00:02:24.240This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.
00:02:29.460I'm Amanda Mull. I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic.
00:02:32.540So, Stanley Cups, the drinking vessel, not the hockey prize.
00:02:36.140That's what we're talking about today, because of very strong listener demand.
00:02:40.820And we're also going to talk a lot about just water bottles generally, and hydration fetishization.
00:02:46.500So, Amanda, how would you describe the timeline of water bottle trends?
00:02:51.880Water bottle trends go pretty far back.
00:02:54.700It's interesting because this is a trend cycle that like I could sort of see different people sort of like clue into at different moments.
00:03:03.220Like it got bigger and bigger and bigger.
00:03:05.340But like the whole idea of water bottles being trendy goes back to, well, reusable water bottles goes back to the 2000s when Nalgene's first became sort of a thing on college campuses.
00:03:18.240I would even date it to 1999, which is when I bought my first Nalgene.
00:03:22.520But I also lived in the Pacific Northwest.
00:03:42.500By the time I got to college at the University of Georgia in 2004,
00:03:47.000in the student bookstore on campus, you could buy a University of Georgia branded Nalgene.
00:03:52.480And those were very, very popular among incoming freshmen.
00:03:56.180Yes, I am sure. And you just like hold it by the top, right, which is actually very grippable,
00:04:00.720I will say. And it kind of swings, and it's heavy. And the other thing I'll say that maybe
00:04:05.680people of my micro generation will recognize, and I'm curious to see if you do this too,
00:04:10.700I still refer to my water bottle oftentimes as a Nalgene. Like I'll say, where's my Nalgene?
00:04:16.480like a kleenex you know like the brand it's superimposed yes it is in some cases like kleenex
00:04:21.860or band-aid type of thing where um especially i think of water bottles that are transparent plastic
00:04:29.120that like very hard plastic as now jeans like i have a yeti i have a yeti now jean essentially
00:04:36.100yeah you know it's so funny yeah there's like there's now jeans and there's insulated water
00:04:42.540bottles yeah um so those i think were like the first like trendy reusable water bottles but um
00:04:49.640and i i wrote about how this has sort of all changed over the years like way back in 2018 2019
00:04:55.180because at the time like swells were the big thing which were like the sort of like curvy
00:05:00.660like girly um with the screw top lids um those were huge and um hydro flask i have
00:05:09.520owned and do own several hydro flasks those were the big things because they came in like pastel
00:05:15.140colors they were very popular among teenagers and then you get sort of into the yeti thing as like
00:05:21.280men are like well i'd like a water bottle and yeti's like i'd like to sell you a water bottle
00:05:25.500so you get like a bunch of those and those have like a whole different regional valence than like
00:05:30.640the early water bottles do because those are from where i'm from um yeah those are from the south
00:05:35.720So you get, like, you know, every water bottle brand has sort of its, like, cultural valence to it.
00:05:42.020Like, who is this the water bottle for?
00:05:44.620And we do this with a lot of consumer goods.
00:05:47.280But even before all of this started happening in the early 2000s, late 90s, depending on what part of the country you were in, you had this entire run of trendy bottled water.
00:05:59.940And this is, I think, where the idea of like trendy hydration really started when you get the Evian, you get then Fiji water, you get this idea that carrying water around is a like healthy for you and evidence of like, putting value in yourself and like you're spending money on it and you understand, you know, which brands are supposed to be the best.
00:06:22.600So these like labeled water bottles are very, very trendy.
00:06:28.440And then we sort of start to realize that it's not a great idea to use all that plastic.
00:06:32.880So that's where you get, I think, this transition into using the reusable water bottles.
00:06:38.980And that sort of induces demand for all of these brands that now make them.
00:06:43.620Yeah, so much of what I learned about hydration craze, which is something that I think a lot
00:06:48.260of people around our age group are like, I only drink water out of drinking fountains. I was like
00:06:54.560a shriveled shell of dehydration as a child. And now like kids are in max hydration all of the
00:07:00.540time. I learned a lot from the Decoder Ring podcast from Slate. They have a great episode
00:07:07.020on hydration that I recommend very strongly to anyone that also interviews a lot of academics
00:07:12.260on like the history of bottled water consumption and how we came to think of this. But I think
00:07:18.140this is a good segue for us to actually dig a little bit more into this idea with hydration.
