‘Are they that desperate if they have a smartphone?’
September 15, 2015 5:29 AM   Subscribe

 
Ah yes, one of the favourite cudgels against the poor! Because poor people deserve nothing and god forbid, they have a smartphone/a large TV/anything marker of relative normalcy, then they must not be very poor or desperate, right?

I s2g, the depth to which awful people want anyone in a less fortunate situation to really truly meet their imposed standards of destitution is fucking horrifying.
posted by Kitteh at 5:42 AM on September 15, 2015 [49 favorites]


A couple of years ago, I noticed some kids I knew were coming from a really broke area with brand-new contract phones, and my knee-jerk reaction was 'what a waste' but then I caught myself and thought hang on, there's probably more going on, think about the math. For the price of the data contract (and students got subsidies, plus there is student wifi for free around lots of places), and with an android or even an older iPhone model, you got access to a lot. Just in terms of entertainment, you had about 4-5 hours of social connection and entertainment for free each day, and the electrical costs are negligible, compared to a desktop gaming machine (and you could charge it at school if that was an issue). Then you had email access which was essential for school, and if you did cloud storage with a library computer for desktop work, you could manage most of the school research project homework even if your family couldn't afford a computer at home. And a smartphone was far safer and more portable if you had a dysfunctional homelife. And a smartphone has decent resale value.

So duh.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:49 AM on September 15, 2015 [58 favorites]


The desperation of migrants and refugees is the desperation to not die.

They are not necessarily poor.
posted by srboisvert at 5:52 AM on September 15, 2015 [76 favorites]


A smartphone enables you to navigate your own journey; a lot cheaper and safer than paying a people smuggler.
posted by Segundus at 5:53 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


I, finally bought a smartphone this year because I can pick up a cheap one at a cost that won't make me cry when I drop it or forget it.

The costs of personal electronics arguably has been deflationary at the bottom end, while the total costs for needs like transportation, education, housing, and even decent food have been increasing faster than inflation.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:58 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]


As someone said on Twitter "They're fleeing from war, not visiting from the Past."
posted by billiebee at 6:00 AM on September 15, 2015 [101 favorites]


This reminds me of those people who say, when they hear someone is living in their car, that they can't be that poor because they have a car. To meet their imaginary standard of need, you have to be on the sidewalk with nothing but filthy rags to wear. And it's not like these people would help then, either.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:02 AM on September 15, 2015 [31 favorites]


Bill O'Reilly was on about what an outrage it is that poor people have refrigerators last week, according to my outraged Facebook feed. (I tried to find a link but apparently he goes back to this well every couple of months, so you can Google it yourself and take your pick.) It's weird how our mental picture of poverty is stuck in the 1930s.

During the run-up to World War II, did people complain that Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime were too wealthy to be refugees? Or is this a hyper-modern complaint?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:09 AM on September 15, 2015 [7 favorites]


If you are poor, you're probably working weird hours, contract gigs, etc. You have to have a smartphone to get those jobs. If you don't have a smartphone, it is much, much harder to get to work.

Plus, why should poor people be unable to access news alerts, weather, etc? An unemployed person gets just as wet in a thunderstorm as a working person, and wants to hide from a tornado just as much, and if anything has particular interest in local political issues.

Also, over the years I've had a number of friends go through homelessness or semi-homelessness (what a great nation we live in!), and actually, it's comparatively easy to get certain kinds of clothes, electronics, etc - better off friends will give you their old ones or buy you stuff on sale. What you can't get is a steady income for rent or medical care. A friend who can give you $300 for a phone won't be able to give you $800 every month for an apartment.
posted by Frowner at 6:10 AM on September 15, 2015 [11 favorites]


As dorothyisunderwood points out above, the smartphone is a revolutionary technology that has become more than a cultural signifier but for the modern poor a lifeline to civilization and an equalizer for education. It is becoming true that a signal of privilege today is the person who can afford to live without.
posted by evilDoug at 6:11 AM on September 15, 2015 [12 favorites]


It is becoming true that a signal of privilege today is the person who can afford to live without.

