Shadowing Practice: The Reusable Water Bottle Trend is DEAD - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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- It's been a while since our last viral water bottle trend.
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Thank God.
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What was supposed to be a movement about proper hydration, health, and wellness, and saving the planet,
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completely devolved into one of the most baffling consumer trends that we have ever seen.
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People were collecting these water bottles that were designed for a lifetime of use.
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They became accessories with their own accessories
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that were all a part of this weird online era where the bottle
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that you owned said something about who you were as a person.
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But as As far as I can tell, the last truly viral trendy water bottle was the Awala Free Sip back in 2024.
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We aren't hearing those same stories about sold out shelves
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and all of the Google trend charts seem to show that these bottles, all of them, are on their way down.
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At the same time, there are reports that predict a ton of growth in the water bottle industry.
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And there's actually been a bunch of new water bottles
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that in their heyday would have had people lining up outside of stores, but they're not.
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Well, the truth is that things have shifted and
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while the water bottle story isn't as hype or viral as it once was, it certainly isn't over.
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But what comes after it is actually pretty predictable.
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So let's get into it.
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A huge shout out to Patreon for sponsoring today's video.
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So the peak of water bottle culture was probably between 2017 to 2024.
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And I was a part of this chapter of online history
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and I made more than one video about these bottles and the reasons why I owned them and whatnot.
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So I have a stake in this conversation.
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But so does this guy.
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I was having a conversation with my sister and my wife, Nat, who are like more tapped into like what's cool and what's trendy.
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And then as we talked about it, we talked about this water bottle.
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I saw like Levi did a video about that.
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And then I started talking more about it.
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I was like, yeah, that is it is insane
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that water bottles became a status symbol and that there have been so many different iterations of it.
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So I binge watched all your water bottle videos and it was super informative and helped me a lot.
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fire.
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What are we doing people?
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Well, at the same time, acknowledging the fact that like, I get swept up in this stuff.
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Like I don't want to like, like admit that before even found out like water bars were a trend.
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It's like subconsciously I'd seen other people with these really nice water bottles and I'm like, that's cool.
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I want the minimalist black, you know, and then I'm like, Oh my god, I am a part of this like, mass system that is just focusing more on these like,
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quick hit trends, rather than focusing on buying something once that's gonna last a really long time.
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This whole conversation with Matt
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and other exclusive interviews plus early access to all of our videos is available on our Patreon page.
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It is the best way to support what we do on this channel
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and gain access to a community that isn't consumerism -pilled.
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event about the state of the world, but also share positive stories about ideas that are making it a better place too.
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We have a book club where we get to talk about these things in greater nuance, and it is genuinely just a nice space to be able to escape to every now and then.
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So if you want to check that out, support what we do.
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Link is down in the description.
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Water bottles are one of those few products that went from a purely functional thing into something that people
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this sense was the swell bottles of the 2010s
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and then even more so with the hydro flask tumblers that blew up between 2018 and 2020.
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These were the first bottles that I would call like um like performance bottles I guess.
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Like previous to this trend it was like Nalgene's and the only reason that they were popular is because they didn't leak.
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But as soon as vacuum insulated bottles hit the scene it was all about the numbers.
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Bottles had to compete for how long they could keep your
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forbid your water got kind of warm while you're on the way to the mall or whatever.
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Like, I think this Clean Canteen bottle is rated to keep your drink cold for like, like 72 hours.
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By the way, you know, if you're wondering what bottle Levi's repping, it's the Clean Canteen.
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had this thing for like probably over five years now.
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Also, these stickers make coffee at home, Costco whole wallet.
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We sell these on Patreon once a year if you want to be in the know for that as well.
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Swell was all about the yoga moms
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and the athletic wear trends of the time while still being sleek enough for the office.
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You know, had to get you a bottle that can do both kind of deal.
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And Hydro Flask built on that with a whole new era of bottles
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that signaled that you were almost always on your way to or from the outdoors in some capacity.
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beginning of the offline movement.
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Oh, dang, dude.
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Now we're connecting dots, dude.
