Misread, White & Blue: The DOGE Hat Incident
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Got my hands on some Faux Threads samples and decided to do what any responsible brand founder-slash-chaos agent would do: run a little IRL market research. I threw on the red, white & blue Dead Oligarchs, Good Eats trucker—yeah, the one with DOGE loud and proud across the front—and hit a bar in Boulder with some friends. Beers were flowing. Shuffleboard was shuffled. All good.
Then she showed up.
Tears welling in her eyes. Stone-cold serious. She’d clocked the DOGE logo from across the room and thought I was just another tech bro cosplaying as a person. You know the type: crypto-rich, soul-poor, vibes curated by LinkedIn and delusion.
She marched over, hot with purpose. Triggered, locked in, ready to throw down. But when she got close enough to read the fine print—Dead Oligarchs, Good Eats—the tension shifted. Her face softened, eyebrows knit in confusion. Maybe even the faintest flicker of relief.
Turns out she works in climate science. The kind of person whose job is to warn the world it’s burning while billionaires build bunkers and flick matches. And DOGE—the agency, not the drip—had its chainsaw aimed directly at her livelihood. So yeah, seeing someone in what looked like fan merch for the people shredding her career? That hit hard.
I told her she wasn’t wrong. The original design was too subtle, too easy to misread. I’m not a professional designer. I’m a pissed-off citizen with a Shopify login. But I’m learning. I let her know I’d already reworked it to hit louder, harder, and way less cryptic. No more mistaking it for Silicon Valley fan club hat.
That took her from red-hot to a low simmer. Still not thrilled, but no longer ready to slap the hat off my head. She walked away. I figured that was the end of it.
But later, she came back. Said she wanted to apologize for coming in so hot. I cut her off: “Honestly, I expected worse.” We hugged it out. And as she turned to go, she laughed and said:
“Never in a million years did I think a DOGE hat would make my f*ing night.”
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That’s the thing about Faux Threads—we’re not here to blend in, back down, or beg for approval. We make gear that confuses the comfortable, confronts the complicit, and—on a good night—connects the quietly furious.
The new Dead Oligarchs, Good Eats trucker hat is live. Same mission. Sharper message. Zero risk of being mistaken for tech bro cosplay or VC merch.
Because if your fit isn’t starting conversations—or catching side-eyes—you’re just getting dressed, not making a statement.
Merch for the Masses. Built to disrupt, not fade into the feed.
Get yours before someone tries to ban it.