I was outside smoking a cigarette, idly watching the train go by, festooned with iPod ads from stem to stern, when it struck me: do you think that Steve Jobs made a conscious decision to create a marketing image for his flagship product that looked like a bunch of young, pretty people were dancing next to the subway train, iPod proudly in hand, before being vaporized in an atomic explosion?
Don’t get me wrong: I am all for nuking hipsters. But thanks to the Hiroshima silhouettes and the blinding pastel background colors, I’ve reached the point that when I think “iPod,” I picture “dirty bomb explosion at Manray.” And yet, the ads must be working; the iPod’s the biggest selling MP3 player in the world, even with the violent nuclear apocalypse imagery. If sales start to drop, I half-expect to start seeing subway ads of a guy with an iPod stabbing Eurotrash. Which I am also all for.
While I do own an MP3 player, it’s not an iPod. I did a lot of comparison shopping before I bought, and even though the iPod’s what all the cool kids are carrying these days, I decided that I wanted something to listen to rock music with, not make a fucking fashion statement. As far as I’m concerned, the statement those white earphones makes on the street is: “Look! I have the highly in-demand iPod you’ve been looking to mug someone to get!”
If you’re considering buying an iPod for the “cool” factor, allow me to remind you that President Bush owns one. And if the President’s has something? It’s not cool (Quarts of scotch, grams of blow and Daddy’s millions excluded, of course). So if you decide to pick one up, just keep in mind that you will own a piece of electronics in common with a man who almost undoubtedly, when he sees, “Del to erase,” asks the Secret Service to go get Del so he can erase the fucking song.
Besides, there is no way I’m spending three or four hundred clams on something that’s trendy. Because being trendy does make a statement, and that statement is, “I can be easily swayed by the peer pressure and by a slick marketing campaign!” And I wanted to make a different statement. And that statement is: I don’t care what image some slick New York ad agency wants me emulate this month; I want to stab some Eurotrash right fucking now.
