I went to a drugstore yesterday to buy some hair products and I was standing in front of the shelf with a stack of thousand different products. Yep, we’ve discussed this horror in my previous post, but this time, I had another mindf**k project being delivered to my poor over-thinking brain: product labeling.
Earlier this week, a friend of mine asked me for an advice of how to stop hair fall. She’s having some trouble with hair and she wants to change her hair products and since I am a kind of an expert on that (yes I own about hundred different hair products in my bathroom and I am nor proud or ashamed) she asked me what to buy. Holding myself back from sending her a 100-items list, I offered to buy a few basic items I use so she could try. It takes about 5 seconds for me to buy my 3 favorite products, but then, I see there is a special corner for hair loss. I take a look at the shelf and I see different brands producing hair-care specialized for this problem. I take a box of hair-shots and read carefully:
HERBAL SHOTS FOR HAIR LOSS
Something seems quite wrong in this label. I take a look at the shampoo next to it:
HERBAL SHAMPOO FOR HAIR LOSS
And then, it tricks me: why the hell would I want to buy a shampoo which makes me lose my hair?! I am a bit pissed off how these producers are ignorant morons, but then my jaw drops: the number of illiterate product labels around me is endless. I am in nonsense hell! Shampoo for dandruff, shampoo for brittle and dry hair, conditioner for lifeless hair easy to break, hair mask for split ends. Why the hell would I want to have split ends?! That product should be AGAINST, not FOR split ends and brittle hair.
The promises of these products are very tempting: hair loss and dry hair, oh what a unique selling point!
The stupidity overwhelms me and I see that it doesn’t stop with hair products. Turn on the TV and you’ll see the pills FOR headache, body milk FOR dry skin, lip balm FOR cracked lips and you’ll even find biscuits FOR diabetes! Go figure, a biscuit that will get you diabetes. Lovely, I’ll have five of those diabetes please.
Some would say I’m nitpicking, but I’m not. Here’s why. Imagine that you buy a toothpaste which says: “Toothpaste for yellow teeth”. Would you buy it? Of course not, why the hell would you want to have yellow teeth?! So, on the other hand do you buy a shampoo FOR dandruff? Of course you do. I’ll tell you why: because you’re used to it. You are used to products being labeled soooooo wrong that you actually take them as normal. Your brain is used to some senseless errors and it makes perfect sense out of these things. It’s like living in a house where floor is on the ceiling and you’re perfectly used to it even though it makes no sense. If you lived in a house like this, you would actually find it very unusual to see the carpet on the floor, because you’d expect it to be hanging right from the ceiling. Our brains are lazy bastards who tend to bend to the situation and adjust to the senseless stuff. That helps us survive because nitpicking is not the real priority when it comes to everyday survival.
During the day, our brain comes out with amazing different 70.000 thoughts. Imagine if for each of those you’d stop and think: is this really making sense? You’d definitely overheat your brain and probably jump through window after a day two. Even though I know a few people with amazing power to question and complicate everything in their lives, I am sure it’s really hard for them to live that kind of life full of over-thinking and nitpicking.
But you know, good news is that those nitpicking people with mild or severe element of OCD are actually doing us good. They are blowing the whistles about this nonsense which is then corrected. They are making our World more meaningful place to live in and they are pinpointing the errors in the minds. Imagine that one day Extraterrestrials land on our planet and ask you why you use shampoo for dandruff if dandruff makes you feel uncomfortable. Wouldn’t you feel embarrassed for the whole mankind?
I would. And I am.
