in the market for streetwear within the online-conspiracy niche, your money is wayy better in the hands of someone like d3vur.