In the race to be the fittest, healthiest, most conscious person on the planet - or at least around the water cooler or the dinner table - people go to some very interesting lengths to make themselves feel good. This, however, can leave you open to being mugged off by fads and trends that do nothing but make your wallet lighter.
For example, let's look at water. We fundamentally need it to survive: it's a basic human necessity and we have a perceivably unlimited access to it, but that hasn't stopped people conjuring up new and "innovative" formulas to sell to us in bottles. They usually bear the promise that they can make you fly or something similar, to legitimise selling it to us for more than a two-course meal at a well-to-do diner or takeout joint.
We've had a fair share of weird water, Blk water and raw water to name a few, but imagine turning up to a festival and finding that someone was selling something called Hot Dog Water for over $38 (£20) a bottle.
Vancouver, Canada was host to a recent Car Free Day festival, and one of their vendors was selling a version of water that caught a lot of people's attention. Marketed as a "Keto compatible", vitality increasing, brain function boosting miracle water, you'd be forgiving for thinking "Hõt Dõg Water: Unfiltered" (those little flicks on the Os - tildes - fully intentional) wasn't just the liquid frankfurters were submerged in to keep them fresh or cooked in.
Many people actually took the bait, buying into the fancy bottled water as being a great source of electrolytes - always useful on a hot, sunny day. A flier for the product read: "With the demands of city life and high-stress jobs, electrolyte imbalances are all too common these days. We believe Hog Dog Water can help restore the body’s homeostasis after an electrolyte imbalance."
"By balancing the state of your body’s multicellular organisms, Hot Dog Water helps you achieve max capacity for biological defences so you can fight both infection and disease," it goes on to say. Incredibly enticing right?
But if you think this just sounds too ridiculous, you’d be right. The whole thing is an elaborate exercise in consumerism and fake news. At the bottom of the Hot Dog Water brochure, there’s some very, very small print: "Hot Dog Water in its absurdity hopes to encourage critical thinking related to product marketing and the significant role it can play in our purchasing choices." Even though CEO Douglas Bevans spent over $1,500 (£852) creating the product, he says that the stunt was worth it. People genuinely were willing to pay $38 (£21) for a bottle.
Talking to Global News he said: "From the responses, I think people will actually go away and reconsider some of these other $80 bottles of water that will come out that are ‘raw’ or ‘smart waters,’ or anything that doesn’t have any substantial scientific backing but just a lot of pretty impressive marketing."
Please don't be that person who falls for it.