My office is basically divided into lawyers (who make a decent salary) and paralegals (who largely do not). In the past four years we've had several lawyers who either had flip phones or no cell phone at all,* and we've had zero paralegals who didn't have a smart phone. You never heard the people making $25,000 a year talking about how they didn't want to be tied to the office.

*Ugh, yes, please leave for out of office meetings with no way for us to contact you if a client calls. Ugh.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:16 AM on September 15, 2015 [10 favorites]


Or is this a hyper-modern complaint?

Good question. I think it's relatively hypermodern-ish. It's part of a larger package of contemporary conservative media tactics that work to define their perceived enemies in the public sphere.

See also: Liberals are not allowed to be wealthy or have nice cars or things because they are supporters of welfare and the poor.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:17 AM on September 15, 2015 [11 favorites]


This is also a fine time to educate people about the fact that refugees are not necessarily from a penniless uneducated background; plenty of Syrian refugees are well-educated folks who had a middle-class life before everything went to shit, and why wouldn't a shopkeeper or doctor or engineer own a smartphone?
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:18 AM on September 15, 2015 [43 favorites]


I am going to pass up the actual discussion of class and privelege as designated by owning a pocket-sized device that can connect to the global information network and instead marvel at the sheer absurdity of a significant segment of a nation's refugees communicating via something with the jokey name of "WhatsApp". I want to go back to pre-ubiquitous-smartphone SF and replace vague references to communications or phone calls or whatever with people using something with as gleefully stupid a name as "WhatsApp".
posted by egypturnash at 6:28 AM on September 15, 2015 [7 favorites]


Im not up to speed on international data plans, I left my phone at home for a week last year rather than deal with trying to take my US ATT iPhone to Croatia, but Im impressed that they can get continuous service from Syria overland through, what, 15 countries? Or equally impressed they get 3/4G data service in the middle of the Mediterranean.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:33 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


See also: Liberals are not allowed to be wealthy or have nice cars or things because they are supporters of welfare and the poor.

According to Google Ngram, the phrase "Champagne Socialist" started in the late 70s and took off like a rocket between then and 2000. (My friend prefers the term "Bollinger Bolshevik")

So that's a good correlation with the Thatcher/Reagan years.

Hm.
posted by Devonian at 6:39 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Not a refugee, but if you're Homeless in Toronto, it tends to help.
posted by cacofonie at 6:44 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


we've had several lawyers who either had flip phones or no cell phone at all

Conspicuous incompetence (as opposed to genuine confusion). A marker of privilege, particularly indulged in by people of a certain age, wealth and class. They have people who do those little dirty techie things for them.
posted by bonehead at 6:45 AM on September 15, 2015 [32 favorites]


The actual manufacturing costs of smartphones have gotten really low, and if you're price-conscious, you can get really nice Android phones for bargain prices. And as a technology enthusiast I'm always happy when technologies get democratised to the point that everyone's life can be improved.

Smartphones are only "luxury devices" because Apple tries to market iPhones as classy, expensive status symbols (and it's kind of funny that Apple is still trying to project this image - cell phones as such used to be expensive status symbols for business people, until prices went down and the manufacturers went for mass markets.) I never actually thought that that kind of marketing balderdash could lead to social/class strife, but, well, people are rarely rational.
posted by wwwwolf at 6:47 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]


During the run-up to World War II, did people complain that Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime were too wealthy to be refugees? Or is this a hyper-modern complaint?
Jews who got out of Europe prior to World War II disproportionately were wealthy and well-connected. People who weren't wealthy generally didn't have the resources to leave, or at least not to get far enough away to help. (Plenty of not-particularly-rich Jews, mostly political radicals, made it as far as France, and that's where they were rounded up and sent to their deaths. My grandparents were in this group, and the fact that they survived was down to dumb luck and, oddly enough, the fact that they had a telephone.) The response to Jewish refugees was totally mediated by antisemitism, and one of the themes there was that Jews were economic exploiters and, while Hitler was certainly going too far, you had to admit that he kind of had a point. So yeah, the fact that Jewish refugees tended to be well-off might have contributed to that perception. But non-Jewish refugees from the Nazis were also mostly not economically abject, and I don't think that anyone was upset about that.

