I didn't say that. We all agree it's kind of dumb, pragmatically. Mostly what I'm trying to do is convey to some commenters here what seems to be a common lac

I didn't say that. We all agree it's kind of dumb, pragmatically. Mostly what I'm trying to do is convey to some commenters here what seems to be a common lack of understanding in tech (maybe a good thing) as to how and why people buy goods and services. When one understand this, one understands why it's a 'good' business plan. Also - we - all of us - are woefully unaware of how poignant and powerful all of this is. It works on all of us and 100% of the consumer goods we buy - and even many 'tech goods' are brand and aspirationaly oriented. Tech is full of ridiculous fads and memes; when I go to tech conferences we play a game of 'count the allbirds' (shoes) as kind of a joke. But even for actual tech products: Google, FB, Snapchat, Apple (obviously), MS, to some extent Twitter - those are heavy brands, even if they weren't derived from a bunch of marketing people ... 'Do No Evil' ended up being an important lynchpin of Google branding efforts. Way way back in about the year 2000, Google was running ads on NPR and their ethos and manner was presented ultimately as quite different than other tech companies. It was part of their messaging, however authentic. So - no, I would not want to do this business, I would not want to support it, and I hope I never buy this ridiculous water. But I know my snowboarding brother and his friends will ...