> 3M does not provide product information on which filters are best for government repression
Great writing.
>When I eventually sat down to write my article about the Portland protests, I had a strange kind of epiphany, if it can even be called that. Out in the real world, when drowning in tear gas and adrenaline
Bad writing.
This is a genius product review right now for all the reasons everyone else thinks it is. I didn't need to read a single one of the authors personal experiences to understand the underlying message, or read ~100 words about their internal struggles to classify Portland as a riot versus a protest. The lack of brevity and conciseness seriously undercuts the absolute geniusness of maliciously compliant product reviews about gas masks in our current political climate.
My comment is about the art of subtlety. Again, this is an amazing article, but it's literally just been flagged by HN because it waxes poetic about politics instead of allowing all of that to be there without saying it. We can all read between the lines.
The product review, while it does stand on its own, is not the main purpose.
The point is to render absurd the incredulous comments from Pam Bondi, "How did these people go out and get gas masks?" Bondi did not ask this question to receive an answer, "oh, they go to Home Depot and get model X-54-Whatever." The point of her question was to cast aspersion on the protestors, to attempt to delegitimize their grievances by painting them as paid, professional agitators. It's the sort of "I'm just sayin'" bullshit rhetoric we've all had to deal with from racist uncles at Thanksgiving for the last 25 years.
Jeong's article works by failing to engage Bondi's comments on Bondi's grounds. Jeong's use of product review as a structure for her article is a conceit that treats Bondi's comments as a legitimate request for product reviews, side-stepping the concept that only paid professionals could ever know anything about gas masks, because information on the Internet is and wants to be free.