Snake Oil

[WinNut]

What's with the occasional jokes about snake oil on this forum? Also Linus says stuff like "PC Audio is Snake Oil".

[Askew]

It means selling a product that doesn't do anywhere near what it's advertised as doing (what the customer thinks it will do) if at all.

 

It's shorthand for 'Marketing bullshit', and the name originated from bogus health products like 'Tommy's Elixir of Eternal Life'.

[Createinator]

Snake oil is an expression that originally referred to fraudulent health products or unproven medicine but has come to refer to any product with questionable or unverifiable quality or benefit. By extension, a snake oil salesman is someone who knowingly sells fraudulent goods or who is himself or herself a fraud, quack, charlatan, and the like.

[Tech_Dreamer]

Meh! the term "futureproof" is snake oil,

[LOST TALE]

Harper is snake oil, in every aspect he touches.

Hitler was not snake oil in economy.

[Scionyde]

Harper is snake oil, in every aspect he touches.

Hitler was not snake oil in economy.

 

Huh?

[LOST TALE]

Huh?

Which part do you not understand?

[JamGorby]

Snake oil...not nearly as hard to clean up as snake butter.