How Much Would You Pay For Mermaid School?

Witches may be born, not made, at least in JK Rowling’s Potterverse. But in the more egalitarian, socialist-y paradise of Canada, anyone can train to be a mermaid — provided you can pay.

Canada and “whimsical sea fantasy” usually don’t go together. Recently, however, all that changed as the country opened its first ever Mermaid school dedicated to “the happiness of your inner mermaid” in Montreal. AquaSirène swims a strange path between cosplay and sport as students don fins for cardio and bond “through a shared fondness for mermaids.” As Montreal resident and part-time mermaid Marielle Chartier-Hénault explained to the CBC: “You become like another person. You are not yourself anymore — you’re the mermaid and the mermaid can do anything … You can do the style you want. It’s a magical creature.”

The website offers lots of options, including fitness classes for people aged 16 and up, though it cautions that “Introduction to Mermaid Swimming” is a pre-req and also that “students must know how to swim.” Cost: $300 for 10 classes of an hour each. Presumably that’s Canadian dollars, so the American equivalent would be around $240. Tail rental is an extra $10 (Canadian) per class. The site also makes clear that all genders, races, ages, and sizes are welcome.

But what if this is another hoax, a la “Send Your Enemies Glitter”??

Yes, sadly, in case you didn’t hear, “Send Your Enemies Glitter” was a prank played on all of us — particular the media — by one Mathew Carpenter. The Observer (while gloating a little that it itself was never pranked) explains.

The premise was both inspired and insane — for $9.99 you could ship a benign glitter bomb to any friend or enemy anywhere in the world. Time.com covered it, and so did Fast Company, the Telegraph, Huffington Post, TechCrunch (note: the Observer declined to cover it because it seemed suspicious). Then after claiming six figures worth of orders and more than a million pageviews, the founder begged users to stop inundating him with requests and put the whole thing up for auction, where it netted $85,000. …

What made you decide to do it and why did you think you could pull this off?

I run a lot of websites that earn recurring income with very little work. My New Year’s resolution was to work on more side projects to keep me occupied whilst improving my marketing & development skills. I read your book about 8 months ago and experimented with a few different ideas before hitting a success with this website.

Here’s Mat’s bio from one of his sites, Sofa Moolah (“a website devoted to teaching you how to make money online!”):

Hi, I’m Mat. I’m 22 and have been making money online since 2008. Not until 2010 did I make enough to do this for a living. In these few short years I’ve experienced both the highs and lows of working online. Some positives include consistent 4 figure profit days and being featured on all forms of media. A couple of negatives were losing low 5 figures in a single day and almost being sued by one of the biggest companies in the world (can‘t say who but I‘ve hidden the name in the very first post on this website — if you find out, you win 100 points).

Sounds intriguing, if also stressful and exhausting. I think I’d rather learn to be a mermaid.

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