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But Hydroflask was just the most popular at that moment.
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At the very same time, seemingly, we had Yeti with their rugged sort of Americana appeal.
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We had Clean Canteen with their environmentalism and a bunch of others that people mostly forgot.
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Like, if you were repping a Contigo, Sheesh.
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Dude, Contigo was like the - it was like the no -name brand of the water bottle world, wasn't it?
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If you were repping at Contigo, people knew that you didn't have a lot of money at home, you know?
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Sorry about your Contigo mug.
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That's too bad.
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Dude, honorable mention though, what were those ones from Australia?
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The coffee mugs with the thing on the outside?
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You know what I'm saying?
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What a - Australian coffee mug.
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You know, the fucking keep cups, dude.
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The keep cups.
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Dude, that's fucking crazy.
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$62 for a glass cup with a ring of cork around it.
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And look, at this point, like, it was already so over the top.
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Like, everybody was looking at each other like, "Yeah, we're all excited about water bottles now?" This is - I'm confused.
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But then the Stanley Tumblers happened.
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The Stanley Tumbler bottle phenomenon was one of the first viral products that sort of broke the system.
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This was door crasher, scarcity marketing insanity that we hadn't really seen before.
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And now we see it all the time.
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Like now it is it is kind of normal.
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We see it basically every week.
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But then it was like genuinely shocking, especially around a product that like was previously not the kind of product
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that was like the same thing that people went insane for.
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Like it wasn't Pokemon or something like, like it wasn't the latest iPhone.
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Okay.
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It was a fricking water bottle, but that insane popularity was always going to be a short -term thing
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because most people realize that once they've owned the average two to four water bottles that people tend to have nowadays, you don't need more of them,
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but we did see it continue to grow from there.
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The collections of these bottles with the colorways subtle growth that would happen after it.
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If you look at Owalla's success, basically the entirety of that brand was built around the colorways that were released,
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the special edition collabs.
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This is something that was established with Hydroflask and Stanley that really hit its peak and then honestly has kind of
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fizzled since.
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And basically this entire time, I think everybody was sort of waiting for this strange and contradictory trend to come to an end.
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And in some ways, I think we are now there.
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But there are some caveats.
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Water bottles have become the latest fashion accessory.
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You now match your bottle to the fit.
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And you may have a series of different bottles to make sure that they're coordinated.
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Like, this is just a part of our culture now.
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It is odd how, like, we took minimalism and what we learned was nothing.
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And we just kind of, like, doubled down and just went to the moon with everything.
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money but we're still like so connected online now more than ever before
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that we still feel like we need to fit in.
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A water bottle is a relatively affordable way to like signal that you belong and you kind of know what's going on.
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I do think it's probably going to it's going to fade into the background.
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This is one thing
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that I talked about in my video was just like the water bottle is just like one small item
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that brands have used to kind of turn into status symbols.
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But now it's like your toaster or your trash can.
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It's like every item that you walk around your house and you're like and like, again, into this, I've got like a smeg, that was my wife, she's like, we need to get the smeg kettle.
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It's getting these like different things that signal that you belong, you have taste and that you kind of understand the trends,
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which is just so different than I think our parents' generation for better or worse.
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Like we can critique my mom's knickknacks and like the little like cow ornaments
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and stuff that she has just around the house.
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Like just obviously, like it doesn't feel like minimalism.
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when she's had it for 30 years.
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- Right.
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So these are our family water bottles.
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- I still don't.
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Is this all of our water bottles?
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I think that's it.
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I haven't met a one up there.
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There you go.
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That's all.
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These are just the water bottles that our household uses.
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Frank, would you like your water bottle?
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Here.
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Can I have mine?
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That's all.
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Have a drink.
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Cheers.
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Cheers.
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Cheers.
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This one, please.
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That in there.
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Everyone has at least one or two of these things per member of the household.
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They're everywhere, and they're normal. In fact, Gen Z is spending more time on the household at the gym than they are at the pubs nowadays
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because people are drinking less booze.
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And so, water bottles are a part of our everyday carry more than ever.
