J. Stupid
Yes. And this isn’t even about the headphone jack… but you know what? F*ck that too.
We have no recourse against the increasingly big and bulky enemy of pockets. The extinction of wires, it turns out, was the death of cheap headphones. An exorbitant, professional grade camera—which amounts to diminishing returns for most customers. We’ve been able to film a movie on a phone for 10 years, how is anyone who isn’t a legitimate filmmaker supposed to give a fuck? Apps crash randomly, apps log you out, notifications disappear. Sometimes shit just stops working until you restart it. Phone manufacturers casually charge you $1000 then put ads in the app stores.
Speaking of a thousand dollars, wouldn’t it stand to reason that as we reach the ceiling of smartphone tech, one way sellers try to gain an edge is to work on bringing the price down if they are unable to make a truly improved product? I’m J Stupid but I’m not stupid, so I understand that there is nowhere in this universe or any nearby one where a public tech company would consider lowering the price of a product because they are able to make it more cheaply, but it must be acknowledged. Then, it must be considered that these prices have become not just astronimical, but tragically normalized. We took that shit in stride.
If you’re product is an essential day-to-day item, and yet is so expensive that you need to engineer convoluted financial arrangements involving discounts for signing aggressive cell service contracts just so customers can reasonably afford to purchase said product, it might be overpriced.
And if I were to tell you that they are made more cheaply, would you doubt it? Would you, even for a second, need to think about? If I said they are expensive, beuatiful garbage, would you not shout “THAAANK YOU” and do the emoji clap? Expensive, beautiful garbage—that sounds like the Kardashians, doesn’t it? The latest smartphones have become equivalent to the Kardashians, and I think that says it all.
Fuck these companies, fuck this duopoly bullshit, fuck this powerlessness, fuck this unregulated grift from the oldest and richest and creepiest. Fuck the fact that the vast majority of you will read this on the same smartphone that has turned into a scam that props up billionaires. Fuck Apple. Fuck Google. Fuck the cell carriers. Here’s why.
Are you scared of your phone?
Are they listening?
I got so much shit to talk, I wasn’t sure where to start. It’s surprisingly obvious though.
One way to think about whether smartphones are really getting “worse” is to think about whether you used to be *literally* scared of your phone? I don’t mean scared of it catching fire in your pocket, which somehow was real, or giving cancer to your balls, which I don’t think was(?).
I’m talking about the 1984, Big Brother is watching, talk-about-something-with-your-phone-in-your-pocket-then-get-nonstop-ads-for-it, Minority Report-downplayed-the-situation, actual literal privacy crisis type of scared. Were you scared of your phone in this way when we had the iPhone 4 with the cool metal band around the sides?
It would be fair to assess that smartphones are “worse,” even if they perform just as well or better than they used to, but are now a source of genuine fear on both an individual and societal level.
Here’s the point: it is entirely reasonable to feel some level of fear, concern, hesitiation, uneasiness, agitation, apprehension, angst, disquietude, perturbation about your phone potentially listening to or monitoring you. That is insane. That should be a ridiculous thing to worry about, not a reasonable one. And yet, somehow it is difficult to feel confident we are not constantly being monitored.
That’s worse. Let’s continue.
Then: High Smartphone Price Pays for Current Innovations
Now: High Smartphone Price Pays for Previous Innovations
the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar.
Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek, then she continued her way
The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen. She packed her seven versalia, put her initial into the belt and made herself on the way. When she reached the first hills of the Italic Mountains, she had a last view back on the skyline of her hometown Bookmarksgrove, the headline of Alphabet Village and the subline of her own road, the Line Lane. Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek, then she continued her way. On her way she met a copy.
And if she hasn’t been rewritten, then they are still using her. Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it.
It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly
Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen.
Longe and Parole and dragged her into their agency
She packed her seven versalia, put her initial into the belt and made herself on the way. When she reached the first hills of the Italic Mountains, she had a last view back on the skyline of her hometown Bookmarksgrove, the headline of Alphabet Village and the subline of her own road, the Line Lane. Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek, then she continued her way. On her way she met a copy. The copy warned the Little Blind Text, that where it came from it would have been rewritten a thousand times and everything that was left from its origin would be the word “and” and the Little Blind Text should turn around and return to its own, safe country.
She packed her seven versalia, put her initial into the belt and made herself on the way. When she reached the first hills of the Italic Mountains, she had a last view back on the skyline of her hometown Bookmarksgrove, the headline of Alphabet Village and the subline of her own road, the Line Lane.
Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek, then she continued her way. On her way she met a copy. The copy warned the Little Blind Text, that where it came from it would have been rewritten a thousand times and everything that was left from its origin would be the word “and” and the Little
Simple double title block
But nothing the copy said could convince her and so it didn’t take long until a few insidious Copy Writers ambushed her, made her drunk with Longe and Parole and dragged her into their agency, where they abused her for their projects again and again. And if she hasn’t been rewritten, then they are still using her. Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean.
