I Can’t Tell

There’s an Internet meme which is coming up more and more often these days: it’s a cartoon character (the version I’ve seen most often features Fry from Futurerama) with half-closed eyes, signifying skepticism, and the legend which reads “I can’t tell: are you trolling or just really stupid?” It’s a measure of how common our fun-loving friends the Internet trolls are becoming that just about everybody has encountered an example of their work that is hard to distinguish from some real aspect of our weird world – or, perhaps, it’s a mark of just how weird our world is becoming. Still, it’s getting harder to imagine any political or philosophical standpoint that is so exotic that there absolutely couldn’t be someone somewhere who actually holds that position to be true, or any product or service that could be offered that would be too stupid for anyone to actually wish to purchase. That said, I’m still not sure if the people behind the $100,000 razor are serious…

You can visit the website here if you want to, but the basic idea is simple enough: The Zafirro Iridium (that’s what they’re calling it) has blades made out of real sapphires, a handle made out of pure iridium, and the screws holding it together are made from jewelry-grade platinum. It’s guaranteed for 10 years, complete with sharpening and repair services, and if the materials are really as described it should be almost impossible to damage the thing anyway; iridium is the second-densest known element (about .1% lower than osmium), doesn’t corrode at temperatures below 2,000 degrees centigrade, and won’t actually melt below 2,466 degrees centigrade (4,471 degrees Fahrenheit). Synthetic sapphire is used to make armor for military vehicles (and in some forms of body armor), and sapphire “glass” (actually transparent crystals made with synthetic sapphire) is used to make shatter-resistant windows for armored vehicles. And, of course, if anything does break, the company’s warranty would include repairs anyway…

A much more immediate question is why anyone would buy such a thing in the first place. Even if we are willing to assume an individual with sufficiently high disposable income to make $100,000 USD a negligible amount, it’s still hard to imagine why such an individual would be willing to pay this much for a personal grooming device. There are any number of outrageously expensive luxury goods that would make marginally more sense than this would – and since there’s no practical way to test-drive such a thing, you’d be spending that sum on something that might be completely worthless, or (even worse) might not work any better than a 99-cent disposable razor…

Of course, the over-arching question here is whether this whole thing is a hoax or not. Fake Internet retailers have been around for years; I’ve referenced the Penguin Warehouse example before, and we’ve also talked about a mythical company selling pirate-hunting tours around the Horn of Africa, among other examples. On the other hand, it’s getting harder and harder to say how far someone might be willing to take wretched excess these days. If cashmere toilet paper, bottled water that sells for $40 a liter, and mattresses that cost more than my car (actually, more than all of the cars I have ever owned put together) can all really exist, I can’t imagine why somebody might not try to sell a safety razor for $100,000 – especially if the product costs them only a few thousand dollars to make (iridium was cheaper than gold the last time I looked – only $500 to $800 an ounce)…

In the long run, I suppose, it really doesn’t matter; if the demand for such a product actually exists, someone will start making them even if the current advertisement is just a hoax. Because unlike importing penguins or transporting tourists into war zones, selling ridiculously over-priced consumer products is legal. It’s just a matter of whether the people behind this are testing the waters to see if such a product will sell or are just trying to make fun of people who attempt to purchase a $100,000 consumer product. From where I’m sitting, I can’t tell which one it is…