There is a type of lens sales trickery really gets to your favorite old eye guru.

And yes, I do say trickery, because English isn’t my native tongue and I can’t think of a more nuanced term to describe the potential rationale of selling somebody a -0.25 or a -0.50, or even a -0.75 pair of lenses.

I’d go with malice, or willful ignorance if we want to be idealists, or … trickery.

Here:

If you’re new to the schemes of lens sellers, let me break it down for you:

Andreas won’t notice any meaningful difference in his vision with the -0.25 glasses.  They will however be enough that if worn during all close-up, that next year the “optometrist” will be able to pitch him some -1.00 glasses.  

In dark “exam” room (sales room as I like to call it more accurately), -1.00 will pass at that point.

Of course feel free to dig into search terms on Google Scholar.  Hyperopic defocus and lens induced myopia are handy terms to go explore with.

This is creating customers, plain and simple.  There is no good reason on planet earth, for the customer, to be selling -0.25 diopter glasses.  

But usually I don’t even post these e-mails, though I get them a lot.

Today it was literally two in the span of a couple of hours, so I just couldn’t help but share. Here’s the second one:

Seriously though.

This is standard practice.  I’m not showing you far fetched conspiracy theories or scare tactics or other Internet unicorn farms.  This is what is actually going on.  If you set foot into that lens seller office, you will be sold glasses.

Not by everyone of course.  But rather quite commonly.

And then you get lens induced myopia.  There is a reason this is a 100 billion dollar a year industry.

Also while we’re already here and at it, the lens sellers will take every possible opportunity to obfuscate the facts, plead gratuitous ignorance, and throw around out-of-context science terms and grandiose demands.  Anything to distract you from the fact that they’re selling you a product that will cause you to become dependent on it.

Here, a recent Youtube comment:

It is exactly these things that fuel my anger and the ongoing investment in growing endmyopia.  

What you really need is to learn about managing your close-up habits.  Print an eye chart.  Start keeping a bit of a log about your vision.  Do some reading here about ciliary spasm and take stock in your screen time vs. distance time, make it a fun project to learn a bit more about your eyes.

And don’t buy those glasses.  Unless you want to become an actual myope and deal with all of that.

Caveat emptor and all the whatnots.

Cheers,

-Jake