Hate-Reading Wirecutter in the Nascent Era of AI Slop

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This aggressively hideous $200 coat rack has been living rent-free in my head for years, ever since the moment I saw it in a Wirecutter roundup of doorway-decluttering products. I’m in a forever fight with my narrow entryway, and here was Wirecutter landing in my inbox and promising a selection of “simultaneously beautiful and functional” solutions. Now, is this coat rack functional? I am willing to take Wirecutter’s word for it, and at an eye-popping price, I certainly hope it performs. But beautiful? I mean, “eye of the beholder” and all that, but this coat rack looks like an errant part that might have fallen off of or out of an airplane–possibly both.

Still, you can’t please everyone all the time, particularly when it comes to something as subjective as the aesthetics of personal style and home decor. I think the Eames Hang-It-All, also recommended, looks less whimsical and more like “it smells like half-regurgitated animal crackers and diaper cream,” which puts me at odds with probably the world’s entire population of fancy design experts. Are they wrong? Am I? Nobody knows! That’s art, baby.

Regardless, $300 is objectively a wild amount of money to spend on any wall-mounted coat hanger, let alone one that looks like it belongs in a high-end Chuck E. Cheese. But as if the Eames itself wasn’t bad enough, Wirecutter recommends not one but two more kindergarten-chic Hang-It-All knockoffs, both at comical price points ($70-$100, which… can people really not throw their coats over a chair or something?). A full third of Wirecutter’s coat storage solutions involve sticking balls on sticks, then sticking the balls on sticks on the wall! It’s a real commitment to the bit. But perhaps beauty is especially in the eye of the beholder when it comes to coat racks; maybe I’m just the kind of person who simply can’t visualize a truly beautiful coat rack. Fine! But sometimes words do mean things, and I refuse to accept that this practically invisible $125 Amazon coat rack falls anywhere in the same universe as “quirky,” but that’s the description Wirecutter chose.

By this time you are likely wondering if this whole piece is going to be one lady hollering about the preferred coat racks of a recommendations website owned by the New York Times, one of America’s most prominent bigotry laundering operations and purveyors of fascism apologia. I promise it will not. I will also be complaining about other bad Wirecutter recommendations, such as these chintzy sunglasses, this list of “wedding guest” dresses that includes one that could legitimately pass for a bridal gown, and a printer I spent five precious and fleeting years of my life in open and active dispute with. I assure you I didn’t write this whole thing just because Wirecutter has become one of my favorite hate-reads after years of getting burned by their bad buys.

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