Another Small Story About E-Commerce

Having Very Little to do with Motorcycles or Rider’s Gear...

…Unless you happen to be looking for a thin sheet of titanium to cut-up and use to fabricate something for your moto. A few days ago before falling asleep I was watching a few YouTube videos and at one point was presented with a five-minute infomercial starring a nice young woman making a sales pitch about ‘revolutionary’ and ‘sanitary’ titanium cutting boards. More out of naïve curiosity, and with zero interest in purchasing one, I clicked the ‘buy’ button and was presented with this online storefront:

https://trytitachef.com/pp/en-2/?

I’ve deleted the coded sales-source tracking information which followed the question mark at the end of the link above, but here is some of it:

gad_source=2&gad_campaignid=22666324047&wbraid=ClkKCAjwvuLDBhBvEkkAAPopvbR-ZAYH9qKikK3DC_DwVUk9bpgPV6FE5vwE6fDRT7ZvtZDOpCyYus03MCMl09jQnx66TgOF-v69jidQYY2hqDLNJBpwGgIu8A  

Any YouTube keyword search for titanium cutting boards will display dozens of other similar videos about these miraculous new cutting boards, each fronting another online store:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=titanium+cutting+board+video

The reason I’m sharing this is because though you may come here for great motorcycle gear and interesting stuff about motorcycling, you also are likely to be an online shopper for Aerostich products, so I thought you might enjoy a brief description of my experiences with some of today’s online marketing, using these titanium cutting boards as an example. Short version: Most online marketing today is just as irritating and misleading as the broadcast television commercials and infomercials were during my childhood. (The more things change, the more they seem the same… Ain’t technology wonderful?)

Here are my experiences with titanium, cutting boards, sharp kitchen knives, and germs: My personal preference is for wooden bowls and plates with ultralight titanium eating utensils (from camping/backpacking outfitters), and for having food prep knives about as sharp I can make them with two different grades of ceramic stones plus an improvised leather ‘strop’. I’ve also long favored hand-washing my daily-used wooden plates and bowls, and the titanium utensils, rather than dishwasher-washing anything. All dishwashing machines use extremely hot water (and some electricity…) to clean and sterilize whatever is placed inside them. Wooden bowls and plates can only be hand-washed, and I enjoy that as another simple dexterity-improving task. The bottom line is I don’t know from personal experience if titanium cutting boards keep one’s knives sharp longer. If you watch any of the videos about them, you can make up your own mind: Scam or innovative germ-eliminating solution? My guess? Scam.

The relative softness of the wooden plates I use helps my knife blades stay sharp. I know microscopic germs get stuck and live inside even the hardest wood, and some kinds of germs can make one very sick. I’ve experienced food poisoning a few times, but never from my wood plates and dishes. Salmonella can be very serious and generally means at least a day of high fever and multiple brief-but-severe episodes of (projectile) diarrhea, cramps, and vomiting. I will never forget the worst time. I was riding and homeward-bound near the end of a week-long motorcycle trip, and I’d eaten a quick lunch made from a decent-looking salad bar at a questionable-looking truck stop. By 4:00 PM, I was on a toilet in a motel room maybe a hundred and fifty miles past the poisonous salad, and in great agony with a high fever and all the other symptoms. I was a mess. It took my body two or three days to recover and be able to complete the trip. Fortunately, there was a Walmart less than 1/8-mile away and the person I’d been riding with was able to purchase a few things to help me get through this ordeal a bit easier. Lesson: Avoid ALL truck stop salad bars.

Despite that experience, I still prefer hand-dishwashing-wooden plates and bowls. The reasons I like wood over other food handling materials are:

1. Very easy to keep clean, germ-free and safe -- if one knows how.
2. Very lightweight and unbreakable in normal use, plus the attractive patina of long use (I know appearance is subjective).
3. Environmentally friendly and ‘natural’ compared to all plastics and titanium. No harmful plastic micro-particles released into the world and titanium takes large amounts of energy to mine and refine. Plus, most of the world’s titanium comes from Russia, and all these new titanium boards are manufactured in China and sold online via Amazon. Three entities I choose to support as little as possible for reasons outside this short story.

The only downside to wooden dishes is that one must diligently hand-wash and then let them air dry fully after each use. The requirements are dish soap, water, and air. (Some online videos also teach how to use lemon juice to sterilize regular cutting boards, etc...)

The key to my wooden plate sanitizing process is air, which means letting the dish or bowl dry completely between uses, preferably after a hand-wash using dish soap. The key is they be allowed to dry fully after each use. Dryness is the key to ensuring all germs are long dead by the time one re-uses a particular wooden plate or cutting board. Germs die when the moisture they require goes away. Every time. All of them.

The washing tool I prefer is a clear plastic soap-and-sponge wand with a detachable/replaceable old-fashioned cellulose sponge and a handle filled with dish soap that slowly filters out through the sponge. It makes lots of suds and is fast and easy to use. When not in use this tool sits upside down in a broad-based ceramic mug located on the kitchen counter next to the faucet. (A repurposed narrow-necked French condiment container - an actual ‘Grey Poupon’ stoneware thing). Stored this way it nearly always dries fully overnight, killing any soap-loving germs which might be hiding inside the sponge. The only risk to storing this tool upside down is having soap drip off the sponge onto the kitchen countertop, but if you press the face of the sponge against the side of the sink to squeeze out most of the water just before putting it away, there aren’t any drips. Humans have been safely eating with, and cutting food on wood, for maybe only a quarter of a million years. Eating tech does not get more old-school than this.

Ten minutes after watching the online titanium cutting board pitch, I’d viewed/scanned maybe a dozen similar YouTube infomercials touting these miraculous cutting boards. Lots of viewer comments beneath each, and 95% of ‘em were highly favorable testimonials. Also, all the videos seemed to have been made by young computer-and-social-media-savvy people. The reviews and testimonials were so overwhelmingly favorable that their preponderance alone seemed suspicious, at least to me. If nothing else, today’s younger people are acutely aware of how affiliate and online marketing work. Thus, I’ve come to suspect that most of the videos were intentionally misleading to simply help businesses sell more stuff.*

Combine high levels of affiliate-payment awareness with strong digital fluency and generationally raised levels of fear about many kinds of risks (germs, motorcycles, you-name-it…) and the unusually high profit margins from selling many Chinese manufactured products, and it adds up to a lot of YouTube videos intentionally presenting falsehoods or partial falsehoods about the desirability of titanium cutting boards.

Beyond all that, today’s popular toothpastes, laundry soaps, and hundreds of other consumer products are now labeled as ‘clinical’ or ‘sterilizing’. Such marketing buzzwords appeal to all generations but are extra-effective with today’s younger people. Random free-range boomer parents: “Where did we go wrong?”

Titanium cutting boards may be ok for cutting fruit, provided only the tip of your knife is run across the titanium, but for easier cutting of meats, fish, cheeses, and vegetables, they will dull a sharp knife far more quickly than any softer cutting surface. This one advantage of old-school cutting boards far outweighs all disadvantages, at least for me, but in the current online video universe, I’m clearly part of a small minority. Just another foolish geezer who loves riding motorcycles and making my kitchen knives sharp enough to dry shave a few ‘test’ hairs on my forearm.

-- Mr. Subjective, July 2025

PS – These Ti boards do look like a possibly nice source-material for DIY fabricated ultralight bicycle or motorcycle brackets or side panels, though far more difficult to work with than aluminum stock.

*A reasonably smart but unethical person could become rich and powerful spreading lies online. Hmmm…

If you are looking for a very good comparison-review of cutting boards, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tm7mVpUIOk  It’s nerdy, honest and useful.