See a month go by; See a viral purchase trend explode. Such is life in the consumerism-happy United States. Recently, A shoppingblitz For Valentine’s Day editions of the Chunky isolated Stanley tumbler rolled over the internet, to big boxes and over middle schools. What this says about America screams at a much higher decibel than the jangel of slow ice cubes in the tumblers themselves.
Background
In recent years, Stanley, the 100-year-old company behind the green thermos from camping trips in Yore, has invaded consumer consciousness. First, the company’s Quencher Tumbler was presented in the Buy Guide, an affiliate marketing site run by a Gaggle of Moma flower. “Every time we switched on it, it would sell out so quickly,” Ashlee Lesueur, one of the buying guide’s owners, told New York Times. The purchase guide continued to sell the tumblers – and sell out. Infectors of social media soon jumped aboard and sales catapulted. “We are convinced that we will be one of the leading lifestyle brands in the world over the next few years,” Terence Reilly, Stanley’s CEO from 2020, said in a Harvard Business Review Podcast section.
The latest
Fast flushing until the beginning of 2024, when Stanley, after continuing its cultural and fiscal ascent, released a Valentine’s day’s edition of Quencher Tumbler. Consumer devil followed. Some cultural critics flash. “There is no real reason that any of this happened, or at least no reason will feel satisfactory to you. Sometimes a cup is just a cup in the right place at the right time,” said Amanda Mull in Atlantic. As if these things are just happening. Not rather because there are forces that are mandatory such trends.
Subscribe to The week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from several perspectives.
Subscribe and save
Register for this week’s free newsletter
From our Morning News Briefing to a weekly newsletter every week, get the best of the week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our Morning News Briefing to a weekly newsletter every week, get the best of the week delivered directly to your inbox.
“What may seem to be an organic phenomenon … is actually a constructed company crossover,” Kyle Chayka said, and wrote about the rise of the boardroom behind Stanley’s rise, in New Yorker. “Companies prepare carefully and expensive to grow their moments of everywhere vicinity. They utilize our attention … to convert online viewers to fans and customers.” Can Stanley predict how exactly would consumers react to their plan for temporary market sharing conquest? Nope. Did Stanley go that there is a strong pipeline from the Old-Timey brand for ironically-kicked consumerism? You betcha.
The reaction
A post -effect Stanley probably did not predict the supervisory bullying in medical school. Bets of Preteens all over the country became obsessed with Stanley tumbles and in January 2024 they sent their new points when they returned from Holiday Break. “Nicole Walker, a sixth class science teacher in Mississippi, estimated that about half of her students release them from class to class,” wrote Julia Reinstein in The cut. “I wish I could have taken a picture today at lunch. At this table it was like every girl had a Stanley Cup,” Walker said.
A pulpable cat of class tension detonated when children without Stanley’s or with knockoff versions began to be bullied. And then a moral struggle began over a variety of social media platforms about whether parents should buy a tumbler for their Stanley-less child or let the child handle the bullying. @Cal_cifer_2.0, a teacher, distilled the two sides of Brouhaha in a Tiktok video.
Then they went on to analyze the classism on the foot. “If everyone with the financial means buys their child a Stanley Cup, then the only people who are bullied … will be the low -income children who can’t afford one?”
Cultural critic Ashtin Berry collected the threads on Instagram. She tied together capitalism, white supremacy, resource shocked and weapons incompetence in A series of posts dissecting the Stanley-centered bullying of aid school teachers and the role of parents in it.
In particular, she had words for the parents who threw her hands in the air, defeated and bought her child an extinguisher. “Everyone’s parenting or lack of it,” said Berry, “affects other children. And although most people are not given the privilege of parenting how they dream of, it is wild to act as if adults have no power to guide and push against the injuries on consumption. ”
