Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrootabega | Hacker News Reader

Shaving is like an Inception-level hierarchy of waste and affectation. It's easy to feel superior because you ditched the biggest brands, and still be wasting your money on unnecessary and crappy products because you were tricked by marketing. Those hipster shave-by-mail clubs are not really better than Gillette. And the safety razor market-disguised-as-a-community is also full of waste disguised by hipster affectations. Specialty soaps, exotic animal hair brushes, elaborate rituals, etc. Underneath it all is the fact that you CAN buy a cheap, adequate, no-name safety razor somewhere, and you can buy cheap adequate blades in bulk with some trial and error, and you can find some combination of products that will work on your skin without going for specialty and prestige. Don't buy these things as tokens of a lifestyle, buy them for utility.

View on HN

Honestly the wetshaving (safety razor, brush, etc) community is also a wealth of knowledge for bang-for-your-buck shaving. It’s simple enough to get in, soak up the knowledge you need, get out. You don’t have to buy into the acquisition hype, and the community is generous enough that you can often get started for free on some decent basics.

Wet shaving is also a great experience IMO, even with dirt cheap razors and soaps and brushes I prefer it. As the article stated a single safety razor handle will last basically a lifetime too.

Dirt cheap doesn’t mean a bad shave too, which is where that wealth of knowledge can come in handy. Astra plat blades are both some of the cheapest and also smoothest blades around for example.

Worth noting that Astra is owned by Gillette and manufactured in Russia.

People are allowed to have hobbies and interests.

But it's not necessary to turn shaving into a hobby with toys and status symbols (look at all the conspicious brand-name-dropping going on in these comments). However, the anti-Gillette marketing zeitgeist makes you think that that is THE alternative. Looking for information about safety/straight razor usage will undoubtedly suck someone into SEO-friendly shaving "enthusiast" traps unless they avoid it. People should be aware that there is a cheap, simple, boring, utilitarian alternative, but the "alternative shaving culture" will try to mislead them, even if from innocent enthusiasm.

> the anti-Gillette marketing zeitgeist

Which is why it might as well be the pro-Gillette marketing zeitgeist. Too easy to turn away from something under the assumption you'll just get sucked into it and waste a lot of money. Another good example of this is the fountain pen community. As a total outsider, I was actually under the impression that a fountain pen cost well over $100 and was difficult to maintain and write with. I happened to randomly look into it one day only to discover that some very well regarded pens are only $30 or so, write well on almost everything, and will last for years of high quality writing.

Yeah, it's pretty much the same effect. Hobbies can cost as much as most hobbyists are willing to pay. Then you get elitism, you get sneers that some beginners are using "too good" equipment that they haven't earned yet (e.g. complaints that beginner photo hobbyists using "too good" cameras) etc. It's just human behavior. As a beginner or casual hobbyist, you need to find a beginner-friendly and mature (ie non-childish) community that understands different levels of involvement, understands there is life outside the hobby as well, understands budgets etc.

Or just buy a safety razor (mine is a simple one made of plastic and some metal weight in the handle) and a bunch of double edge blades and call it a day.

If some people want to turn it into a hobby where they obsess over badger hair brushes and so on, that's also fine. Nobody is ever forced to buy that sort of stuff.

All marketing tries to mislead people to spend money on "unnecessary" stuff. That's what people mostly spend their disposable income on. And Americans have tons and tons of disposable income, so they are good targets for marketing. I don't see the same thing in Germany for example as people are generally more careful with their money and don't have ginormous amounts of it like Americans (look up the disposable incomes). For example, you're (assuming you're American) also getting screwed by the mattress industry.

> CAN buy a cheap, adequate, no-name safety razor somewhere, and you can buy cheap adequate blades in bulk

Lay it on us, jrootabega. Whence comes these?

I bought my razor a long time ago but I think it was just in an American chain drugstore, which others have mentioned. Amazon is probably the easiest place with the best selection of blades at decent prices. Might take a few tries to find a brand you like, so you'd want to avoid large quantities at first. I've heard there can be counterfeit blades but I've also heard that might be bull.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com