Or just buy a safety razor (mine is a simple one made of plastic and some metal weight in the handle) and a bunch of double edge blades and call it a day. If s

Or just buy a safety razor (mine is a simple one made of plastic and some metal weight in the handle) and a bunch of double edge blades and call it a day. If some people want to turn it into a hobby where they obsess over badger hair brushes and so on, that's also fine. Nobody is ever forced to buy that sort of stuff. All marketing tries to mislead people to spend money on "unnecessary" stuff. That's what people mostly spend their disposable income on. And Americans have tons and tons of disposable income, so they are good targets for marketing. I don't see the same thing in Germany for example as people are generally more careful with their money and don't have ginormous amounts of it like Americans (look up the disposable incomes). For example, you're (assuming you're American) also getting screwed by the mattress industry.