00:07:22.380So we got so many questions. We received more questions for this episode than any other episode
00:07:28.280so far. So we are going to get right into it. This first one comes from Katie and Melody is
00:07:33.420going to read it. Were we all in a constant state of dehydration before the water bottle era?
00:07:39.100Do you think there's some connection between the rise of processed food with excess sodium
00:07:43.180and the increase in thirst okay so I want to caveat this first to say that in the past when
00:07:49.740I have made comments about the rise of hydration fascination hydration fetishization people have0.99
00:07:58.480been like like I had a tweet go viral where people are like what's wrong with this bitch1.00
00:08:02.760like there does she want us all to like be in pain and have headaches all the time like I wasn't1.00
00:08:09.000against hydration I'm not against hydration I am upset I'm that person who like when someone
00:08:13.840when my partner Charlie your co-worker says oh I have a little bit of a headache or like any
00:08:19.180ailment I'm like oh have you drunk enough water today like that is always my go-to fix but at the
00:08:25.660same time I think there is a very very clear shift in how we've thought about the necessity of
00:08:31.700hydration or even the word hydration so what's your thinking on this yeah I think that sometimes
00:08:37.620people can misapprehend the urge to like understand how something functions in culture and how it has
00:08:43.300is function within culture has changed as like criticism of the thing itself but like drinking
00:08:48.560drinking water is good i love drinking water it's a good idea for everybody to drink water a lot of
00:08:52.400people probably don't drink quite enough the idea that it's good to drink water is like not something
00:08:57.080i think that like anybody anybody here is critical of in and of itself i love it i'm drinking water
00:09:04.320while we're speaking. Yeah, absolutely. Me too. But like the it is very, very interesting the way
00:09:10.880that like, this idea becomes like sort of a marker of wellness overall in a way that it's almost
00:09:20.800like axiomatic. This is how we understand what a healthy person is. They drink water, they get
00:09:26.060enough sleep, they do certain things, they walk 10,000 steps, like there are all these sort of
00:09:31.100like factoids that we invoke and like if you do all of these things then you're healthy and like
00:09:36.280what does that mean is it correct like why did my parents never drink any water as long as I
00:09:44.240you know as long as I lived in their household and but then suddenly like we're all gonna die
00:09:48.320if we don't drink water like um they didn't die no I just think about like my granddad who's I'm
00:09:54.280sure the only water that he drank during the day was either like if he felt an incredible thirst
00:09:59.100and like chugged a glass of water that he poured at the top and like drank it at the sink. Do you
00:10:04.940know what I mean? Right. Or water that was in gin, ice cubes that were in his gin and tonic. Like
00:10:09.840that is how he got his water and was, you know, smoking several packs of cigarettes a day. I kind
00:10:15.360of think that the baseline for our grandparents generation for many in our grandparents generation
00:10:20.220was just like kind of feeling bad all the time. Yes, I think this is this is like a broader topic
00:10:25.640that I'm sort of obsessed with because I think that there we have a lot of folk beliefs as like
00:10:30.840a generation like people who are like I would say like 40 45 and under that like a couple of
00:10:37.720generations ago people's health was a lot better because they they ate better food they interacted
00:10:43.340with like purer things in life and like when you actually go back and look at the habits of like
00:10:48.720the greatest generation the greatest generation was like constantly zooted on diet pills they were
00:10:54.500they drank like several times more than than the average person does now they drank coffee all day0.99
00:11:00.920and it was shit coffee um they were drinking like bolgers yes it was just like ripping on0.99
00:11:07.740unfiltered cigarettes right unfiltered cigarettes that they started at like age 12 like my granddad0.99
00:11:13.780literally started smoking at age 12 and smoked until age 82 you know like yeah unfiltered
00:11:19.620cigarettes, lead in the gasoline, um, no seatbelts in the cars. Like there was a lot of like
00:11:26.280fascinating ways to, to, um, die or become ill, um, that we are pretty shielded from now. And
00:11:33.640like, which is not to say that like culture is like healthy now, but I do think that this idea
