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We killed the golden goose (aka DE shaving is a hipster fad)

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MTG Jr

MTG Jr

I’ll admit, this thread is way too long for me to read the whole thing, but my initial thought is.....hipsters have lots of facial hair, so how can DE shaving be a hipster fad? And if it’s a fad at all (not associated with hipsters, obviously), why is this Forum over 15 years old? Fads, by definition, are far more short lived, no? Taking the argument beyond the merely anecdotal, I don’t consider myself or just about any of the folks on this Forum or any of the various social media sites that are involved in traditional DE shaving to meet the normal definition of hipster. I’m left wondering what the OP’s basis was for calling DE shaving a “hipster fad”.
 
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something better

something better

It’s definitely growing in popularity. Based on the fact that the number of new artisans making shaving soaps, the number of people making new razors has kind of exploded. so far there seems to be a large market for everyone.
 
JoeLr

JoeLr

MTG Jr said:
I’ll admit, this thread is way too long for me to read the whole thing, but my initial thought is.....hipsters have lots of facial hair, so how can DE shaving be a hipster fad? And if it’s a fad at all (not associated with hipsters, obviously), why is this Forum over 15 years old? Fads, by definition, are far more short lived, no? Taking the argument beyond the merely anecdotal, I don’t consider myself or just about any of the folks on this Forum or any of the various social media sites that are involved in traditional DE shaving to meet the normal definition of hipster. I’m left wondering what the OP’s basis was for calling DE shaving a “hipster fad”.
Click to expand...
I'm choosing to think it was an attempt at humor that just failed to land for many of us.
 
Domminigan

Domminigan

I can post a bit of experience with riding out a fad that killed off interest in something.

In 1969, my Mom’s cousin owned a brand new white Firebird TransAm with a blue interior. Her cousin had blue neon put under the car, and Mom has forever talked about the car and the underglow.

When I got my first car, I went out and bought an underbody neon kit with some accent neons and installed them. Joined a forum supported by the company and everything.

Eight months to a year later, The Fast and the Furious came out and all the world suddenly wanted neons. Everyone was sold out, the forums were loaded with newbies trying to get some glow and... things just got weird.

The Mart of Walls got involved and started selling cheap neons, a number of the guys who had been original members started branching out and selling their own products. Much like we have numbers of people selling soaps and handmade hardware, we had guys selling LEDs and kits.

On the online venues, the forums were completely overrun with new people. Visitors and new members spiked massively with the first couple movies. The biggest problems were adbots and spam messages, but twice we had active hackings. The first one deleted the entire contents of the message forum. Tutorials, hundreds of answered questions, everything was gone and we had to start over answering FAQs because nobody could search, and most everyone was a newbie with no clue what to do. The second time, we recovered better.

During all of this, the experience we had was very similar to what we are experiencing now; only on a smaller scale.
We had new products, new gadgets, lower prices. There was enough interest in the field that some decent innovations came out, like the LED underbodies that can change color, brighter LEDs... really MUCH brighter colored LEDs moved into the consumer market faster than they otherwise would have. Anything and everything that someone had come up with was suddenly getting financial backing and being produced. It was pretty great times.

Things started cooling down after a few years and a couple movies. Several of the people who opened their own online businesses closed them, and the forums started increasing activity in the BST as people got rid of their neon. As used prices dropped, I picked up cheap tubes and accessories at garage sales, flea markets and even thrift stores.

Now it is years after the fad of neon. You still see it on the bay, at far lower prices than they were originally.
You see a lot of cheap LED kits available, and the few companies that survived have branched out a bit.
The variety that exists currently is a bit hollow. While there are a lot of options, most of those options are the same low quality things that will perform poorly if at all. They will break quickly.
The few remaining high quality items are excellent, if not expensive. The costs of the good stuff went up as the quantities sold went down. The revamped real neon is more than double the original price.

The things that really killed neon was the people that it attracted. There were loads of people who got in on the fad and drove like complete Idiots. They already drove like idiots, but they now were associated with the rest of us; and much like anything hipsters do, they were memorable enough that they set the thought pattern. If a guy zooms through traffic cutting everyone off while glowing, the next time you see a glowing car, you are wary of it. You see a guy taking up an entire multi top coffee shop table with a typewriter when it’s busy time, you kinda hate the guy and the typewriter. That association gets passed on to anything that someone like that does. They wear this kind of shoe? Enjoy selvedge denim? Like vinyl? Eh, that’s hipster crap. Guy has neons on his car? Must drive like an idiot, have an economy car that he’s thrown a bunch of cheap mods on, cut the springs on and probably hits his girlfriend.

This is where I hope razors won’t go.
I want there to be enough continuing interest to continue to grow the community.
I would love to see more people be able to start small related businesses, not small businesses shutting.
 
RigelDust

RigelDust

Domminigan said:
I can post a bit of experience with riding out a fad that killed off interest in something.

In 1969, my Mom’s cousin owned a brand new white Firebird TransAm with a blue interior. Her cousin had blue neon put under the car, and Mom has forever talked about the car and the underglow.

When I got my first car, I went out and bought an underbody neon kit with some accent neons and installed them. Joined a forum supported by the company and everything.

Eight months to a year later, The Fast and the Furious came out and all the world suddenly wanted neons. Everyone was sold out, the forums were loaded with newbies trying to get some glow and... things just got weird.

The Mart of Walls got involved and started selling cheap neons, a number of the guys who had been original members started branching out and selling their own products. Much like we have numbers of people selling soaps and handmade hardware, we had guys selling LEDs and kits.

