I love new products and gadgets but the iPhone craze even if I profit off it from time to time, really makes me upset. You see the worst of people for what? A piece of metal and glass that makes it harder for you to distinguish fiction over reality even more. You treat people in line as competition, you cry because you didn’t get a specific color, you cut lines to make a dollar. But it isn’t enough. I, having sat in on two iPhone launches before considered it a fun bonding experience and way to meet potential people to work with and geek out with, but this year if you were not surrounded by resellers who didn’t speak English, witness to the lack of education of the people paid to stand in line for pennies, and hiding your newly purchased iPhones under your jacket as you walk back home, you didn’t stand on the iPhone 6 line. For the first time in a line I felt like I didn’t actually want to support apple anymore because any “device” with this much mind control over someone for profit, bringing out the worst of the worst to yell racist slurs at Asian scalpers, using the N word as if it is OK because they are that race, calling others fags and the like, acting as if their mother didn’t just drop them off in line, pretending the iPhone isn’t paying for baby food, or just fanboy-ism is doing this for all the wrong reasons. I don’t know what the right reasons would be persay but I do know we as people are more important than the devices we let define us.
I watched workers mock rather than assist, scold instead of prevent, gossip instead of plan. It was as if there were different planets, those on line and those not. Many different races, those buying it, those selling it, and those who didn’t speak english.. and those races were at war, and battling to get to the top of their own social ladders as well. It was a mess.
Why didn’t I walk away today feeling as though the people around me were decent, kind, loving, compassionate, understanding, and better yet not defined by the dollar. Why did I hear the ones who made it that way complimenting each other on a job well done at the expense of others and plotting to do it again next year to get “ahead”… quite literally in line..I saw the worst of people today and it made me sad, it made me grateful, and it made me very angry at the idea that a company has that much control over people. Sure people will always fight and kill over toasters for Black Friday, but your toaster stays home, your toaster isn’t defining you, your toaster didn’t cost hundreds of dollars. You are paying top dollar to scorn the world rather than let them lay on your shoulder if they are tired on the subway ride back. This is too much power for one company. This is too much responsibility for the current human race.