As a general rule, refugees tend not to be the poorest of the poor. The poorest of the poor often don't have the resources to get out and/or apply for asylum in a new country. Expecting refugees to be poor strikes me as very weird, and yeah, I think it's basically just conservatives borrowing an incoherent talking point from their discourse about welfare.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:49 AM on September 15, 2015 [28 favorites]


Plus, why should poor people be unable to access news alerts, weather, etc?

Gee, why WOULD the wealthy want poor people to be uninformed, ignorant and vulnerable?

I think it's at least partially motivated by fear- if the poor aren't helpless, then they might be a threat.
posted by happyroach at 6:53 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]


xkcd (sorta) called it.
posted by Etrigan at 6:59 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]


but Im impressed that they can get continuous service from Syria overland through, what, 15 countries?

The thing with smartphones is you don't need cell service, just wifi, to text and email and all that.
posted by JenMarie at 7:04 AM on September 15, 2015 [6 favorites]


"How desperate can they be? They could have just downloaded the Bomr app to get alerts on where and when the next missile strikes were happening so they would have time to seek shelter."
posted by drlith at 7:07 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


I would say there is also a racial element as well. The average person watching or reading the news has more than likely formed the idea that places like Syria or the Middle East is so barbaric how in the world could they possibly have smartphones?
posted by Kitteh at 7:10 AM on September 15, 2015 [8 favorites]


I'm guessing there are still roaming fees. This article talks about an ad-hoc "park" in Lebanon that has coverage from Syrian cell carriers, and refugees congregate there to save money on calls.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:11 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


I never actually thought that that kind of marketing balderdash could lead to social/class strife, but, well, people are rarely rational.

I thought marketing (and advertising) was the only thing that lead to social/class strife outside of a legal aristocracy.
posted by deathmaven at 7:18 AM on September 15, 2015


Also Apple has always championed making personal computing affordable, and therefore essential. Their marketing taps into ethereal desire, not luxury. Status symbols, yes - of taste - but not expensive (not cheap either - a "good value").
posted by deathmaven at 7:22 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


You hear people saying: ‘Are they that desperate if they have a smartphone?'

People who say this are grossly ignorant.

To put it another way:

"This misunderstands the role of cell phones in third world economies. They ARE the phone company"
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:29 AM on September 15, 2015 [9 favorites]


My smartphone is a 3 or 4 year old Android 2.2 that was like €120 new, which I unlocked for my pay-as-you-go sim card after I lost my job. Outside, I mooch the Internet from FON, bars, and other free hotspots.

I'll wait for someone to explain to me how is that a luxury.
posted by lmfsilva at 7:38 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


See also: Liberals are not allowed to be wealthy or have nice cars or things because they are supporters of welfare and the poor.

On the other hand the bumper sticker I saw on a BMW 5 series that said "Live simply so that others may simply live" was good for a guffaw.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:40 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


PC penetration has been so high in the US and other developed countries that they see smartphones as superfluous excess rather than unprecedentedly affordable computers that you can fit in your pocket.
posted by deathmaven at 7:42 AM on September 15, 2015 [13 favorites]


During the run-up to World War II, did people complain that Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi regime were too wealthy to be refugees? Or is this a hyper-modern complaint?

Talk about swinging at softballs.
posted by Talez at 7:48 AM on September 15, 2015


Yes, deathmaven. Not just a computer! A phone, tv, music player, radio, calculator, camera, camcorder, alarm clock, virtual library and emergency alert system.

