By now, you must have heard of the new scent from The Boring Company, an "omnigender product" -- according to Elon Musk himself. The perfume is called Burnt Hair - Singed, costs $100 a bottle, and will supposedly ship out Q1 2023.
A fine concept art, indeed. I wonder what company will actually be manufacturing the product. If you recall, Mattel was enlisted to make the toy Cybertrucks. This isn't the first time that the Tesla CEO has delved into quirky, gimmicky products. There's actually a long list of items that have actually been sold, all stemming from something going on with Musk's life/companies and turning into a marketable joke:
- Flamethrowers sold in 2018 raised $10 million for the Boring Company tunnel-building tests
- Tesla Tequila, starting as an April Fool's Day gag
- Red stain Tesla Short Shorts, sold for $69.42, to mock short sellers in 2020
- The $50 Tesla Cyberwhistle
No matter what I or anyone thinks of these products, their apparent successes cannot be denied. Musk has such a cult following that these items sellout. Thus far, Burnt Hair is still available and apparently over 20k have been sold.
That's $2 million raised in just over 48 hours. There's hasn't been any update since 20k, but Musk has clearly been enjoying the attention he has been receiving. He's even changed his Twitter-bio to "Perfume Salesman" to reflect the recent happening. He's even joked that the funds will help him to buy Twitter. Here's what he had to say when he hit the milestone of 10k bottles being sold:
To me, the fact of the matter is that the money is not important to Musk. Two million dollars is just a drop in the bucket. So, what's really happening here? To speculate is to guess, but my guess is that this is further testing of crypto payments. You'll notice that he states "you can even pay in Doge" on Twitter. Have a look at the payment screen:
Musk's professional roots go back to X.com and PayPal, both financial payment services. I postulate that this whole perfume stunt has nothing to do with scents at all, but makes more sense that it's further real-world testing of cryptocurrencies as a payment. The main hit on crypto has been that there are so many coins with no utility. When you see the Doge, ApeCoin, Shiba, and Bitcoin logos in the midst of PayPal and the major credit cards it gives them some legitimacy, even if you're buying a perfume made by a company that digs tunnels. Musk obviously has a vested interested in advancing meme tokens like Doge. It all makes scents. Or does it?
Who's hair is burning, by the way?
