This Is Probably B.S.

OK, so supplements are basically useless. They’re essentially unregulated; they make unsubstantiated claims about their health benefits; and pretty much no one should buy them (outside a very few specific cases where a physician has made an evidence-based recommendation to address a particular condition or deficiency). It’s a scammy segment of the market, full of unsavory characters.

Including us, now! Here we’re gonna disparage the stuff even as we sell it, like a sleazy ouroboros, the snake that expresses its own oil. Gross.

But vouching for a product’s efficacy or quality has never been what we’re about. What we do is assure our visitors we got them a good price. Whatever we’re selling on any given day, whatever other quibbles and caveats it might inspire, you just shouldn’t be able to say it’s available cheaper elsewhere. That’s our whole deal.

And who are we to get between an informed, consenting customer and his/her placebo of choice? Reasonable people might reasonably decide to try this stuff. It’s supposed to help users get “restful sleep and recovery”, and you will indeed find ingredients with sleep-promoting reputations on the ingredients list. There’s magnesium, for example, and turkey-coma compound L-tryptophan. (Oh, but the sleep-enhancing effects of magnesium are overblown, and tryptophan plays no special role in Thanksgiving Day lethargy. But we digress.) Sounds plausible this mixture could work the way it promises, right?

Of course, that’s assuming the ingredient list is accurate and complete. It probably is? But this product category is notorious for spiking their stuff with undeclared pharmacological agents. The FDA says “many dietary supplements contain ingredients that have strong biological effects which may conflict with a medicine you are taking or a medical condition you may have. Products containing hidden drugs are also sometimes falsely marketed as dietary supplements, putting consumers at even greater risk. For these reasons, it is important to consult with a health care professional before using any dietary supplement.”

Yuck. We just don’t like this industry.

So why carry “Crash” all? Good question. The way we see it, people fall into three groups:

First, there are the people who are way into this stuff, who are already taking “Crash”, or something like it. They’re going to buy this. They like it, and we have a good price on it. They didn’t read any of this shit-talk before clicking the buy button, and even if they look it over afterward, it won’t dissuade them.

Second, there are those who are never going to buy supplements for any reason. Maybe they were even a little disappointed to find us selling them here at Meh, and it cost us a little bit of their respect to do so. We’re in this group ourselves. Sad!

Finally, in the narrow slice of the graph that remains, there’s a small number of convinceable people. They don’t have any pre-formed opinions about supplements, and, when it comes to buying some, might be persuaded by a good argument. They’re the ones we might be able to reach. To that group, we say: Skip this stuff. Save your money. Make today a hit-the-Meh-button day.

Oh, man. We just had a worry. What if this anti-sales posture we’re trying to affect somehow backfires? What if people think we’re being “funny,” and we sell out of our whole lot of this stuff? What if we’ve got the makings of a Springtime for Hitler style unintended success here? How will we sleep at night?

I mean, especially since we’ll have no ProSupps Crash sleep enhancement product left for ourselves.