Top Questions: A Culture Obsessed
Posted by Sean_Yeaton on Thursday, Jun 24, 2010
This is an ongoing series of vague inquiries into recent developments. Read more.
Why doesn’t the iPhone 4 work for left-handed people?
While it may take amazing pictures, the phone has apparently been doing a decidedly awful job accomplishing its namesake – phoning or iPhoning or I cannot phone with this iThing. Insane.
It’s Tickle Me Elmo all over again, but if you’re left handed, forget about the iPhone 4. Southpaws (may god have mercy on your soul), beware of Apple’s new toy losing service left and right (mostly left).
I’m inclined to think that there’s a more sinister explanation than the proposed antenna placement excuse from Engadget.
From Wikipedia.
[T]he English word sinister comes from the Latin word sinestra, which originally meant “left” but took on meanings of “evil” or “unlucky” by the Classical Latin era…The contemporary Italian word sinistra has both meanings of sinister and left (the masculine adjective for sinister being sinistro)…In Portuguese, the most common word for left-handed person, canhoto, was once used to identify the devil, and canhestro, a related word, means “clumsy” (sinistro means only “sinister”).
What about other demonic or religious imagery?
The iPhone 4 taking a picture of an iPhone 4 is sort of unsettling.
That’s the reflection of our dystopian existence in that iPhone 4, there. Our collective unconsciouses suspended in a harsh realm where the self ultimately eschews society in favor of a vague simulacrum.
Striking resemblance to the photo above, Jesus is the iPhone 4, Steve Jobs is Gabriel, the Keynote Adress is the Annunciation and, for all intents and purposes, we all are Mary.
Pay attention to the hand position in this picture and compare it to the iPhone image above. Spooky.
Commodity-based hysteria boggles my mind (To be fair, I only use the iPhone 4 here as an example because it is literally affecting us in real time right now. No offense, Apple. I know I’ve made you out to be the bad guy before.) so I caught my associate, William Harris on Gchat to see if he could help me come to some conclusions.
William is the Financial Services Office Associate at Ernst & Young in Boston
MOTHERBOARD: Hey Will. Any insight into commodity-based hysteria? With the iPhone 4 coming out and all, I was wondering if you had any theories about why people go bonkers over this kind of stuff? Care to share your insight?
William: To me its kind of mind boggling because I have always owned a [crumby] phone. I believe that once you jump that fence, however, you can’t go back.
Right right.
Theres probably a better metaphor for that but, once you’ve got a decent phone, or whatever piece of technology, you’re certainly not going to regress into buying a [lesser] product. At the same time, the moment something better comes out, your current commodity is instantly devalued.
Footage of a Tickle Me Elmo toy, set ablaze. This chilling image is tantamount to the wasteful tendencies of upgrade-obsessed consumers.
What on earth has compelled these people to just hop in a line and get this thing day 1?
Status, man. We’ve been castrated as a society. The only ways in which we can prove our superiority over one another is determined by whether we can win the best new toy for our kid or if we have a nice phone. That’s one way of looking at it, I guess, not necessarily the viewpoint I hold.
What would you say the viewpoint you hold is?
I guess if I had to say, my theory would be that people find these things self-empowering. I guess it’s kind of an idea thats been hashed out: Somehow, the cumulative effect of all this is to make people feel like what they do is actually important.
Right you are, my friend. And If people aren’t waiting in line for the iPhone 4, they’re blogging about the lines. Just another example of our self-obsessed, competitive society.
To my knowledge, at least no one has been murdered yet, but it’s not even noon in New York, so anything could happen.
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About the author
Sean Yeaton is a writer based out of Brooklyn, Reach him at sean@motherboard.tv