00:11:38.720that we have changed so much from the worst in our health habits over time, like just really
00:11:42.880does not stand up to scrutiny. I'm interested in the ways, and this I think comes from my own
00:11:48.700context of watching Nalgene's which I actually really bought to go hiking with like we had early
00:11:55.700Nalgene's or even something like a Stanley thermos which the early iterations were here's a thermos
00:12:01.820that either you take to work or you take when you're going hunting or fishing right like it had
00:12:07.280this very specific utility and often it contained coffee like you could use the the lid to drink
00:12:12.580cups of coffee throughout the day like it often was not was not water at all no and that has then
00:12:22.180transferred over into a necessity for everyday life and I think there are some parallels that
00:12:26.920maybe you can tease out here with like athleisure or ideas about nutrition and hydration and even
00:12:33.200like fueling that are part and parcel of this like optimization and wellness idea that like
00:12:41.560even if you're the most rigorous exercise that you do during the day is like walking your dog
00:12:47.900that you still need to be hydrated as if you are training for a marathon. Yeah, I think that
00:12:53.260something that is interesting over time is what our idea of like an elite lifestyle is. When most
00:13:00.400people had to toil outside every day, the the way to live like a luxurious high status life was to
00:13:06.720be inside and to not have to deal with the outdoors at all. And then you see with, you know,
00:13:11.600the industrial revolution, a lot of work, both physical work and non physical moves inside. And
00:13:17.180then with the technological revolution, it moves even further inside to the internet. So suddenly,
00:13:24.140it's really difficult for a lot of people to get out of their houses to get as much movement as
00:13:28.480they should to spend as much time in in nature in the outdoors as they might have in previous
00:13:33.120generations. So that becomes what is sort of aspirational. This concept of being able to go
00:13:41.100to the gym and being able to spend time sort of fine tuning your body to spend time in nature to
00:13:46.460spend time at the beach is very, very high status. So with that, you get all of the sort of like
00:13:53.440physical material trappings of that status, you get athleisure, which you know, wearing it implies
00:13:59.260that, you know, maybe you didn't just come from a yoga class or from the gym, but it implies that
00:14:03.280you're a person who does those things because you have the clothing for it. Yeah, you're always
00:14:07.900ready. Spontaneous yoga, just right now. You have all the equipment for it, you're available to go
00:14:14.840to yoga, you are a person who values these activities and who participates in them. So that
00:14:19.260is like the way those the material goods that are associated with these activities become
00:14:24.700high status goods, even though they're not quote unquote luxury goods. They're a little bit
00:14:29.660expensive, like a Stanley Cup is 45 bucks for the big size. But mostly they are something that
00:14:35.780signals that you spend time and money and effort on these activities that are considered aspirational
00:14:41.280and high status. So with that comes the water bottles. And when it's, you know, in a culture
00:14:47.600where it is considered aspirational and high status to concentrate on your health and to
00:14:52.860fine tune your body and to treat yourself well, then a water bottle, even if it doesn't directly
00:14:59.060signal, I'm coming from the gym, it signals that you are somebody who has the time and resources
00:15:04.540and knowledge. And a lot of this is like knowledge that you're supposed to have and you're supposed
00:15:09.940to acquire to do the correct things to improve your life as much as like a very rich person could.
00:15:16.520Okay, so this next question comes from Alex, and it's about the nature of the discourse.
00:15:19.880What is the men's equivalent of the Stanley Cup? Or insert other femme-coded consumer trend here.
00:15:28.000And why aren't they getting roasted online about it? What can we start roasting the men about?0.79
00:15:33.900Okay, so first, we talked a little bit about the Yeti. Do you agree that water bottles more
00:15:39.500generally are like a femme-coded consumer trend? I think that they are mostly femme,0.98
00:15:45.820But I think that that has equaled out significantly in the past few years, especially with like the sort of advent of the Yeti branding for for drinking vessels.