On the online venues, the forums were completely overrun with new people. Visitors and new members spiked massively with the first couple movies. The biggest problems were adbots and spam messages, but twice we had active hackings. The first one deleted the entire contents of the message forum. Tutorials, hundreds of answered questions, everything was gone and we had to start over answering FAQs because nobody could search, and most everyone was a newbie with no clue what to do. The second time, we recovered better.

During all of this, the experience we had was very similar to what we are experiencing now; only on a smaller scale.
We had new products, new gadgets, lower prices. There was enough interest in the field that some decent innovations came out, like the LED underbodies that can change color, brighter LEDs... really MUCH brighter colored LEDs moved into the consumer market faster than they otherwise would have. Anything and everything that someone had come up with was suddenly getting financial backing and being produced. It was pretty great times.

Things started cooling down after a few years and a couple movies. Several of the people who opened their own online businesses closed them, and the forums started increasing activity in the BST as people got rid of their neon. As used prices dropped, I picked up cheap tubes and accessories at garage sales, flea markets and even thrift stores.

Now it is years after the fad of neon. You still see it on the bay, at far lower prices than they were originally.
You see a lot of cheap LED kits available, and the few companies that survived have branched out a bit.
The variety that exists currently is a bit hollow. While there are a lot of options, most of those options are the same low quality things that will perform poorly if at all. They will break quickly.
The few remaining high quality items are excellent, if not expensive. The costs of the good stuff went up as the quantities sold went down. The revamped real neon is more than double the original price.

The things that really killed neon was the people that it attracted. There were loads of people who got in on the fad and drove like complete Idiots. They already drove like idiots, but they now were associated with the rest of us; and much like anything hipsters do, they were memorable enough that they set the thought pattern. If a guy zooms through traffic cutting everyone off while glowing, the next time you see a glowing car, you are wary of it. You see a guy taking up an entire multi top coffee shop table with a typewriter when it’s busy time, you kinda hate the guy and the typewriter. That association gets passed on to anything that someone like that does. They wear this kind of shoe? Enjoy selvedge denim? Like vinyl? Eh, that’s hipster crap. Guy has neons on his car? Must drive like an idiot, have an economy car that he’s thrown a bunch of cheap mods on, cut the springs on and probably hits his girlfriend.

This is where I hope razors won’t go.
I want there to be enough continuing interest to continue to grow the community.
I would love to see more people be able to start small related businesses, not small businesses shutting.
Click to expand...
We have enough idiots as it is. We don’t need any more.
 
Teuse

Teuse

When talking about fads I like to refer to an absolute, obvious, unmistakable fad:
The codpiece

Let's compare the "neon under the car" and "DE shaving" to the "codpiece scale":

- It is completely useless. DE shaving: no. Neon underlights: yes
- It is an appearance thing. DE shaving: no (A shaved man is a shaved men, wether he uses cartridges, electrics or DE or other method). Neon underlights: yes
- It is started by the dumbest part of the population, the young males. DE shaving: no. Neon underlights: yes.

In conclusion, DE shaving has no risk of suddenly disappearing for no reason like fads do, and the "neon under cars" was definetly a fad and destined to die quickly.

Nevertheless a long slow decline of DE shaving is very possible and arguably ongoing. But it will take a few decades to kill it and only if something nearly as cheap and more convenient takes its place. Cartridges costs a lot more, even without the price gouging of Gillette and co. Electric shaving either costs also a lot more or is a lot less comfortable. The "DE evolved" system like the focus dynamic or the broman razor might actually be the frontrunners of DE 2.0, but that is not a problem at all from my point of view.
 
Domminigan

Domminigan

Teuse said:
- It is completely useless. DE shaving: no. Neon underlights: yes
- It is an appearance thing. DE shaving: no (A shaved man is a shaved men, wether he uses cartridges, electrics or DE or other method). Neon underlights: yes
- It is started by the dumbest part of the population, the young males. DE shaving: no. Neon underlights: yes.
Click to expand...
Rather exactly my point. You hold a negative view of something that was popular, and was taken to extremis by a group that the larger part of society already held in contempt. Something that was specific to a small group before and has now more or less shrunk to it’s original population.

Although the negative viewpoint of hipsters is not universally held, it is held by a large portion of the population who’s perception of things that hipsters do colors their perception of those tools they use.

Neons are functionally useless, just as having multiple DE razors is, the same as shaving with anything other than the bare minimum of bic disposeable razor and canned goo is... and that’s only if you decide that shaving is a need rather than a want. It’s required in some lines of work, but it is not required to be in those lines of work. There are show cars that create revenue for sponsors that use neon and LED lighting as accents.

DE shaving is not an appearance thing unless you broadcast to the world that you are doing so with the reason for appearance. There are those that do so.

Shaving is absolutely started by young males. It’s continued by the rest of the population to varying degrees, but that does not change the reality that the young are the ones who start it.

Automotive neon was improved upon to LED lighting, and is now found in cars from the factory. This is much as striaght razor shaving was improved upon by safety razors, which was then improved upon by cartridge razors. The improvements are all debatable.
 
T

TechClone

Teuse said:
When talking about fads I like to refer to an absolute, obvious, unmistakable fad:
The codpiece

Let's compare the "neon under the car" and "DE shaving" to the "codpiece scale":

- It is completely useless. DE shaving: no. Neon underlights: yes
- It is an appearance thing. DE shaving: no (A shaved man is a shaved men, wether he uses cartridges, electrics or DE or other method). Neon underlights: yes
- It is started by the dumbest part of the population, the young males. DE shaving: no. Neon underlights: yes.

In conclusion, DE shaving has no risk of suddenly disappearing for no reason like fads do, and the "neon under cars" was definetly a fad and destined to die quickly.
Click to expand...

I’d love to pretend to know what you’re talking about, but sadly I literally didn’t understand a single word.
 
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