The craze for Stanley stainless steel drinking cups reached new levels last week when a woman was arrested and accused of stealing 65 of them, worth almost $2,500, from a store in California.
Police in Roseville, in Placer County, northeast of Sacramento, said Sunday that they were called Wednesday to a report of a theft from a store on Stanford Ranch Road in the city.
“Staff saw a woman take a shopping cart full of Stanley water bottles without paying for them. The suspect refused to stop for staff and stuffed her car with the stolen merchandise,” police said in a statement on Facebook.
Nah, I think “Hey I think I see a way to make a bunch of money” happened. “Stanley cups have suddenly become very popular and thus scarce, so I’ll go get a bunch of them and sell them for more than their retail price. oh, their retail price is actually quite high. I know, I’ll just shoplift them! Profit margins increase!”
The psychology I find fascinating is the trend itself. A brand of quality insulated metal water cups that has apparently existed this whole time has suddenly become a popular fashion item among the instagramettes. We’ve apparently reached the shoplifting stage of the craze. I wonder how many fistfights there will be over $45 water bottles.
From the point of view of a male 30-something hermit, the journey has gone like this so far: I use Firefox, and if you don’t set a homepage it has this start screen with buttons for sites you frequent as well as a bunch of news articles served by whatever the hell Pocket is. One of them had an image of a bright pink handled drinking cup with a headline to the effect of “Confessions of a cup girl.” I did not read this article. A short time later, someone posts to Lemmy the picture of Homer Simpson in the lesbian bar, all the women have those same pink cups, he’s got the hockey trophy. Now here we are, a 23-year old woman has been arrested for stealing a shopping cart full of them. It’s absolutely fucking hilarious.
Thank you, I read this and was shocked the hockey trophy was stolen, and was so cheap.
I saw that Homer Simpson meme and had no idea I was supposed to be looking at the other cups XD
Why are they popular? I’ve got 3 excellent thermos cup type things from Costco for 20 bucks…
As far as I understand, it’s influencer fashion. Somebody with a popular Tiktok account has said “you’ve got to have one of these” and it was so.
My sister in law gave me one of these things for xmas. I like it but $45 seems steep. I had no clue there was a trend!
With the right branding, anything can be a trend!
I mean, at this point we’re all just thieves thieving from thieves.
Who are you? Trazyn the inginite?
I’m the twisted firestarter. I was hired for the show.