00:15:57.180And you see this in other areas of consumer goods as well, where things that were previously intended for women's like physical and appearance upkeep have become more interesting to men.
00:16:13.800It just like like it's good for men to feel like they have the freedom to, you know, express themselves however they want to and and, you know, deal with their bodies however they want to.1.00
00:16:22.940But like it's probably bad for them to be feeling like even more pressure about that in the way that women do.0.99
00:16:28.940Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those shitty things where it's like we don't want like the equalization to be like men should also feel like the incredibly toxic pressure that women feel to have their body regimented in certain ways.
00:16:41.720like that's not that's not a quality right right equality of pressure is not is not equality like
00:16:47.780theoretically it would be a quality of of choice and like the the ability to to you know self
00:16:53.440determine what your body looks like and how you treat it in whatever way you want to I think it's
00:16:58.080so fascinating that water bottle design does feel gender coded to me like you were talking earlier
00:17:04.080about the swell bottles and how like they're curvy and they just feel more feminine and then I think
00:17:09.800of like my partner's yeti that he has which is giant it's like 24 ounces it's man portion
00:17:17.860of water or maybe it's 36 ounces and then the top is like a huge screw top right and the the mouth
00:17:25.640is big for like man mouth right like yeah it's just so much bigger yeah if i had it it would be
00:17:31.780the size of my thigh like it's not a desirable water bottle for me but do you think like that
00:17:36.400sort of like that's part of how they've marketed to men yeah i think that like water bottles are
00:17:43.120sort of a fascinating design challenge as far as like consumer goods go because like we've had the
00:17:49.080technology to keep water cold in this kind of vessel for like a really long time like like the
00:17:53.420technology itself to like do the practical thing is not new stanley has had the patent for like a
00:17:59.020century um and it works basically the same as it always has like like it has not changed a whole
00:18:04.240lot and you know different companies use like slightly different methods for insulation but
00:18:09.120like this is a thing that we can do these are products we can fabricate it's not like it's not
00:18:13.660rocket science it's not something that came up in the past 10 years um so you really get this
00:18:18.480opportunity like once you have a you know a vessel that can hold some amount of water you can sort of
00:18:23.740do whatever else to it you want as far as like how you make it look how you how sharp or curvy the
00:18:30.400edges are what kind of colors it comes in what kind of metallic finishes you have um in the
00:18:34.960metal parts like do you put a handle on it or do you not like this is a big thing about the Stanley
00:18:39.800for me and maybe we'll get into this later but like I think one of the reasons that the Stanley1.00
00:18:44.500became so popular with women is that like you know 30 to 32 ounce water bottles were already1.00
00:18:50.360popular among this group like uh lots of people had the hydro flasks yeah I knew women who were0.53
00:18:56.340buying yetis already when the when the stanley's became popular like these were these were out
00:19:00.920there um there was a lot of brands that made bright colors so it wasn't just that it was only
00:19:06.420stanley that was looking for the feminine audience but a big problem with like a large1.00
00:19:12.000capacity water bottle is that women on average have smaller hands i have i personally have like1.00
00:19:17.040tiny baby hands i have tiny hands i have baby hands too yeah and i i know that like i will1.00
00:19:22.380drink as much water as I have in front of me. So if I have like a, like a drinking glass of water
00:19:27.340that is easy for me to hold, like it might be eight hours before I get up and refill it because
00:19:31.620I'll just the hyper focus and time will pass. And you know, who knows what happens in that period.
