Today I’m gonna start with a suggested read: probably the most amazing article Cracked.com has ever published. But if you’re a lazy jackass here’s the exact point I want to touch:
Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that part? Yeah, whatever you try to build or create — be it a poem, or a new skill, or a new relationship — you will find yourself immediately surrounded by non-creators who trash it.
https://twitter.com/JohnDiesattheEn
Let’s say you’re a hookah enthusiast that also has a knack for pottery. You decide on making your own bowls. People see some and say “yeah, I wanna buy that shit off of you.” You make some and sell them.
And then one of those guys posts it on Reddit.
Why do we throw this double standard at people? First feedback on it was that it was lopsided. Here’s my Onyx:
Yet one is a very good artisan product that just requires the right grommet, bro, and the other is on the “I expected better quality” side cause there’s no hype around it yet. “If you choose to make something and sell it to people at a luxury price then it’s not asking much for it to be made properly.” Hear that, Mason? I want my money back. Or I could just sell it second hand and get 100 euros for it. Oh, wait, PEOPLE OVERPAY FOR LOPSIDED STUFF? HOLY SHIT, BATMAN.
And then comes the “omg copy” squad. Here’s the deal with phunnel bowls. They’ve been around for a while. Like, if you count the old-school “one hole without a spire” design, a very long while. But let’s say we place a T0 at when Eric released the Tangiers phunnel quite a few years ago. You only get like… what is it, 5 inches? to work with for the outside and there’s only so many ways you can actually prevent foil drag. And it’s also gotta be easy to handle. It is what it is. We’re at a point where there’s really only so much that’s new and even then those designs get continuously refined. That’s how it fucking goes.
But the copy callers usually play favourites and call the copies on their favourite brands. Do you hear many people upset about the micro looking like a hoob? Not really, but it’s fucking hilarious when you see one of these bandwagonners see a hoob and cry out them copying Shishabucks.
How much innovation can you put into a product at a time and why the hell are we saying no to incremental refinements/improvements/variations?
Now if you wanna make bowls, your clay and ability to make a good bowl out of it have to play in the background while you have to sweat your brain out to find whatever gimmick you can that won’t impair said bowl’s performance but allow you to call out “I’m different”. Gotta choose shitty colours instead of a nice blue, cause Onyxes are blue. Gotta be careful with using metal cause there’s a Skybowl out there already (not that we care much that there was stuff like the Minzari Crown beforehand. This one was innovative in using metal!). Gotta be careful with any trimmings and decorations cause there’s the Relyx. Don’t dare have notches in the spire, cause there’s the Rook. Holes in the middle of a closed spire are okay cause none of us are Vortex fanboys so we’ll not really care. Designs on the bottom are a no-no because of the Stone bowls. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
We’ll eventually end up with a bunch of Kaloud’s screaming and kicking about “muh design” and lose as consumers, in a market where you can already vote with your money, even if it means “I just want this cause of the sweet karma of reddit.”
How does this all fit in a blog where I’m tearing B2 a new one every two posts over grommets? Well, for now Hazy, Akimbo and other makers don’t really make a fuss over their releases or brands. They don’t have fanboy clubs yet. (Yet. The moment when you start brigading criticism comments you’re part of the club. Don’t be the same as the other fanboys. Downvote/ignore and move on.) Once they’ll start pre-sales, teasers, calling “innovation” for standard features, hype and stuff, well, I’ll have more brands to rant about. In the meantime, carry on.
Hookah Rants 