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We found numbers from market analyses that show
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that there's going to be a bunch of growth in this industry over the coming years because of that fact.
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And there are more and more reusable bottles and dupes out there that people are still buying.
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And there are articles in the New York Times comparing them
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and videos of people gathering all the latest bottles and doing side by side, Like, the market for it is still there.
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They're just not as viral as they once were.
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We've gone past peak bottle
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because there really just isn't anywhere else to go once you've stacked up a collection of them on your wall.
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Once you've run every limited edition colorway in the rainbow and done every Disney collab in existence, what else can you do?
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So, let's Where does the trend go now that it's not trendy and it's becoming a cultural staple?
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Well, I think that this is kind of like when your mom starts using the word "dude." It's no longer cool.
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It doesn't have the same kind of response that it did
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when you first use it as a socially novel thing in your vocabulary, but people will still say "dude," and as it becomes more widely known and more widely used,
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it will become less and less symbolic of the thing that it was originally supposed to mean, right?
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And dude can take various different forms and it can mean different things.
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And maybe I'm getting a little carried away with this metaphor, but what I'm trying to say is the bottles
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that we were obsessed with for that brief moment are not the bottles of today.
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And they are going to shift to reflect that.
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So you can kind of get an idea of where things are at based on this article
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that we found comparing the top bottles of 2026 from Wirecutter.
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written by AI.
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Every single link that you see in here is an affiliate link that is designed to generate sales.
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This is a shopping
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post right this is this is all about just directing traffic
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to certain products to generate income for the new york times
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because they're poor and you need to help them right
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but according to this list the top bottles this year are hydro flask awalla takeya and Purif - Purifu?
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The last two in particular feel kind of fringe and almost like Timu knockoffs of other brands for some reason.
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But we were looking around
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and there's actually a ton of new bottles out there in the market that I had no idea existed.
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They got the cool minimalist aesthetics, they've got some new features, LED screens on the top of some of them, and then there's a whole tech angle,
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self -cleaning bottles, and bottles that remind you when you need to drink more water.
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The Lark
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the most famous of all of these and i can't believe
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that it isn't honestly more extremely hype
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because this feels like the kind of dumb product
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that people go completely insane for
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because it's supposed to like optimize your life by reminding you
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to drink water their smart bottles will track your water intake
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over the course of the day it will clean your bottle with uv
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filtration baby so I guess it all connects to an app on your phone you know
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because one of the biggest problems that we've faced in the last you know, 100 years is the fact that like, I just keep forgetting to drink water.
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You know, double wall insulation, detachable handle.
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It's got a USB -C charging port.
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You have to charge your water bottle, bro.
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Can you imagine?
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Like, you got so many things going on in your life.
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Oh, dude, I forgot to charge my water bottle.
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This is going to be the water bottle that has a subscription model attached to it.
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I freaking guarantee you, dude, there is going to be a monthly subscription fee for your Lark bottle in the next couple of years.
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There's more bottles than ever, and they're going to sell more bottles than ever because it is normal for us all to own more bottles than ever.
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I think that we have seen a big shift away from this whole phenomenon,
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and that is because there has arisen another far more lucrative trend in the same category.
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We've simultaneously seen an explosion in the beverage space with new brands and drink categories vying for repeat sales.
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The same wellness and aspirational marketing used in the peak water bottle days is now being repurposed
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colors and flavors being released every single week to get you to buy more.
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But most importantly, these drink companies have a natural repeat buyer once they have a customer hooked on their product.
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Like Lark wants to sell a subscription model for their bottle, believe me.
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But they know that that's kind of illogical
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and there's a lot of consumers who are not going to go for that because it kind of doesn't make any sense.
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The fundamental flaw with water bottles is that you just don't need
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need to keep buying energy drinks once you are addicted to them.
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Our sort of secondary part of the story, what's coming next after water bottles.
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And I think what we've sort of guessed is the explosion in drink culture again.
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Like we've, there's always been drink culture, of course, but water bottles, you can't really sell at a certain point.
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You can get the colorways.