00:19:36.540Um, but if I have 40 ounces right there, I'll drink 40 ounces and I will feel better and sleep
00:19:42.320better. And you know, I will have plausibly done something better for my health, but like the 30
00:19:47.060to 32 ounce water bottles that are just a cylinder, like I have a hard time gripping them when they're
00:19:51.940full they're heavy um they're a little bit big around like and especially if i'm taking it to
00:19:56.520the gym or something and i'm sweating and it's a little bit wet and like it just is really hard
00:20:01.980to keep a hold on while you're and then you have to like unscrew it to sip or whatever like it is
00:20:06.920just like a whole thing and i have tiny baby hands and i never really liked it the reason i got the
00:20:12.840stanley is because it has a handle like i i saw a lot of people like them i didn't jump on
00:20:17.980immediately. But I was like, you know, a lot of people seem to like these. I have not been using
00:20:22.480my hydro flask at home as much as I would like to because it's like, I don't know, it's just
00:20:27.380annoying to deal with and annoying to grab. The handle is interesting. So like, why don't I try
00:20:32.920it? And I love it. Like, it's so much easier to grab it, especially with one hand. So I think
00:20:37.820that that was like, a design issue that a lot of these companies had that they maybe didn't realize
00:20:43.040they had because like big water bottles with a handle like did exist but companies weren't
00:20:48.600really putting them on bottles of like the 30 to 40 ounce size at the time and I honestly think
00:20:55.780that that was like the innovation that people were like oh this makes so much more sense you
00:20:59.580can carry it securely with one hand you don't have to screw it off to sip it's got a straw
00:21:04.320I think that in sort of the rush to make water bottles that looked good for women that a lot
00:21:11.540of companies sort of missed the functional aspects that might be valuable to women in particular,
00:21:16.400and especially to moms, which is where the Stanleys first took off. And I think that that
00:21:22.240is sort of like a fascinating element of this. And I think it got sort of glossed over in a lot
00:21:26.680of people trying to explain the trend. I think that that is why the Stanley over all of them
00:21:32.020took off. I think one of them was going to take off and it just happened to be the Stanley because
00:21:35.660of that yeah and i think stanley was also maybe not so precious about oh we make water bottles
00:21:42.720for athletes right like this actually reminds me in some ways about how part of hocus success stems
00:21:48.240from its real willingness to make shoes that are quote-unquote athletic shoes that aren't for
00:21:54.920people who are necessarily running right right whereas another company like say brooks or
00:21:59.680something it's like oh but we still got to make sure that this is a running shoe and hocus like
00:22:04.200nah we want people to wear these for everything and the thing about a stanley cup and part of
00:22:10.160the reason why i don't have one is it is top heavy it's not great for putting one like a peloton thing
00:22:15.840it's not great for using necessarily at the gym like it doesn't have that utility which is fine
00:22:21.480it has so many other utilities but you can't pretend that it's necessarily like the best
00:22:25.900exercise or hiking water bottle right i would never take my stanley outside of my house i
00:22:30.600I well the one time that I did it I had to rent a car in my 13 years in New York City this is the
00:22:37.600first time I drove a car in the city I had to rent a car to drive out to the middle of Pennsylvania
00:22:42.160to do a site visit for a story I wrote about return facilities oh right and so I knew that
00:22:48.320I was going to have like a two and a half hour drive each way and I was like well normally I'd
00:22:52.640have my water bottle with me so I guess I'm taking my Stanley on the road and but just but just having
00:22:57.900it in my hand to like take the train down to the rental car place and pick up the rental car I felt
00:23:02.320a little bit silly you have to like march with it like upright and it's so big um I was like I know
00:23:09.100I know that this is a little bit silly this is not normally where I would go with this but
00:23:12.500it was in the car great like it sat in the cup holder I know that's something that a lot of
00:23:16.640people appreciate about it and I can totally see why that why that would be but like you can't take
00:23:22.560the thing to the gym like or like put it in your backpack right like it doesn't fit right it will
00:23:28.720it will tip over um yeah there's definitely like some things that like my hydro flasks still do
00:23:34.520with me they go to the gym with me they you know they they do a lot of the like if I went to the