It's awfully hard to get a job if you don't have an internet connection and a phone number where an employer can reach you. I'm not sure how people expect anyone without a home and savings to get a job without a smartphone.
posted by Pearl928 at 7:52 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Couple comments deleted. Fixed mandolin conspiracy's link, carry on.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:56 AM on September 15, 2015


"Live simply so that others may simply live"

What? It's not like it was a 700 series.

I saw that sticker on a Honda Accord V6 and immediately thought, "You hypocrite, you got the V6" and then I spiralled down the toilet of my own narcissism.
posted by Rat Spatula at 8:02 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]


but Im impressed that they can get continuous service from Syria overland through, what, 15 countries? Or equally impressed they get 3/4G data service in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Don't know about 3G/4G but if they get anywhere with free wifi, they can text/call and otherwise stay connected to other people back home or also "on the road".
posted by CrazyLemonade at 8:03 AM on September 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


But the "hey, look they have phones, how bad it can be" stuff is just the low-information hurf-durf gloss for a lack of understanding about what being a refugee means, and how asylum has some built in paradoxes that lead to faulty assumptions about their plight:

“Safe third-country” agreements have led to a false belief that refugees ought to flee to the nearest country, and that running further away must be fraudulent.

...and sort of the ass-end extension of that is "Hey, they have nice phones! How bad can it be?" So, you end up getting:

As a result, we are now in a situation where Europe, whose millions of displaced citizens brought us the word “refugee” and its concept in the first place, seems to be engaged in a vigorous interstate refugee-policy race to the bottom, in which every state fears that its asylum policy might be less harsh and restrictive than its neighbour’s. Lest we forget how our ancestors got here, and what they were very often fleeing, we ought to step above the headlines and start talking to our neighbours about something like Lamey’s proposal.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:07 AM on September 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's not a hyper-modern complaint although the status symbol of "you don't really need that" tends to shift from generation to generation. The Welfare Cadillac was a traditional scapegoat for Reagan/Bush/Bush II. As one of those Welfare Caddy owners, mine was a reasonably reliable brick of a car, a white-elephant hand-me-down with an odometer that rolled once and then broke.

When I was a kid, it was also jeans and shoes, both of which could be found at Salvation Army or in generic form at K-Mart. (The pockets always got holes first for some reason.)

I was under the impression that it was much, much, cheaper to set up cell service than to run cable. Similarly, household solar beats many other options if you factor in the cost of running and maintaining a kilometer of cable. The idea that cell service is a luxury definitely comes from the privilege of living in a country where telecom monopolies already built a nearly universal cable infrastructure.

I don't think it would be hard to find anti-semitic nastiness based around the stereotype of the rich Jewish immigrant around WWII.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:26 AM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


Smartphones are only "luxury devices" because Apple tries to market iPhones as classy, expensive status symbols

To be fair, it's not just Apple, but certainly, it is their business model to do so.

It's also that mobile phones are very much still have the halo of a status symbol (from the time of the executive car phone) and smartphones are still less than ten years old. A 16 year-old will think nothing of anyone using a smartphone, but a 56 -year old will remember a time when they were unimaginable luxuries, and a signifier of wealth. It takes generations for that to change, and so makes fools of those whose assumptions of status markers change decades slower than the economics of the technology.
posted by bonehead at 8:46 AM on September 15, 2015 [7 favorites]


I really like the idea of aid workers wandering around with backpacks to provide wifi, because it seems like a great assessment & then addressing of need (but also a little bit because it seems kind of adorable).

It also seems to me that to many (rightwing?) commentators absolute destitution is required before charity (or amnesty or help of any kind) is acceptable--that we don't need to feel responsible for others unless they have absolutely nothing at all. This seems crazy, given both our own relative security and overabundance and also the ostensibly Christian viewpoint of many of these commentators, but it also seems pretty common to me.
posted by n. moon at 8:58 AM on September 15, 2015 [5 favorites]


The poor must be pure and virtuous to be worthy of help. Otherwise they're cheats and criminals.
posted by bonehead at 9:01 AM on September 15, 2015 [8 favorites]


