3 posts tagged “stupid”
So you bought an 8 GB iPhone at $599 when it first came out and are whining your spoiled and stupid head off when it dropped by $200 just over two months later. Now you're saying that Steve Jobs raped your virgin orifice when a few weeks ago you wanted to carry his babies. What's wrong with this picture?
Then you were obligating yourself to a 2 year lock-in with AT&T/Cingular as your only possible mobile carrier. I get the fact that the iPhone was shiny, hyped, and the nerd-herd status symbol of the week. It is nice to look at and use, but what about that price point and all those restrictions?
You didn't understand the fact that a $600 phone with a very restrictive carrier options (one) and two year lock in with an expensive plan wasn't going to be hitting a mass market price range for the most of the market? You thought everyone else in the world was hanging on Steve Jobs' every word like you were? You didn't realize that price cuts were inevitably coming very soon to try to create some sales volume?
So what happens when the price cuts come?
- Whine that Steve Jobs did something illegal by pricing it so high when it really should've cost $399 from the start. Sorry, I have news for you about supply and demand. Good ol' Steve-o could've priced them at $10,000 or $1 billion dollars if he wanted to, just you probably wouldn't have bought one at that price and he wouldn't have made money off the pathetically desperate for nerdly status who couldn't afford them at that price. It is only illegal to price things high if there is some secret deal in the market for EVERYONE to price their phones this high so there is no competition and people have no choice but to pay high prices because of price collusion.
- Get insulted that (*gasp*) the unwashed masses might be able to afford an iPhone and it won't be so exclusive to your club anymore. And you were so enjoying your conspicuous consumption and invidious consumption. But you bought it for the features, right? Um, wait, those are still the same, so what has changed? Oh, those people paying $399 weren't desperate enough to prove their coolness and were willing to wait for the price to drop. Unlike you, they didn't buy one for $599+fees, wait in line all night like goons for the privilege, and then rub it against their crotches and then shove it in people's faces for superiority points like you did.
- "But I didn't know it was overpriced." So you're saying you're stupid and/or were so desperate to prove your worth that no price was too great to make yourself look cool, is that it? Early adopters always pay a premium and early adopters of heavily hyped gear pay even more of a premium (such as for the original RAZR).
- "But I got ripped off." No one had a gun to your head making you buy it. You made your decision to buy it at a high price point. I assume you can take any responsibility for your actions? That was your decision not Apple's. Evidently, Apple figured out the same thing that many people knew from the beginning: that the price point was too high for the long term sales volume they wanted to have. You were just part of their little money-making experiment. This isn't different than usual, it was just a little more obvious. The problem wasn't that they priced high, it was that they went just far enough that you noticed instead of keeping you in blissful ignorance of how markets work.
- "Apple is a magical land of gumdrops and lolly-pops like Santa's workshop. They shouldn't be shamelessly making money." Puleeze. They charge whatever the market will bear and try to maximize their profits. You paid. Now shut your trap and quit trying to blame your own actions on someone else because you feel stupid now. If it is overpriced and they don't get as many buyers as they want then they'll figure out ways to make more money--like lowering the price or getting it made for cheaper (or both). They're not doing this for charity. They're just as much of an evil corporation as anyone else--just one whose products are probably a little nicer to use.
Ok, so she's probably 15 or 16 years old and now wants to hide under a rock and never come out for the rest of her life. Or we can sort of hope she at least feels a little that way and is just not just completely blissfully oblivious. I mean I don't want her to be scarred for life, but c'mon.
You can see that she's nervous and she's trying to process all the advice they taught her in Charm School at the same time she's trying to come up with a coherent beauty queen answer.
. o O ( Think. Stay poised. Rephrase the question about polls. What's another country? Um it's good to talk about South Africa cause you're supposed to say something about world hunger in these questions and there was like some fighting there. And like Iraq is another country that's like political and people talk about it and some of those people are really mad about something. And like the US is part of America, so I'll say the US of something to show that I sorta know it's like on that continent America. )
Gah.