00:23:39.220beach I would take my hydro flask um with me I did see I was at the beach in January and I did
00:23:44.640see a couple a couple girls at the the beach who had their Stanleys with them and I was like
00:23:49.840god bless if you brought that on a plane to get here and are like exposing it the the wide surface
00:23:56.240area on the top to the sand right i mean yeah go with god yeah i brought my yeti with the screw top
00:24:01.780for that the the sort of plain plastic one without any insulation it was like is it this is lightweight
00:24:06.980when there's no water in it goes on the plane it's fine so we didn't come up with a masculine
00:24:11.500coated equivalent and i think our advice would be like we don't need to roast men for their
00:24:15.760consumption habits let's just not roast anyone what i would say about that though is this question
00:24:21.040confused me because i wasn't exactly sure what she was getting at is if it's something that like
00:24:26.540fills this role for men or if it's just there is a consumption pattern um that is equally sort of
00:24:32.480like inscrutable from the outside that men do and i think the latter thing there absolutely are and
00:24:37.560there's a zillion of them like gamer rigs decorating your like gaming cave lining up for beer releases
00:24:44.040yes uh lining up for legos like the one thing that i got into about my in my story about this
00:24:50.640is that stanley is a consumer phenomenon looks strange when it sort of surfaces to you out of
00:24:56.060nowhere and you don't have any context on it but like this phenomenon of people like waiting
00:25:01.800outside of a store for a new release or whatever is happening constantly you're just not in the
00:25:06.620parking lot at nine in the morning when when people are are being let in to get their you
00:25:12.020know limited edition sets of whatever like this is really really common and not gendered at all
00:25:16.180yeah shoes sneakers have been huge about this for years the ones that are specifically male0.93
00:25:22.880coated I think are sneakers Legos anything to do with gaming I think men definitely get roasted for
00:25:28.620certain types of consumption habits that they have and for this consumption pattern of behavior0.76
00:25:33.660you might not be in the communities that are roasting them I think because like a lot of1.00
00:25:39.940a lot of who I saw roasting Stanley Cup owners were other women. It was not just purely men
00:25:45.400doing this. I think men roast other men for this kind of stuff a lot. I think that because women
00:25:50.740make up an outsized portion of the consumer market, and there's a, you know, there's historical1.00
00:25:55.160reasons for that. I think that often our consumer habits are surfaced a little bit more easily to
00:26:01.700the culture at large. But I would say that this sort of behavior replicates itself in all kinds
00:26:06.700of cohorts of humans no matter gender and i'd also say part of the reason that we roast people
00:26:12.740for it there's like two twin forces happening there's this understanding that like it's a
00:26:18.960hysteria right like that there's a feminizing that happens so like when men are competing for
00:26:23.500these objects it is in a behavior style that we associate with women and with like irrational
00:26:30.060behavior and then also there's like a very muted but very present capitalist critique that's like
00:26:37.480how can you be this excited about buying something and i don't think it's necessarily
00:26:41.960like an actual like don't buy anything like it's not like a marxist critique it's more like
00:26:46.860how can you believe that someone is this excited about buying an object
00:26:51.260right and i i think both of those understandings are pretty misplaced i think that they are too
00:26:57.660and especially this idea that people find it sort of inexplicable to be excited about buying an
00:27:05.580object. I think that people do a lot of internal justification that their fixations are somehow
00:27:11.480like objectively superior to the fixations that they don't understand. You can see this conversation
00:27:17.700sort of play out in like little interpersonal interactions on the internet about the Stanley
00:27:21.820cups all over the place where the stanley cup will come around and somebody will you know or
00:27:28.480it'll come up on a subreddit for people who collect something else and um yes yeah and and
00:27:35.560and somebody will be like how could you like spend all this time on a water bottle and someone will
00:27:39.640reply to them and go you know you're on an internet message board about um stuffed animals right
00:27:46.960you know you know that this is like you know and and they'll respond again and go but this is like
00:27:53.880objectively that and they're really well made and they're you know and we all have these sort of
00:27:57.120justifications for why the things we're obsessed with are more rational and more justifiable than
