Instagram Has Become SkyMall

The ads are a nonstop slurry of surreal products, and I love it

If you flew during the 90s and 00s, you probably remember SkyMall. It was a catalogue of completely loony products — often high-tech gadgets of dubious promise, such as “a vacuum cleaner to catch flies, an alien butler drink tray, a helmet that promises to regrow your hair using lasers.” Here’s that head laser …

Very often the products existed to solve a problem that wasn’t remotely a problem, like “hey, do you ever find it a huge hassle to pour cereal from a box?”

The thing is, SkyMall was a blast. It was so consistently unhinged — night-glow toilet seat! seabreacher customized boat! wine-glass-holder necklace! — that I began to look forward to thumbing through the catalogue while nursing a plastic tumbler of scotch. It was the high point of my flight.

Back then, I was somewhat baffled that anyone bought this crap. In retrospect, I can see that air travel — where people are…