ipod fetishism

January 19, 2005 11:57 PM

...the consumer is the product being sold to the iPod... And then I thought of the shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I felt like I was seeing the consumer version of the neutron bomb: shadows where there were once people, their last moment frozen as a dark blotch on the city's landscape after being evaporated in an instant, their personal entertainment device -- gloriously unaffected by the blast -- still transmitting some driving house beat.
posted by symbioid (12 comments total)

Wait... wouldn't a neutron bomb sorta kill the electronics?
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:01 AM on January 20, 2005

It's an article that complains that the iPod is given more precedence than the consumer in advertisements.

It's like some kind of bizarro world. "They're putting the focus on the product, and not the person owning it! I've been raised on ads that show happy smiling models instead of products; I can't handle the models being less important the product! Make them stop, and show me a smiling happy person instead of the product, so I'll know how happy I'll become if I buy it!"
posted by Bugbread at 12:06 AM on January 20, 2005

Community becomes re-defined as a demographic experience rather than a shared communality: we identify with others who share our same commodity fetish, our same demographic; shared experience is reduced to acknowledging that "Hey, they're listening to an iPod too!"

As opposed to our shared experience being reduced to acknowledging that "Hey, they live in my same postal code!"

There's probably a message buried in there, but it's under so much pseudo-intellectual wank it's hard to tell.
posted by Bugbread at 12:09 AM on January 20, 2005

Who wants me to plot the exact logical connection between the ipod and the irrelevancy of the universe itself? Don't push me.
posted by angry modem at 12:11 AM on January 20, 2005

The best part is the crazy Pat Robertson quote at the bottom of the page:

Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.

posted by Tlogmer at 12:13 AM on January 20, 2005

When I see these ads now I can't help imagining these disembodied wraiths plugged into their own little white instruments of torture masquerading as eternal fun. I momentarily see a fade-in as the wraiths become the people they once were, their faces frozen in a look of ecstasy that could be mistaken for agony, their contorted mouths agape in a joyless joy they wish would stop, their frozen dance of bliss a freeze-frame of a spastic waltz with St. Vitus.

Too much acid.
posted by Bugbread at 12:15 AM on January 20, 2005

a few points:

1) yes, the iPod is largely a marketing phenomenon. It's pathetic to me that Mac users, a crowd that generally think they've got a good sense for superior products, fall for a nice design enclosing an inferior feature set (built in copy protection, no platform-independent mass storage support, no radio, no encoder) at a higher price. These so-called "techie people" have proved to be some of the more deep-pocketed fashion victims ever. Disappointing.

2) even revolutionary products that we all really love suck a bit more when 10-story-tall images of them litter our landscape. Advertising sucks, whether you like the company or not.

3) now that the iPod mania has risen to full-on "phenomenon" status, it's attracting buyers who simply want something novel, something cool, who might not otherwise consider a portable MP3 player at all. The iPod is the cliche gift idea now, just because it's cool. This, unfortunately, is just more reinforcement to look to consumer products for novelty, interest, hope in mankind's advancement, etc. Why's it sweet to be alive in the 21st century? Because they didn't have fucking iPods in the 1900s, dude.
posted by scarabic at 12:16 AM on January 20, 2005

Also, the point of a neutron bomb is that it kills people with short-term radiation: don't see any reason it should be more likely to leave people as shadows than a regular atom bomb. I suppose he just thinks it sounds cooler than boring old atom bomb.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:16 AM on January 20, 2005

Still, wouldn't it fry the iPod? Am I the only one concerned about this fallacy in his metaphor?
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:22 AM on January 20, 2005

Scarabic: Don't paint everyone with the same brush. There are some people who don't buy music from iTunes (copy protection problems therefore doesn't apply), only plan on using their mp3 player with their Windows PC (platform independence doesn't apply), don't like the radio (hence buying the iPod in the first place) (no radio problem), and don't want to record on the fly (no encoder problem doesn't apply), but want good design, UI, and small form factor. For them, it would seem silly not to buy an iPod, if it's the device best suited to their needs. There may be some fashion victims among iPod buyers, but remember that there are a lot of people who just bought the tool that best fit their conditions, and it happened to be an iPod.

Kinda disagree on point 2 as well, because the products' quality or lack thereof has diddly to do with whether the company making it does annoying advertising. It's that kind of thinking that makes people approach iPods as fashion accessories rather than tools. Unless an advertisement changes my battery life, audio quality, or screen brightness, I don't see how it can make my iPod worse or better. Now, it very well may make Apple worse or better. And in that case, I do think the giant ads make Apple a worse company.
posted by Bugbread at 12:25 AM on January 20, 2005

Tlogmer, if you reload you should get a new quote each time. It's a gimmick.

Nice link, thanks. The old Walkman atomised society stuff is a bit old, I remember a bunch of articles about that in print.

scarabic:

1) The iPod is a marketing phenomena, but two years ago one could argue it was a decent way to listen to MP3's if you use a Mac, period. The built-in copy protection angle is a falsehood, that only makes sense if you buy music from the iTunes music store -alone. I don't. And what do you mean by "platform independent mass storage support?" No encoder? I thought it was possible to record audio via an add-on.

2) "me too"

3) "a partial me too"
posted by gsb at 12:25 AM on January 20, 2005

I, for one, don't get it.

Isn't this just another bogus insight on just another webblog?
posted by DuoJet at 12:27 AM on January 20, 2005