I carry a phone roughly the size of a television, a pair of sunglasses that collects fingerprints like limited-edition coins, and have a boss who really likes to poke at my screen. My life is a series of smudges.
Oh man I hate smudges. They make me feel uncomfortable, like I've had too much coffee or I'm waiting for a girl to call me back. I like things clean and shiny. I own many many many microfiber cloths: furry ones for washing my motorcycle, little ones that live in all of my jacket pockets, and big floppy ones I use to fanatically free my television of dust (the scourge of city life). I keep a cloth on my kitchen table and another in my office. I give microfiber sunglasses pouches as gifts (great stocking-stuffers). A month ago, I figured microfiber was good to go; it had already improved my life. Then I got a somewhat pushy email from a publicist repping a particular brand of microfiber cloth, punctuated by the following provocative sentence:
"If you don't like it you can send it back, throw it away, light it on fire...anything you please."
I also really like fire.
No offense, publicists, but I live to prove you wrong. Over the past decade, I have gotten so many exaggerated claims, spun sentences, and outright lies from your species, that, unless I know you, I generally don't believe anything you say. So when this person—this Kelly (if that is her real name)—told me that Cloth Addiction (hahahaha what a dumb name) was "the absolute best out there," and then challenged me to set it on fire if I didn't like it, I was like I'mma use the thing, shit all over her hyperbolic hucksterism, make fun of the product's stupid name, and then set the fucking thing on fire. And then I'd post a video of me setting the fucking thing on fire. Maybe a gif too.
There was a problem with my plan: These cloths are awesome.
I don't know if Cloth Addiction (hahahaha what a dumb name) is the "absolute best out there;" right now there are literally 63,582 results for "microfiber cloths" on Amazon, and no, I am not going to test all of them. But these are the "absolute best" ones I have ever used in my profoundly anal-retentive life. While my go-to microfiber sunglass pouch mostly makes swirls of grease on my highly annoying (but awesome and totally worth the trouble) mirrored-blue lenses, Cloth Addiction (hahahaha what a dumb name) returns my shades to smear-free awesomeness with a few rubs. Screens, like the one on my super gigundo Android communication television, are even easier: usually perfectly clean with a single pass.
What makes Cloth Addiction (hahahaha what a dumb name) so outstanding? It's hard to describe, and I am not a materials scientist. But the cloth feels kind of softly abrasive: grippy like a cat's tongue, but super smooth at the same time. In my mind's eye, I imagine the tiny woven fibers grabbing grease molecules and spiriting them away. According to the company's literature, it's much finer weave than other microfibers, with a denier (it's kind of like thread-count) of 0.65. The company also claims that its cloth is the only cloth that is made of 100-percent microfiber, while other products are not. I have no idea if that is true, but suspect it is not. (I will investigate further.) What definitely is true is that Cloth Addiction (hahahaha what a dumb name) is great.
So OK, "Kelly," you win. Please send me another note with your address in it (I deleted your emails) so I can send these things back to you. It's only fair that I buy some. [Cloth Addiction]
Buy this. It means we totally, unabashedly, unreservedly think you should buy whatever it is we're writing about. But you figured that out, right?