It’s time for a new category on the side. In my restless search for ridiculous things on the internet, I never thought I’d find something so perfect, so wonderful, so designed for my own happiness. No no, it’s not Kanye or Chic-Fil-A. And yes, Epstein didn’t kill himself. No, this is more wonderful than all those things. And because of it, I’m starting up Witless Wednesdays—a whole day for those enchanting inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and decadences that make modern life what it is. When there’s a moment to talk about Goop, it will be on Wednesday. When you’re wondering whether to wall paper your bathroom in human sized flowers, it will be on Wednesday. When you’re wondering whether or not to tuck in your bulky winter sweater, it will be on Wednesday. Whatever it is, it will be Wednesday.
Our inaugural moment is going to be hard to beat. Yes, you know it, Kon Mari has opened an online store.
It’s a twist on her trademarked KonMari Method, which encourages people to keep only the things that “spark joy” in them: while historically Kondo told others to save items that made themhappy, in the new store, she recommends (i.e. sells) products that make her happy, presumably in the hope that they make you happy as well. Going from directing others to get rid to their stuff to selling it to them can become a sticky situation, but she makes it clear that she doesn’t encourage anyone replacing things that already bring them joy, she told The Wall Street Journal.
“Sticky,” that’s funny, because she’s literally selling a stick, for Twelve Whole Dollars. What does the stick do? Some clever person asked on twitter.
“It massages the money right out of your pocket,” someone brilliant responded. Also, there’s as $75 tuning fork, an expensive “balancing” water bottle that’s supposed to purify your water but won’t because that’s not a thing, and a “crumb brush.”
Of course, Of Course, it’s almost Christmas so.
I mean, I’m not a fan of poverty or socialism or anything like that. I think people should organize their own lives the way they want. I think what really bothers me—besides the sheer decadence—is the fake “joy,” the taking advantage of peoples’ real unhappiness to sell them something useless.
If you’ve painfully gone through your house to get rid of the piles of clutter that are pressing on the back of your soul, making you feel overburdened and exhausted from all the cleaning, and are beginning to feel like you can breathe and enjoy yourself, and then the person who told you to make hard choices and let go of stuff you felt guilty about keeping but sad about throwing away, tries to sell you something, that’s just dumb. I should say sell you something “else.” The method is also for sale—a temporal bandaid for an eternal unhappiness.
You can have joy—in Jesus, by not measuring all things by your own feelings about them, by letting yourself be forgiven by an eternal God who doesn’t expect you to have a perfectly curated life. And also, you can have a shorter term joy by not throwing any of your books away. I mean, for real, if you are in the market for crystals, buy them from Goop. They were there first.
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