The thing about the "deserving poor" (or the deserving refugee) is that they don't exist; to qualify one must be both almost entirely destitute and simultaneously resourceful, moral, and hardworking. For many the presence of one is sufficient evidence for the absence of the other, so the actual class of people deemed to be both in need of and worthy of assistance is conveniently reduced to almost zero.
posted by bracems at 9:27 AM on September 15, 2015 [23 favorites]


" phrase "Champagne Socialist" started in the late 70s and took off like a rocket between then and 2000. (My friend prefers the term "Bollinger Bolshevik")"

Please, please -- "Limousine Liberal"!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:27 AM on September 15, 2015 [6 favorites]


In the past four years we've had several lawyers who either had flip phones or no cell phone at all,* and we've had zero paralegals who didn't have a smart phone.

Quoth Umberto Eco, back in the day when any cellphone at all was considered a status symbol: "In the last category (which includes, on the bottom rung of the social ladder, the purchasers of fake cellular phones) are those people who wish to show in public that they are greatly in demand, especially for complex business discussions. Their conversations, which we are obliged to overhear in airports, restaurants, or trains, always involve monetary transactions, missing shipments of metal sections, an unpaid bill for a crate of neckties, and other things that, the speaker believes, are very Rockerfellerian.... What these people don't realize is that Rockefeller doesn't need a portable telephone; he has a spacious room full of secretaries so efficient that at the very worst, if his grandfather is dying, the chauffeur comes and whispers something in his ear. The man with power is the man who is not required to answer every call."
posted by jackbishop at 9:42 AM on September 15, 2015 [10 favorites]


The idea that cell service is a luxury definitely comes from the privilege of living in a country where telecom monopolies already built a nearly universal cable infrastructure.

Yep:

Even at a few bucks a transaction, Africa’s so-called “mobile money” market is huge, topping $61 billion in 2012—greater than the amount of money sent via mobile in Europe and North America combined...

The Bank of SMS.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:54 AM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]


With cellphone penetration in the US above 80%, and majority of smartphones are probably on a 2-year post-paid contracts that cost in the neighborhood of $75/month, it's no surprise that smartphones are seen as a luxury by many. Worse, some of those smartphones are leased, which means if you stop paying for the plan, you (legally) have to give the phone back to the company as well!

I'm glad to note that the article mentions the IRC has given out thousands of solar-powered cellphone chargers as I imagine those might be more useful if you have no idea the next time you'll be able to use your wall-powered charger. (Unfortunately, not all solar-chargers are created equal, so I wonder how useful they are in practice.)
posted by fragmede at 11:59 AM on September 15, 2015


The moment I hear someone say they can't be that poor because they have a smart phone (or, in US debates, they're wasting their welfare check, aka my tax dollars, on a phone) is the moment I know these people have never experienced poverty, severe or not, but likely wouldn't know if anyone was experiencing poverty. It is pure ignorance.

The most valuable possession, with the highest bang for it's buck, is a smart phone. Assuming you're able to keep the bill paid, your number will follow you if you lose your home or place to crash. But, unlike a basic cell phone, if you can't pay your bill, you can hook a smart phone up to wireless and message people in other ways. As a manager of some struggling folks, it was not uncommon for people to ask me to message them because they weren't sure if they'd have phone service. But they could find wireless and I could get them on a shift.

Smart phones get you work, help you find places to stay, keep you connected to friends & family, provide information, and give a touch of stability. Which is also one of the reasons a couple of my coworkers in abusive relationships often have shattered phones - their controlling partners can't have that and throw the phones in fights.

Not that the migrants are all poor, but they are impoverished. They've had to leave their homes and lives. If you're going to hold on to anything, it is going to be a phone.
posted by imbri at 12:04 PM on September 15, 2015 [17 favorites]


Smart phones get you work, help you find places to stay, keep you connected to friends & family, provide information, and give a touch of stability.

