Hot Dog Water

Confirmed 52,522

Overview

Hot Dog Water is a novelty product advertised as a health drink, parodying other forms of popular water brands. The fine print for the drink indicates that the drink was a joke.

Background

On June 17th, 2018, at Car Free Day street festival in Vancouver, Canada, Hot Dog Water CEO Douglas Bevans opened a stand selling bottled water with a single hot dog floating inside. Labeled "Hot Dog Water," the product cost $38 and boasted health benefits, such as eight loss, increased brain function and age reduction.^[1]

Developments

Performance Art

Bevans admitted that the water was a piece of performance art. At the bottom of the fine print for the product, a disclaimer reads, "Hot Dog Water in its absurdity hopes to encourage critical thinking related to product marketing and the significant role it can play in our purchasing choices."

Bevans said:

"It’s really sort of a commentary on product marketing, and especially sort of health-quackery product marketing. From the responses, I think people will actually go away and reconsider some of these other $80 bottles of water that will come out that are ‘raw’ or ‘smart waters,’ or anything that doesn’t have any substantial scientific backing but just a lot of pretty impressive marketing.

"They’ve been drinking it for hours. We have gone through about 60 litres of real hot dog water."

Online Reaction

Online, people mocked customers of the Hot Dog Water stand. On June 17th, Twitter ^[2] user @moebius_strip tweeted, "This booth that sells unfiltered hot dog water is hands down the strangest thing at Car-Free day, and I have no idea – literally none – as to whether it is real or an elaborate stunt." The post (shown below) received move than 800 retweets and 1,500 likes in five days.

Over the next few days, as the story continued to spread, people joked about the product. Many, however, still were skeptical about its authenticity (examples below). On June 22nd, Twitter^[4] published a Moments page about the stunt.

On June 22nd, Redditor ^[8] undue-influence posted about the stunt in the /r/off-beat subreddit. Within 24 hours, the post received more than 100 points 93% upvoted).