Easy answers for her could be, people don't travel to other countries from the US as often since it's a large and very populated country and so there is less practical need to pick it out on a map when it might be of more practical value to need to pick out the surrounding states or cities on a map (which are often the size of many European countries, anyway).
Or she could use it to talk about education and how children might not be involved in their classes and how they could use better teaching methods. Or she could even give a beauty queen answer and talk about hunger as in "Many people in the US are starving and we need to learn how to ensure that people are fed and can afford access to quality medical care, since learning to identify the US on the map may not seem as urgent if you don't know where your next meal is coming from, or you're dying of cancer and have no health insurance, and you have other things to worry about."
Or even, "people from the US are lazy and watch far too much MTV and they should spend their time learning American Sign Language WHICH IS MY TALENT instead of just watching TV. Then they could ask a deaf person where the US is on a world map and they could feel warm for doing something so sweet to someone less fortunate and beautiful than someone like me."
Unless you've been living under a rock you know that the Boston PD got it's panties in a wad because someone planted Aqua Teen Hunger Force blinking LED boards at a few places around the city. In the meanwhile, most of the "serious" news sources in the US seem to be doing self-parodies by putting on their oh-so-serious faces and talking about how bad these people are by causing "bomb hoaxes" (cover-your-ass official's own words which the news sources all seem to quote).
Doesn't a "bomb hoax" imply that the people planting these devices intend them to look like bombs rather than weird space-invader-looking cartoon characters flipping the bird? If you want to see what it actually looked like, then why not look at this link http://www.bostonist.com/archives/2007/01/31/new_aqua_teen_hunger_force_wreaks_havoc_in_boston.php which seems to be one of the few places I've actually seen run a photo of the thing. I later found these photos on Flickr which were of some found weeks ago in other cities of the same promotion. I mean, even if you have no idea who the Mooninites are or have never seen Aqua Teen Hunger Force, does it seem like terrorists would attempt to make these things so visible that everyone going by would notice them? So that they screamed out "look at me"? God, we're being invaded by cartoon characters! South Park really, really needs to do a parody of this whole situation. This is right up there with nipplegate (Janet Jackson) in exposing why the US can blow something trivial completely out of all proportion. I can understand being worried, but the media didn't help either by taking their usual uncritical reportage.
And if they were going to use a cartoon character to plant bombs, then why not Mickey Mouse instead of an unknown Mooninite? That would be more ironic. But as my friend Mike pointed out, terrorists don't have a sense of humor or irony so they probably wouldn't use either (unless maybe Boston gave them the idea now).
So why is the Boston government having a fit and trying to point fingers at, and sue/imprison everyone else that they can think of? Well, because that is what incompetent people do when they do something stupid but don't want to take any responsibility. They use words like "bomb hoax" and pretend like it was perfectly reasonable to think that bombs will try to advertise their presence as much as possible. Or perhaps they've watched too many action movies and believe that bombs will have large LED boards attached. And maybe after some extremely obvious countdown timer or animation completes it will go off! It will be just like in all those MacGyver episodes the chief of police watched in the 80s. Richard Dean Anderson, we NEED YOU to disarm the Mooninites with some baking soda and salt! Get him on the bat phone right away.
The sad truth is that most of the attacks come in ways that are probably not going to loudly advertise their presence. Oklahoma city? Moving truck full of explosives! Previous WTC attempts? Car with explosives. Or why not a backpack, bag or package that would probably have bigger volume than this LED board? And it wouldn't be all that hard to put it somewhere that it would probably go unnoticed and without flashy lights and batteries showing for all the world to see.
I'm conflicted because I think suspicious objects need to be investigated and I'm glad that it wasn't an actual bomb. At the same time, can these authorities use their brains a bit instead of succumbing to irrational hysteria. I mean, maybe they did need to shut things down for a while to be safe, but c'mon. Couldn't they figure this out pretty quickly? Or is there more to their seeming incompetence?
I feel for all the people that were inconvenienced because of this, but they need to start holding their leaders accountable for rational thought and action as well as the people who did this viral marketing. Lets not start throwing people in jail for doing something different just because the government and police are embarassed and want someone to blame for making them look stupid.
