It's time for mumsnetters to finally define "tat"

[Oxforddictionaryunofficialupdate]

Aibu for traffic, title not exaggeration.

In last week the world "tat" took over mumsnet faster than bedbugs did over Paris.

It's time to finally define it. In last week it was plastic items, decorations, some clothes, various home furnishings, kitchem utensils and small gadgets, jewellery (i think), chocolates and sweets...

Anyone using the worls "tat", please give an example items of what "tat" is in your minds. Like exact items examples not "just stuff no one needs".

Because at this point on MN it is simply "any physical item I personally don't like" 🤷 o EVERYTHING is tat...

Yabu - tat is life and everything is tat
Yanbu - it did get ridiculous now with even food being called tat

absolute snobbery
would you use the word Tat in public?
eergh

I remember having one of those. With several bizarre tiny orange plastic babies in thr windows.

Tat as it was, we had to put the individual toys back every year after Christmas, and the calendar was reused again and again.

I would agree on the cheap, poor quality thing. And tacky. I put my decorations up yesterday and I’m now looking at my beautiful wooden mini nativity set, that I’ve had for years. It is good quality and just rather beautiful. I personally wouldn’t say that is tat. However a few metres away I have a decorative red and white glittery candy cane. Bits of glitter keep dropping off it. That’s tat. But I love it 🥰

I love tat

YES!!!! That exact one. 😂😂😂😂

We could only afford things from the market in my youth. Things that would've been described as "tat" nowadays on here, but had lasted us through nearly a decade with very little money to spare.

Even wall paint and pictures/art, jewellery, graphic design? I think purely decorative things can be important and/or beautiful and valuable, for me it’s not just that something has no practical use in itself.

I will use the word "tat" with the word "plastic" in front, so usually for toys, pocket money toys, the kind of things you get out of those egg machines.

Cheap, poorly made, will break in no time whatsoever and end up in landfill. Tat.

From October to the end of December, ‘tat’ is mentioned thousands of times on here, usually by the same posters who get annoyed at ‘Americanisms’. They get very worked up about celebrating Halloween, Autumn decor, themed bedding as well as ‘plastic tat’. One thread ended up with one of the tat haters calling others cunts and wankers. I quite like to see them lose their minds about tat. 😅

Tat is stuff we are manipulated into buying.

From October to the end of December, ‘tat’ is mentioned thousands of times on here

I’m sure there’s also a massive uptick in other things that are associated with Christmas and that some people find annoying, like “MIL” and “Buble”.

Anything that they could buy at higher prices before it became accessible for everyone else to buy.

It’s basically the leftie woke peoples way of telling everyone else to stay in their lane and not indulge in buying stuff which they themselves happily bought.

A bit like normal people eating supermarket chicken is cruelty but they themselves are morally superior because they buy it from the local farm shop, and the chicken had access to a fully furnished gym for recreation and ate only gold nuggets for breakfast.

The ad I'm seeing on this thread features a dog wearing a balaclava. I think dog balaclavas are tat even if made from pure lambswool .

One persons tat is anothers treasure 😁

I always thought tat was gimmicky bits. Like valentines day. You are my valentine plastic ornaments or plushie that after the day becomes redundant. But...if its from your young child or someone you love after a lovely day..it becomes a keepsake treasured memory item 😂

Surely one man's tat is another man's treasure?

I am rubbish at home decor. If I put an ornament anywhere, it looks like it has been put down on the way to somewhere else.
A friend can put stuff together so so well (as in Ideal Home has done her house), that she has groups of items that individually I would call tat, but how she does it, they look fabulous

We were in a shopping centre yesterday and I noticed that several new shops seem to have popped up selling stuff like cheap looking Kpop demon hunter clothing and hoodies with the "6,7" slogan on them. To me that is tat, stuff that is poor quality and has been mass produced as quickly as possible to tie into a trend that will probably die down in a few weeks. I suppose it's better to have something there than an empty shop unit though.

This !

tat is all that is wanted by children in their stockings

Tat is cheap stuff with no purpose, that is looked at/played with for minutes before being ignored, that will break quickly and easily, and is shortly destined for landfill. HTH.

Tat is a word people use to describe something liked by someone else in order to make themselves look superior. It doesn’t work. It just makes them look judgemental.

To me, tat is generic "stuff" that's bought for the sake of buying something, used or looked at once and is then thrown away/charity shopped/ gathers dust. Example: DH bought me a cat origami set as a joke present on our anniversary. We laughed. It's sitting on my desk several months later, unopened, waiting for me to take it to the charity shop. That's tat. Ditto clothes from Shein/Temu/Amazon that are so badly made they're unwearable but so cheap that they're not worth returning, so they get binned.

As per PP, poor quality, usually plastic ‘stuff’ that is neither attractive nor useful. Both of these things are in the eye of the beholder of course.
Decorative taste is so personal I’m always amazed by the confidence people have in giving ornaments etc, I’d never do it in case I was accidentally gifting ‘tat’

That isn’t how lots of people define it though.

People have used it to describe toys like my children had, things like Spider-Man, Transformers, Toy Story characters, peppa pigs camper van, which in my house were all played with a lot over a 10 year period by my children and their cousins and friends. They were still in great condition after years of play, many passed on to friends, charity shops and some in our loft to pass on to any future family children. Some mumsnetters just use it for any toy that they don’t want to buy or anything they want to judge others for buying.

Go on the numerous threads about giving up gift buying. There's three listed when you go on AIBU.
I was going to comment on this, because it means something different to stuff. The usual pedantic are suddenly quiet and using a word wrong. It's the height of MNs classism, like ageism it's acceptable.

Or for stuff in shops that poor people shop in! Like B&M, HB and on Shein.

in my family to avoid tat we club together so less present but bugger budget ie. I have 2 sisters so we each pair up and give to the other one budget is 30euros so means 60euros budget. And we ask for 2/3 items and we pick one to keep
an element of “surprise”.

so tat for me could be anything from cheap to expensive. One yr one of my sister in law gave me a sewing box. She must have spent a fortune, you pull it open on either side and is in wood but such a fucking random present.
Or my husband god daughter giving him a sign that says “xxx’s (his name) garden” i know she shopped with her mum why couldnt she said it s a very expensive (7euros) for something they are not going to display in the house, any other idea you have?”
last year she gave him
a golden retriever calendar which at least can be used. And is cute!