The Shiva Sunglasses: The Shiva - 9 layers polarized sunglasses

Maker

We are pleased to announce the launch of our Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for our new eyewear called The Shivas. Joplins started in 2016 with the ambitious goal of making eyewear eco-friendly and transforming this dirty industry. We wanted to produce a top notch pair of sunglasses with unseen quality by opting for alternatives to the regular materials currently being used by other eyewear brands. Making sure they were not only durable and fashionable but also lightweight, resistant, and environment-friendly. This gave birth to Shivas. The shiva is the perfect pair of sunglasses that fits any and every occasion, season and weather. This is the solution for everyone that wants to be environmentally friendly without having to compromise their style or stretch their pocket.

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3yr ago

Katina Cash

Dryfta

@glenleka Congrats on the launch!

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3yr ago

John Vonroth

@glenleka @plo_seth @alicia_sutton #StopCulturalAppropriation Imagine the outcry is this was named "The Allah" or "The Mohammed" or "The Jesus". "Shiva" is the name of a major Hindu god. Naming Naming a product by nonchalantly stealing from the name of a God for more than 1 billiong people smacks of casual and blatant racism. Simply googling this would have been easy enough but its clear that the founders were too lazy to even do this or care. On top for a company that has no less than half a dozen mentions of environmental stewardship, social responsibility and governance, clearly they dont really care but just want to make as if they do. To see this in our day and age reminds us of yet another instance of white businesses thinking it cool to steal from Eastern cultures and people.

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3yr ago

Rafael Dutra

Joplins Sunglasses

Maker

Hey, John, thanks for your attention on this. Just so we can explain, the idea of the name came from a mantra during a yoga session where we sing Shiva Shivaya Namah om. Shiva is the god of yoga and is said to bring bliss, Shiva also loves to dance, and it is said that dancing is the deepest meditation that one can have ( by the way our founder loves to dance - Forró, have you heard of that? It is a traditional dance from Brazil :)) that is why so many mantras relate to Shiva and have his name on their songs. The Shiva destroys the present moment to make way for whatever is coming next, which for us made also a very nice sense as to look for whatever is coming next through the lens of our Shivas. We only do this for the good and maybe to bring more awareness for what we like, practice and relate.

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3yr ago

John Vonroth

@rafael_dutra In the hopes that this doesnt turn into an endless back and forth a few points: 1. While I, and I imagine Hindus, do certainly appreciate the perceived explanation you gave above, it certainly rings hollow. Indeed, it seems that this cobbled-up mystic "rationalization" is precisely that: an a posteriori justification rather than a genuine thought from the get go. 2. You wax lyrically about songs and music, etc etc, yet nowhere on your website, emails, Kickstarter, Twitter, IG, or any other social media was there ANY type of mention of the origins of the name, the perceived philosophy you described above, or any mention whatsoever. 3. Now suddenly, after I raise this point, we get a deluge of rationalizations and justifications that feel like Joplins LDA/Joplins Inc suddenly want to avoid negative press after having butchered a culture for sounding trendy/cool. 4. Lets do a thought experiment. How would it be to say Oh you know Jesus loved wine, and he was creating a new trend and so he overturned the tables of the money counters at the Old Jewish Temple to create a new light so we are naming our sunglasses(get it: light?) after him. 5. Or you know, Muhammed was a Prophet(PBUH) and he was in a desert and he was changing etc etc, and he would have appreciated a nice pair of Muhammad Sunglasses. Bro seriously: if this was indeed your intent as you say so many times that you wanted "to bring more awareness", answer the simple question: where was the awareness before this comment? When you fault, in general not a good idea to keep digging. As a PR professional, my advice would be to acknowledge and change, not degrade the culture even more. Shame.

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3yr ago

Rafael Dutra

Joplins Sunglasses

Maker

@john_vonroth you are right, we don't want to turn this into a back and forth. We have this info in our Faq on the Kickstarter page, and the answer I posted to you was actually taken from there, as we included the question "why the name shiva?" once we had two people asking regarding the name. It is true it is not so obvious anywhere and sincerely, John, for me, as the founder, it is my personal choice to choose names as for example past models (Patel, Rashree, Srisri, Shankar) which are names of some of my Gurus and because I relate to all of these and mantra singing is part of my practices. It is mostly for me that I choose these names but not for the others, so to exactly say we are not trying to take advantage of the name or anything (otherwise we would talk about it and sell this idea), but no. Anyways, I will take into consideration your comments, we can't change the name at the moment for this project until it ends, but if I do receive more feedback regarding this, I will look into making that change later. So thank you for now, and peace.

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3yr ago