Big takes on These Disruptive Times seem better suited to multimilliondollar, VC-funded, vanity-project sites than to the pages of SFist, but I'll tell you this: if no one can tell if your startup is satire or real, either you're screwed or we all are.

I'm saying this today in reference to Trashday.co, a startup that apparently claims that you will "never take the trash out again." So, what did they do, find a way to convert garbage into water? Fabric? Artisan pickles? Nope! Assuming that they are serious, their model is built around moving your trash cans for you, for between $32-$52 a month, depending on the number of bins you have.

People who are much smarter than I am, like Clara Jeffery, the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, apparently believe that Trashday.co is the real deal:

A startup for San Franciscans too lazy to take out their own trash. http://t.co/dxAl85akvA #nottheonion — Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) May 30, 2015

And, who knows, maybe it is a real startup! After all, Recology, which is the company that picks up your trash, has been offering ALMOST EXACTLY THAT SAME SERVICE for "years and years," a rep told me over the phone this morning.

It's "very popular" with people who cannot otherwise take out their trash, "people who are disabled, out-of-town, things like that," she said.

If your trash cans are easily accessible, Recology's service can actually be significantly cheaper than Trashday's. If the Recology workers don't have to contend with any stairs, and if they only need to drag your cans 25 feet or less, all they add to your bill every month is a $27.10 "key fee," no matter how many bins you have. That's $13.55 for a key for the folks who get your recycling and trash, and $13.55 for the folks who get your compost.

If the Recology folks have to deal with stairs, you're billed an additional monthly $10.06 per cart, and if they have to take your cans over 25 feet, you're paying an additional monthly $9.28 per cart. So if you have a lot of cans that have to travel 30 feet and up and down stairs, Trashday could be a bargain.

That is, if it exists and you live in Trashday's "Launch Neighborhoods Noe Valley, The Castro, The Lower Haight and The Mission." (Says the Recology rep to whom I spoke today, "of course we [offer trashcan moving service] all over San Francisco! Why wouldn't we?")

But then again, as Business Insider's Matt Weinberger puts it, "we can't rule out the possibility that it's a big joke."

After all, Trashday only offers a phone number (415-209-5724) as a means of contact. When called, all you get is Google Voice's outgoing message, not one specific to Trashday.co or even one that says "GOT YOU SUCKERS." (Needless to say, SFist hasn't gotten a response to our calls to Trashday at publication time.)

Their website is privately registered, so that's no help — when I looked it up I was halfway expecting to see contact info for Chicken John or something. No dice.

So is Trashday real, or not? It doesn't seem funny enough to be a joke, especially since it's an imitation of a service that already exists. But it doesn't seem together or professional enough to be serious, either. So, I dunno? What do you think?

Update: SFist commenter Kevin Montgomery notes that the Trashday website's privacy page:

says the owner is "Tap and Hold, Inc." That company has another app on the App Store called NOW (which seems like a shitty Periscope rip-off--seems like their thing!): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id964353220 Tap and Hold is in the CA Secretary of State's business database, registered this January to Joseph R. Mellin. Here he is on Quora. If this is a hoax, he's gone to great lengths to make it seem legit.

Let's see if Trashday is Joe's baby! I've dropped him a line on his Facebook page to find out.