If you’re going on an international trek, adventuring through Appalachians, searching the Sahara, or navigating the Nile, a Hydro Flask is an investment for you. Belonging to the upper echelon of water bottles, this nifty flask can keep your beverages cold for up to 24 hours and hot up to 6 hours, handy when a fridge or stove is inconvenient. Their trademarked Tempshield double wall insulation prevents condensation and maintains the temperature of the beverage inside.

If you aren’t going to find yourself in one of these rather unconventional situations which would require you to store a beverage at a certain temperature, a Hydro Flask is useless to you. You are spending an unnecessary amount on an unnecessary item. You could effectively get the same use out of a five dollar water bottle you buy at Dick’s or Sports Authority, or even a disposable water bottle that you can rotate out once it becomes worn. Also, fridges exist, just leave your bottle in a fridge to keep it cold. You can also warm beverages by heating up them up over a stove and even a microwave.

The Hydro Flask even lacks any creative design or an aspect that causes them to stand out; they’re plain metallic bottles with a simple logo, a logo that seems to hold a massive importance to too many. Ultimately, Hydro Flasks use their own over-hyped brand to sell more units. This is seen too much in popular society. Consumers rely too often on the over-priced, over-hyped, branded items rather than those that do not belong to a certain brand but serve the same purpose. Yes, some brands provide a quality and creative designs others may not possess, but this is not the case for the average water-drinker and the Hydro Flask.

This brand culture ravages and destroys individualism, inciting conformity among masses, especially the youth. It teaches them that the best way to be is like everyone else; this is most often not the case. It also teaches them bad financial habits, such as wasting upwards of $300 on shoes, $100 on a water bottle, or $100 on wireless headphones,(that come for free with wires alongside a new phone). This can also lead the youth to fall victim to other bad popular habits to fit in with the masses, a sort of corporate peer pressure that only invites conformity and hive-mindedness.

Consumers should be thinking of how to most effectively spend and even grow their money to get the most use out of it, not waste it on simple novelties and cash grabs. Ultimately, while having a hydro flask is cool and trendy there’s really no point to it if you just want to flex it in school. If it’s really important to you then buy it, but think of how that money could be used more effectively and how useful that hydro flask would be to you.