Marcel Winatschek

Gold Doesn’t Stick

You run out of ways to impress people. Designer sneakers from Japan? Dead. Endangered fish from the Pacific? Doesn’t land. Models, cars, whatever—nothing sticks. So you keep escalating, trying weirder shit, because something has to work eventually.

ColorWare made a 24-karat gold Xbox One. Fifty of them, for some reason. The arbitrary limit is almost funny—like rarity suddenly makes this thing matter. Your friends would look at it for four seconds and go back to their phones.

The thing that gets me: it plays the exact same games. Grand Theft Auto doesn’t perform better on gold. Mortal Kombat doesn’t know what’s running it. The controller matches if you care about that, but hands don’t know precious metals. You know all this. That was never the reason.

It’s that moment you open the box when everything feels special and new and like you’ve finally done something. Five minutes of it. Then it’s just an expensive console and they’re still bored and you’re wondering why you thought this would be different.

I get it though. At least it’s honest—doesn’t pretend to offer anything but the visible fact that you spent money. Which is probably exactly why it doesn’t work. Everyone can see the gold. Everyone knows what it means.