Every few years there is some terrible new status symbol that becomes ubiquitous and, thus, inescapable. Several years back it was those dumb Canada Goose jackets that retailed at prices of up to $1700 and made everybody look like Death Star employees. Lately, however, the marker of status is just a cup.
By now, you and everybody you know have likely heard of the Stanley Quencher—a relatively mundane-looking stainless steel tumbler that retails for between $20-$45 and, like all other tumblers, will hold beverages for you. What is so special about the Quencher? Well, not much. Like all virally popular products, this cup has ascended to the Olympian heights of pop culture through no real fault of its own. Instead, it’s a monstrosity largely birthed by the internet.
Well, TikTok, more accurately. If you’ve somehow escaped the origin story of this prestige product, I apologize ahead of time for enlightening you. While the cups have been growing in popularity for some time, a recent incident helped propel the cups to superstardom. In November, a woman posted a video to TikTok explaining that her car had recently burst into flames. As a result of the incident, her car was destroyed but her Stanley Quencher, which had been locked inside, allegedly somehow survived. The esteemed Stanley company behind the drinkware decided to send the woman more Quenchers and simultaneously bought her a new car. The story went viral, providing some great PR for the tumbler brand.
Since then, TikTok has been the place where the Quencher’s cultural power has continued to germinate. This is thanks largely to its consumer base—mostly young girls and women—and an army of influencers, who have helped push the product to an absurd level of repute, making it the Taylor Swift of cups.
Of course, once you get past the product’s immediate star power, there’s a lot to ridicule. For one thing, it’s called a “Quencher,” which is an unequivocally funny name. For another, it is ridiculously expensive. Lately, the company has been releasing “special edition” versions of the cup, which then hit the resale market at prices as high as $5,000. You might call it the NFT-ification of tumblers. This insanity has also spawned a black market of shady lookalikes that are duping hapless Stanley stans out of thousands of dollars.
Of course, the real object of ridicule here should be the people buying the Quenchers, not necessarily the Quenchers themselves. You can’t blame a cup company for making an expensive cup but you can blame people for actually buying them. In Americans’ case, they appear to not only be buying them but are also allowing the collective hysteria surrounding the cups to drive them off the deep end. This is, of course, a time-tested tradition in America, where conspicuous consumption is now more of a national pastime than baseball.
The Quenchers have compelled thousands of people to stand in long, long lines for just a slim chance to buy them. In California, a woman was recently jailed for allegedly stealing $2,500 worth of the dreaded mugs. In Florida, a brawl reportedly broke out at a local Target, with the cups at the center of the action. Middle school girls are being bullied for not having them, while the ones that do have them can win a certain form of social allegiance. One girl, who spoke with The Cut, said that she was able to make some new friends by bringing the trendy drinkware to school. Well, sort of. “I wouldn’t say any of them are actually my friends,” the girl told the outlet. “They only talk to me in the morning when I’m holding my Stanley.” Thus are the meaningful bonds forged by American consumerism.
In short: Fuck these cups. Here is your friendly reminder that cups were first invented thousands of years ago and have not changed much since then. There are many other cups currently in existence that do the same thing that the Stanley Quenchers do. Here is one listed for $6.98 at Walmart. Go forth and buy that one. Make that one popular. Tell your friends that they just have to have the $7 Walmart cup. If you do, you will save the American public tens of millions of dollars.