00:28:01.860the things other people are obsessed with and maybe they are to us maybe they fit like some
00:28:06.340practical or emotional need for us that a water bottle wouldn't but this is like this is like one
00:28:11.880of the most replicable modern human behaviors I have ever come across. Like everybody is like
00:28:17.400this about something, even if you don't believe you are. Yeah, yeah. So I just wrote about dahlias
00:28:21.660and there's like this, there's a whole bunch of stuff that's going on in the dahlia world right
00:28:25.780now, what's called the dahlia wars. And there's all this competition for unicorns. And, and the
00:28:30.980way that I finished the piece was asking people, how is this behavior replicated in your niche
00:28:36.940expertise or hobby and people all over they're like this is how this happens in civil war
00:28:43.420memorabilia collection like this is how this happens in knitting all over the place and I
00:28:49.000think that like if we can extend that understanding to also include something like this which is
00:28:53.640really ultimately about collecting and this is a great segue to our next question which is about
00:28:59.480sustainability we got a ton of questions about sustainability and this question from Melanie
00:29:03.720summed it up best. At what point is the market for stainless steel tumblers and other reusable
00:29:09.100vessels oversaturated? I think it already is. Is this bad for the environment? Where do obsolete
00:29:16.180bottles and tumblers go to die? Right. I feel like you're the best person to answer this question,
00:29:21.720even though it's a really hard one, because I've loved your reporting on like what happens to
00:29:26.260returns and like the ultimate, the stuff that like we like to not think about when it comes to
00:29:31.800consumer behavior so what do you think here i think the market is oversaturated like i think
00:29:37.260that we are already past capacity for how many of these that like humanity could actually like
00:29:42.200need when it becomes bad for the environment is sort of difficult to pinpoint like um because
00:29:48.560there is all this sort of like very difficult very opaque math that goes into calculating like
00:29:54.220the environmental impact of like a particular product and it is usually sort of incomplete and
00:29:59.800it makes things just really like hard to compare to each other. Also, I would say that like most
00:30:07.280people are not collecting these. Yeah. As with anything on the internet, what you see and what
00:30:13.380what becomes ridiculous enough to like cross your awareness is probably an extreme of the entire
00:30:20.960set of behavior that goes along with a particular object or a particular fandom or whatever. So you
00:30:27.100get people acting a little strange in the Target parking lot or rushing in to buy things. And it's
00:30:36.340funny because most of the videos that I saw of people rushing in to buy the things were actually
00:30:39.900pretty orderly. I've worked at big box stores in the past and like, I don't know, I've seen worse
00:30:44.440fights than that. Yes. Yeah. Over like a sale, like a markdown on sheets. Yeah. Yeah. Like people
00:30:52.140were rushing and it was very quick and like a little bit chaotic. But like in most of those,
00:30:56.240like nobody got hurt like nobody you know nobody fell over nobody tripped nobody nobody pushed
00:31:01.280anybody else you know it's um in the in the grand scheme of retail behavior this was like sort of0.97
00:31:07.220tame I thought mostly from the videos that I saw um and from like the shit I've seen myself
00:31:12.120so you most people don't collect like collecting is in anything is like a is like a very small0.81
00:31:19.780percentage of the buying behavior that you're going to see in a market but you do end up sort
00:31:24.560of accumulating these over time and a lot of times you're going to end up accumulating them
00:31:28.460because um you went to a wedding and someone gave you one you went to a conference and usually the
00:31:35.020ones that they give you are like pretty low quality so they're really on your like jv shelf
00:31:39.440and they just hang out yeah yeah yeah you sort of like accumulate them over time because they are
00:31:45.060an easy like piece of swag to give out they are an easy gift from like the you know the family
00:31:50.000member you don't really know yeah but everybody knows they're like expensive enough to be like
00:31:53.620useful and expensive enough to that, like somebody, you know, spent 40 bucks on you or
00:31:57.940whatever. So they feel like a really good gifting slot. I remember talking to the head of swell
00:32:02.500back when I wrote that article in 2018 or 2019 at first. And she said that there was like this very
00:32:09.160replicable behavior that they saw on ordering on their website that they would have customers
