This song is just a cute indie croon until you realize that lines like “I hope you don’t know where I am” are about running from scary men. Choose to read it as a metaphor if you’d like to feel less agitated, but good luck mindlessly singing along to the chorus. Take a listen real quick and then let’s talk about guns.
You know how we have Clif Bars for women and yogurt for men? Well, the universe keeps on giving and now there’s coffee for the far right. The Utah company Black Rifle Coffee is blowing up right now,* forging the “put a gun on it” era of branding for insurrectionists. After their merch made it into the Capitol on January 6th, the brand has been enjoying something of a moment in the sun. Since you’re new here, they’ll have you know that their high-quality beans are small-batch roasted RIGHT HERE IN THE U.S.A., then delivered in TRUCKS that GUZZLE GAS. This is coffee FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE AMERICA — not the crazy leftist ones, obviously, but the guys who can shoot bullets through a bag of coffee beans like in the brand’s promo video. Why would you shoot at coffee? Because you’re free, goddamnit, and that’s what it’s all about. Wake up to Fresh Roasted Freedom™. If you don’t, you’re antifa.
*They actually started their rise in 2017 when, in response to Starbucks’ pledge to hire 10,000 refugees, they pledged to hire 10,000 veterans.
Commerce for the rest of us isn’t doing so great either. Remember when Warby Parker was exciting in like 2008? And then Casper? And Leesa? And BrooklinenAllbirdsOutdoorVoicesHausAway… Now that we’ve produced more direct-to-consumer brands than we know what to do with, it naturally follows that we need a guide to make sense of them all. Predictably, a bunch of former DTC execs are on the case with The Fascination, a site that reviews internet brands and lets you buy them on the spot. Now, you may recall that the whole value prop of a direct-to-consumer brand is that they cut out the middle man to save you the markup. Yet here we are again with a man in the middle, quietly taking cuts of our purchases. So it would seem that the revolutionary, venture-funded “directory of curated brands” is…… just a store.
Just a note to say that a bunch of Canada’s major cities are thinking about banning hand guns, if you want to go there instead. Just be warned: shipping from all your brands is going to be more expensive.