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You can have some nifty designs.
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Now they've got smart water bottles that like tell you the temperature of your water and like clean your bottle for you.
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Like you can take it to a lot of extremes.
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You can definitely do a lot.
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But eventually, the better business model is to sell the beverage in a can that's disposable.
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And so that's, I think, what is going to happen now is like, bottles will have a place is like a fashion statement,
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but like the money is in repeat buyers through caffeine addiction or sugar addiction or whatever it is.
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You know, one of those things that was the reason
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that the water bottle trend kicked off was because it was attached to health and wellness.
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And because that was an additional kind of subliminal message
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that like I care about my health and my wellness and my body.
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And like, it's also like a fair point, like drinking enough water is like is important.
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And so like, I think carrying around a water bottle everywhere is probably a good idea.
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But I think you're, you're right.
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Like I have seen that as and I know you're saying caffeine, it's just like all these different kind of wellness drinks, like mytropin, and like, they're just finding all,
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like, what are different vitamins and stuff to throw in it?
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And this is gonna be the thing that helps it fix your overtiredness.
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That's been super fascinating, 'cause I thought we had reached peak saturation of, different greats that could be sold.
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I'm like, okay, we've figured it out.
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And now The Rock comes out with one and, you know.
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So with ZOA, we wanted to create something that was unique and special for our consumers out there, something that was not available to them.
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meaning a great combination.
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of health and wellness.
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Immunity package and great healthy energy combined.
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We already made a video about energy drinks if you want to see that, but we are going to be making a video soon about dirty sodas
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and the sort of increasingly insane levels of sugar that we see in new drinks today.
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So subscribe if you want to see that, support us on Patreon if you want to do that, and if you do either of those things we'll see you every week for another upload.
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Do you guys like generally feel,
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do you feel like pessimistic about every day and it doesn't seem to be getting that much.
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No, it's not getting better.
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- It's getting worse.
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It's getting like really, really blatantly worse, which is kind of the weirdest part.
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Like I kind of thought we were gonna run out of ideas at a certain point.
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That was kind of my expectation.
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And it just seems to continue to devolve.
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Context & Background
In the video titled "The Reusable Water Bottle Trend is DEAD," the speaker discusses the evolution of water bottles from mere functional items to stylish accessories that symbolize status and personal identity. Highlighting the peak of this trend between 2017 and 2024, the speaker shares personal anecdotes and insights from conversations with friends and family about how they became enamored with high-end water bottles. This reflection serves as a critique of consumer culture, where practicality sometimes takes a back seat to aesthetic appeal. By examining this cultural shift, English learners can gain not only vocabulary but also an understanding of the implications behind consumer trends.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- "That's cool." - A casual affirmation of something interesting or appealing.
- "What comes after it is actually pretty predictable." - Indicating that future trends can be anticipated based on past events.
- "I want the minimalist black." - Expressing a desire for a specific style or design.
- "It's insane that water bottles became a status symbol." - Reflecting on the surprising cultural shift regarding value and identity.
- "I binge-watched all your water bottle videos." - Describing an experience of consuming a lot of video content in a short period.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
To effectively learn English with YouTube and utilize the shadowing technique with this video, follow this structured approach:
- Select a segment: Choose a short 1-2 minute segment from the video that resonates with you.
- Listen and repeat: Play the segment and pause after each sentence. Use a shadowing app or simply repeat what you hear out loud, mimicking the tone and intonation.
- Break it down: If a phrase is difficult, break it into smaller parts. Focus on mastering each part before combining them again.
- Practice regularly: Incorporate this practice into your daily routine, aiming for at least 10-15 minutes a day to improve fluency.
- Reflect on your progress: Record yourself practicing and listen back to identify areas for improvement or any phrases you’ve mastered.
Using this approach, you can enhance your spoken English skills effectively by leveraging engaging content while immersing yourself in contemporary discussions. The shadowspeak method allows for nuanced understanding and retention of vocabulary, making your learning experience both engaging and efficient.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have ever seen · have shifted · have been |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | were designed · is rated · was built |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.