Like the Olympics or sex between a minotaur and a harpy, the release of a new consumer Apple device is a lengthy affair in which a few petty details may change, but it’s pretty much a rote sequence of events that happen in a fixed and predictable order.
The day before, the news channels show the line outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York (or the Regent Street store in London). They interview the same professional
Like the Olympics or sex between a minotaur and a harpy, the release of a new consumer Apple device is a lengthy affair in which a few petty details may change, but it’s pretty much a rote sequence of events that happen in a fixed and predictable order.
The day before, the news channels show the line outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York (or the Regent Street store in London). They interview the same professional line-sitter/attention-adventurist who snags the first spot in every Apple Line. On Release Day, the local news shows the lines outside the local shopping malls, and the excited people who exited the store with their little white boxes. Later that evening, YouTube is flooded with thrill-packed unboxing videos, in which it’s demonstrated that the fantastic rumours are true… the new iPhone does indeed come with a USB cable.And in the days that immediately follow, YouTube is filled with videos of people destroying the new device.
As I write this, it’s just a week after the release of the iPhone 4. I have seen videos of iPhone 4’s being dropped to demonstrate its durability, or lack thereof. I have seen them thrown against walls in fits of… well, just in some sort of fit. Over the years, I have seen iPhones and iPads shot with rifles, slammed in doors, set on fire, doused in water, and in one video, an iPhone was shot, set on fire, and run over with a car.
I’m no psychiatrist, but would I be far off the mark in suggesting that this last videographer has mommy issues?
Ok, look: I really don’t care what happens to those phones and iPads. If any part of me is offended by these First Day iPhone/iPad Destruction videos… it’s only my sense of style.
I have a message for all of these people. Remember that time in college a few years ago, when you were hearing this sort-of-ok band play at a club and the lead singer smashed his guitar? What did you do? Yes: you booed him off the stage. You were very correct to have done that.
There was indeed a time when the act of destroying your instruments onstage was subversive and thrilling. That time was 40 years ago. Even by the mid-70s, it had become the stock-in-trade of a schlocky performer who fancied himself as a Rock God but lacked either the skills, or the room-filling sexual musk, to back that up.
Yes, Pete Townshend kept right on smashing guitars straight through into the early 80s. But he’s Pete ****ing Townshend.
You, Mr YouTube Phonesmasher, are not Pete ****ing Townshend. Even when we overlook the facts that you’re not a musician, that thing you’re destroying isn’t a guitar, and you don’t have the ability to impregnate women 80 rows of seats away using nothing more than rock and roll and a Stonehenge-scale arena sound system… you aren’t Pete ****ing Townshend.
What you are, if I may be blunt, is a bored university student armed with 1) a phone that shoots video, and 2) a credit card that your dad told you was only to be used in case of emergency.
See, it’s all been done before. You’re not making a Bold Statement about Consumerism. You’re not “bravely responding to Apple fanboy hysteria by cutting Apple and its community down a peg.” You are not subversive in any way, shape, or form.
More to the point: this video will definitely — definitely — not help you to get laid. You, sir, are the “Don’t tase me, bro!” of the tech video community.
Titanic statement
If, after all of this, you still feel that you simply must destroy a new Apple gadget, you should at least step up your game. Is there an awesomely high bridge over a completely human-free ravine you can drop it from? Do you have access to a deep-sea submersible, and can you arrange to smash the new edition of the iPad across the bow of the RMS Titanic like a bottle of champagne?
Do you have a friend in the astronaut corps? Maybe he or she would be willing to roll down the window of the Space Shuttle or the Soyuz or the Shenzhou and hold the iPhone 5 out into the plasma stream during re-entry. That would be an awesome video; I would definitely leave a positive YouTube comment underscoring that sentiment.
Let’s also talk about production values. You’re dropping about £200 plus monthly fees for two years on this video. Use a real video camera. There’s a certain unintended irony in the fact that you would have wound up with sharper, clearer, high-def and far more watchable video if, instead of using a four-year-old Nokia to record the destruction of a brand-new iPhone 4, you’d reversed the two roles.
Also: editing is your friend. Once you’ve completed your Suburban Gangster rant about how dangerous and unpredictable you are, and how you’re just plain nuts and you’re having none of Society’s rules, et cetera, the video should cut right to the smashing of the iPhone. You’ll want to edit out the two times you threw it against the wall and failed to even crack the screen, while all of your friends made fun of you.
I’d rather encourage you to consider Demolition In Service Of The State. My scorn for destruction porn is mighty, but I give stress test videos a cheerful free pass. The iPhone 4 has a glass front and back. It’s great to see if these panels can withstand a drop onto asphalt. Or if a plastic zipper-bag will protect an iPad from the water if you use it in the bath.
Or, how about this: take the £500 you’d had budgeted for the iPad that you were going to bust. Turn £250 of it into a carpet of pound notes, and shoot a Wacky And Subversive YouTube Video of yourself setting it all on fire.
Then give the other £250 to a local food bank. Deliver it in person.
Maybe, when you speak to the volunteers who will convert your cash into food and services for the poor and hungry people in your immediate community, you might finally appreciate what an empty, dumbass stunt it was to waste the other £250 on a video that 282 random YouTube viewers barely gave a damn about.
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