When I was younger I was homeless for a number of years, in the pre-mobile phone era. If you wanted to contact me you had to know where I was, or where I might be, or at least know someone who might know. This was unreliable, at best, if you were close friend, and unworkable for anyone else. I was all but invisible to mainstream society (and it's services, like doctors) unless I came to conflict with it.

Fast forward a few years (still pre smart phone) and I almost broke down the first time I met someone homeless with a mobile phone, realizing the consequences of that. I still get a visceral reaction thinking about it twenty years later.

My situation then, when I was homeless, would be luxurious compared to that of someone fleeing a war zone: I was somewhere familiar, where I spoke the language, and was embedded in a social network. Though I certainly ran up against the law, my everyday *existence* wasn't seen as illegal. I can only begin to imagine the impact of a smart phone in that situation.
posted by tallus at 2:11 PM on September 15, 2015 [7 favorites]


I've posted this in like, 10 other threads about this sort of thing at least... but there are functional decent smartphones for $20 now. And nice ones for $50, like the moto E or G on sale and a million models Chinese brands you probably haven't heard of. I've dug up links before, and i've seen sales even at the grocery store near my house for functional smartphones in the $20-50 range.

No one is giving them shit for having $50 shoes that aren't the cheapest keds from the the drug store. Smartphones are literally the new welfare queens cadillac, and will likely remain so for a long time.

Don't lose sight of that. Shit, i hope it becomes a memorable thing for this era of politics that becomes a total automatic eye roll.

On preview, to be clear, i don't mean $50 on contract. That's silly. I mean $20-50 outright phones that work on $25-50/mo prepaid plans, and which are still very useful devices on ubiquitous free wifi if you cant pay the bill for a few days. Shit, you can make free calls with gmail and other apps. And you can google "how to make free calls with wifi" and figure that out if you didn't know!
posted by emptythought at 3:23 PM on September 15, 2015 [7 favorites]


I'm a frequent traveler for work. My travel is pre-arranged, inside the US, costs are covered by my work, I speak English fluently, and I would still be at a serious loss without my smartphone. Of course this is an essential item for refugees. I'd guess that refugees with smartphones are more likely to survive and get to a safe destination than those without.
posted by bile and syntax at 3:45 PM on September 15, 2015 [4 favorites]




is this a hyper-modern complaint?

If refugees are rich, they can't be denigrated as "economic migrants". Denigrating all refugees as "economic migrants" is politically convenient. Therefore rich refugees are not even a thing. QED.
posted by flabdablet at 9:12 PM on September 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


"Also Apple has always championed making personal computing affordable, and therefore essential. Their marketing taps into ethereal desire, not luxury. Status symbols, yes - of taste - but not expensive (not cheap either - a "good value")."

I have PCs that are over 9 years old and still functioning fine. I don't know anybody who uses old Macs.
posted by I-baLL at 2:21 PM on September 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't know anybody who uses old Macs.

I know a lot of people who have been using the same Mac for years. I've been one of them.

Laptops, mostly - which are pretty much the only Macs worth buying anyway.
posted by atoxyl at 4:52 PM on September 16, 2015


I have PCs that are over 9 years old and still functioning fine. I don't know anybody who uses old Macs.

I don't know a single person who uses a PC that old, the only places i could think of would be businesses or a few clients i've worked for, and they were more like 14 years old.

However, i know a ton of people using 2006-2007 macs. TONS of people are still using 1st gen macbooks, and there's quite a few imacs and mac minis from that era still kicking around as well. Occasionally i even see an old mac pro!

A lot of them were starting college computers from parents that just didn't die, or something to that effect. Many were hand-me-downs or used.

You can get a new battery for $20 on amazon, and the rest of them holds up. Macbook pros sometimes died of the nvidia 8000 series GPU plague, but the rest just keep on truckin.

The oldest PCs i see people using are usually ~5 years old, and most of them are newer. Many of them are falling the fuck apart because everyone buys those commodity $300 15in laptops now. I have a stack of those junkers next to my workbench, and i could rant about them for hours.
posted by emptythought at 10:59 PM on September 17, 2015


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