Don’t let it be said that Americans don’t have a penchant for buying bullshit. Literally.
Ideally, a market strategy is definitely working when you can sell shit to people and they still line up to buy it. It’s even better when you can tell them, “No, really, it’s shit. I’m selling you shit — although it is neatly packaged in a cute little black box.”
And 30,000 people will still order it right away.
The guys at Illinois-based company Cards Against Humanity, creators of the card game that advertises itself as “a party game for horrible people”, are not fans of Black Friday sales. Last year they celebrated it by selling their game $5 above the normal price, so this year they topped that off by actually selling bullshit to thousands of people. Actual feces from a bull! An American bull — the packaging, though, was made in China.
This was no scam. They were very honest about the contents of the box they intended to sale: It had shit, real shit. Customers would receive a box full of shit in the mail, and they agreed to pay $6 for it. Not just a random guy or two; within days the bullshit had sold out. All 30,000 boxes of it.
Some people were upset when they found out there was nothing more to it. Some others just questioned how legal it was to mail feces (it is legal, by the way, as long as it’s not used to harass people with. Just, you know… the other uses of poop, I guess…), but it was all pretty damn clear from the beginning.
There are even videos of people opening their boxes to find their poop!
But it doesn’t stop there. While it may seem easy to make fun of people who paid $6 for a box of shit, some of them are in fact making a profit from it. A quick “Cards Against Humanity Bullshit” search on eBay provided close to 100 results on people re-selling their bullshit. Prices range anywhere from $10 to $40. The pricier ones remain sealed, of course, essentially turning the little poop package into an actual collector’s item.
This makes for excellent social commentary. Well played, Cards Against Humanity! Consumerism may have reached its finest moment.
What makes you look worse as a society, the fact that you’re paying 40 bucks for a sealed collectible pile of shit in a box, or actually complaining about receiving feces when you were told you were being sold feces?
As Max Temkin, founder of Cards Against Humanity tweeted:
If you buy the poop expecting it to be something else that’s not poop, you’re actually buying a valuable life lesson for $6.
— Max Temkin (@MaxTemkin) November 28, 2014
