Saturday, May 7, 2011

Don't Spill any Blood on my White iphone

It is hard for me to imagine a flock of people fighting until blood spews in order to be the first to possess a white iphone or ipad 2. But on May 7th customers broke the front door of the Sanlitun Apple store in Beijing, China to possess one of these highly sought after devices. The details are hazy and rely off of someone's twitter account, however, a group of "resellers" of Apple products got mad that an employee would not let them in the store immediately. Following this notice of delay, the anxious crowd broke the glass door and injured several employees. One employee retaliated by swatting at several aggressive customers with an iron rod. No one was seriously injured but the police closed the store.

These new Apple products are flying off the shelves, becoming sold out in no time. Due to the recent earthquake, the Ipad 2 just recently debuted in some parts of Asia. The hype surrounding these products is truly amazing. For somethings that is not revolutionary and only internally upgraded, Apple creates a hysteria that reminds me of new debuts of gaming consoles in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I remember Sony announcing the release of its Playstation 2 and some of my friends paying upwards to $600 for a console that I believe sold for $200. Nevertheless, violence over these meager purchases is quite infantile in my eyes. It is unacceptable, disgraceful, and the people involved should feel ashamed for being such poor role models. I hate to break the news, but an iphone in white is not life changing.

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/violence_shatters_apple_store_queue_in_china/

8 comments:

  1. Clearly the above poster doesn't own an iPhone. Having a new technology has become a status symbol that is not exclusive to the cell phone market. Even a cosmetic change can cause a large scale hysteria when a company has quietly hyped the product for so long. Because these smaller products are sold in common stores that are highly accessible and low in security, it is common for customers to fight to be the first to get their hands on the newest Apple products. If people can recall, the T-Mobile Sidekick had a similar craze when it debuted. I am not shocked by the news that customers were injured, but I think that these people didn't act infantile is a shallow assessment of a complex psychological phenomenon in consumers.

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  2. this ruckus is a symptom of an affluent society with (essentially) no worries over the availability of basic necessities that it has turned its attention to other things in order to occupy itself and vent emotions. On second thought, affluent societies are also fertile ecosystems for supporting individuals who display remarkable talent at clicking and strategy (starcraft), clicking (shooting games), and many other rather draining activities...so that video game console isn't simply an entertainment device, it's a tool for survival

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  3. Honestly, this happens because of both of the aforementioned posts. And I do think that people who engage in this sort of life-threatening behavior are indeed both irresponsible and infantile. Having reckless abandon for one's life as well as the lives of others is unacceptable. Sure, would I like to own an iphone 5? Why not. But will I help to create or give life to a riot? No. I like my life and do not like to threaten it. So I would like to say that I overcome the psychological and societal wants that I am encouraged to have; however, it could just be that I haven't found the right item yet. I mean, if so many people do it, then there must be a good reason for it.

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  4. This is sort of funny to me because I really cant relate to these people at all so I guess Im just curious to know WHY they act this way. My friends describe my phone as a "nugget". its big and round and doesnt break, which is why I have it. I obviously could go out and buy an iphone whenever I want but its really not for me since I would probably be on my phone instead of interacting with the real world. People will ask me why I dont upgrade and Its really just because I dont need to. Is it really that important to check your email at anytime of day instead of taking a 5 minute walk to a computer lab or back to your dorm.

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  5. Ever seen a video of shoppers mobbing and into stores on Black Friday, and trampling people in the process?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOVD-m8urJU

    Now you have. I find it incredible how emotionally involved people can get with new technology and special sales. The incentive of being "one of the first" drives people into selfish animal like behavior. It is both disgusting and humorous. A true social experiment.

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  6. In asia especially, owning an iphone (or anything expensive for the matter) goes beyond consumer psychology: it is a status symbol. People desire to own it, because they can. or that they want to APPEAR that they can. I personally met people who would spend more than 75% of their monthly salary on the newest phones, handbags, shoes, watches...when they really should put that money into more "efficient" uses.

    On an completely different ending note, the following clip from "the onion network" provides a whimsical spin on the "technology worship" our society is intoxicated with today.

    http://youtu.be/9BnLbv6QYcA

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  7. People are crazy, they truly think having the newest technology is the most important thing in life. To be honest, I'm not gonna think you're any cooler if you have an iPhone as opposed to an old Nokia. We live in an affluent society that is fixated on wealth and brazen displays of said wealth, and unfortunately this will never change.

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  8. You guys might have missed the point that these were resellers. They might have been slightly motivated by the personal reasons of wanting to be the first or whatever, but their main goal was to get the phones in order to make money by selling them to others. The issue is just that the phones are so desired and so rare that resellers can get huge gains from each one they can get. The item itself is meaningless, it's just the economic opportunity that matters. If the item in questions were a survival necessity, but could also somehow fetch prices as high as resold iPhones, then the resellers would have behaved in the same way. So this isn't really an issue of vanity, unless you are critiquing the people who are willing to pay inflated prices for the resold phones. The individuals in question were just behaving out of good old fashioned greed.

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