00:32:14.980that would order one and maybe like come back and order another one. And then they might not
00:32:19.380see him again, but then it was holidays and they'd come back and they'd order five because they were
00:32:23.440going to give them to their friends or their like female family members or something so
00:32:27.120because they are they were like a really like they're a good roi gift like nobody's going to
00:32:31.480be upset that they got like a nice water bottle totally um they're they're very safe so i think
00:32:37.940that like for most people the accumulation that you end up with is this sort of like ambient
00:32:42.380accumulation um because they are marketed as gifts because they are so frequently given away
00:32:47.760as like event swag or whatever and that is like i think probably where more of your environmental
00:32:55.780waste comes from um from people sort of like distributing these like they distribute tote bags
00:33:01.700and like that behavior happens at scale because it happens like because you order like several
00:33:07.180thousand of them to give out or several hundred depending on the size of your event whereas
00:33:11.640somebody who's just like ordered four of them um because you know they had a couple in a different
00:33:16.680sizes and then there was like a color that they really liked that came out and they're like ah
00:33:19.940damn they got me again like an individual doing that I think is probably still toward like one
00:33:24.740of the extremes of consumption of personal consumption for these and even then like0.99
00:33:29.440it's not going to be as harmful as like this happening at scale because a fortune 500 company
00:33:35.520decided to give one of these to every single one of their employees for the holidays or whatever
00:33:39.600like I think I would like if I was criticizing this first of all I think water bottles are
00:33:44.980actually a really great way to deter people from drinking bottled water and celebrate the fact that
00:33:52.740we have good drinking water in the vast majority of places in this country and we should celebrate
00:33:57.800that municipal infrastructure whenever possible uh but then i think that like if you're going to
00:34:05.360critique or if you're going to try to like advocate for systemic change it should be at the corporate
00:34:09.920level right it's like don't give this a swag this is not the utility that you think like this is
00:34:14.500actually where the waste comes because if someone donates i don't know a water bottle that like is
00:34:19.960for like edward jones and co like someone is not likely to thrift that or secondhand you know what
00:34:25.620i mean like right there are other types of water bottles that people do want to reuse but that's
00:34:29.920not necessarily the one yeah yeah and i think that like that is like a great place to start and like
00:34:34.860stop giving out this stuff that nobody wants just because it has a logo on it and because
00:34:38.560uh you feel like it's good like employee relations or whatever like stop don't do it
00:34:42.880do something else buy them lunch like i don't need do you know how many pairs of buzzfeed
00:34:47.560like socks i still have like right i don't need that um yeah but i think that the idea that these
00:34:53.280are good for the environment and buying one is like good for the environment is something that
00:34:57.100these brands use to sell more of these than like people really need so like i think what the
00:35:02.160questioner is is bringing up is like a valid thing but i would say i would be sort of slow
00:35:08.620to generalize collectors as like the main consumers of these. And also like, you have to sort of look
00:35:14.700at like the holistic market and like where they where they come from in all kinds of different
00:35:19.700ways. Okay, so our last question is a twofer. And this is one that we got a ton about. And that's
00:35:26.040about kids and water bottles. So we're going to play two questions back to back and then answer
00:35:30.380them together. First up is Nora. I'm a former teacher, nanny babysitter. I currently am a
00:35:37.440pediatric social worker and my question is when the fuck did kids get so obsessed with carrying0.98
00:35:46.660water bottles like am I just blocking out my own water bottle habits from when I was a kid0.99
00:35:52.160why does every child always have a water bottle and is so obsessed with hydration
00:35:57.660and then here's Caitlin can you explain how water bottle mania extends to kids and two specific
00:36:03.860things. One, class signaling at an early age, and two, wellness surveillance in terms of monitoring
00:36:11.000how much water kids are drinking. I see this in my daughter's cohort, and I wonder why are we like
00:36:16.500this as caregivers? There's so much going on here, and I feel like we can maybe just start with our
00:36:23.660joint acknowledgement that like, yeah, we did not have water bottles when we were kids. Like,