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Published 07/24/22
I have wanted to start writing FOR AN AUDIENCE for a while now, and just explain my thoughts on a topic (or multiple topics) so now that I have a personal website, here we go! This article will be going into depth about some things I have noticed as someone interested in the consumer electronics industry for quite a few years now, and who could be considered an "enthusiast". Someone who has owned and used a multitude of computers, mobile devices, and all sorts of other gadgets as you no doubt have noticed if you have watched some of my videos, as well as someone who has been immersed in modern American culture and the market and social effects caused by consumerism and the like. It will also be getting a little personal but I won't be going into specifics about anyone or any location or anything like that obviously, the inclusion of other people will be purely to illustrate my point.
Two of my watches, a Casio on the left, and an Omax on the right
So let's get started. In this picture you can see two watches that I own and used to wear. These were both around the same price when I got them a while back, which was around $30-$40 each. BUT, there's a pretty significant difference between the two. Despite the very similar prices, the Omax on the right has the APPEARANCE of being higher quality, or more expensive. To someone looking through a purely objective lens, the Casio on the left should be the better choice, right? I mean, it has the ability to be used as a stopwatch or an alarm, it has water resistance, an illuminator button, and it's just easier to read for anyone more accustomed to digital time. Surely, at approximately the same price, the Omax stands no chance, right? I mean, its flimsy faux-leather band I even had to adhere back together with super glue one time. Or at the very least, it should be a matter of preference. Square, black, rubberized, digital, versus circular, silver, faux-leather, analog. Who's to decide, really? It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess. But NO. At least in my experience, according to a lot of (maybe most) people, you'd be dead wrong. Now this was a while ago, when I was still in school, but I remember, on multiple occasions, being complimented while wearing the Omax, and, you guessed it, being made fun of for wearing the Casio. I'm not in school anymore, and actually I don't wear either of these anymore. I have a G-Shock now, which is closer to the latter than the former, so you see where my preference lies. But regardless, I've come to find this phenomenon very interesting.
A phenomenon, yes, that's what I'll call it, because that was far from an isolated incident. I also used headphones during that time, as one does, to listen to music. BIG MISTAKE. Why is that, you may ask? Well I wasn't using the right BRAND, of course. I had these fairly cheap on-ear wired headphones, I think they also had bluetooth capability, I don't use them anymore as they broke a while ago, I'll put a picture up if I can find them, but I believe I found them for $25-$50 at Target (which is an American retail chain if you aren't from the USA and don't know). Battery life well over a day, perfectly adequate to drown out all the noise around me with music or what have you. Now one day I'm just minding my own business, walking down the sidewalk, and this dude walks up to me and says something to the effect of "hey what are those, fake Beats?" Now I wouldn't consider myself an audiophile, but anyone who knows anything about headphones or audio gear knows that Beats are basically the worst value you can get, I mean, watch or read ANY review! Shoddy build quality, way too much bass, just all-around horrible headphones. And so to this random dude who had just accosted me on the sidewalk purely over his weird brand fetishization, I gave him a confused "no, what are you talking about?" and continued on my way.
Weird coincidence, isn't it? Only, it isn't. They say once is an incident, twice is a coincidence, and thrice is a pattern, so here's a third example. If you don't know already, I would not consider myself an Apple fan. However, for a short period a few years ago, I had a MacBook. Shocking, I know. It was a 13 inch Pro model from 2010, and, being an Apple product, it suffered from a fatal design flaw in which the dedicated GPU would basically overheat itself to death and render the machine inoperable. Here's a picture if you don't believe me.
MacBook? More like MacCooked!
But anyway, before it killed itself, I noticed something that would happen. Now I was only using this MacBook because it was the sole machine available to me at the time, after my newer, more powerful Asus laptop had one of its memory sticks partially dislodged, preventing it from booting. (I later remedied this but at the time I wasn't very technically inclined so please don't judge me too much). The thing that I noticed, was that frequently, whenever I took the MacBook anywhere, or someone came over to my place, I would get comments like "whoa, is that a MacBook" or "I wish I had one of those" et cetera. No such love for any laptop I have ever owned before or since. Weird. The laptop I was using before the MacBook was newer, it had a better processor, more memory, a higher resolution display, more ports, a removable battery, why did everybody only seem to care about the MacBook?
The main thing that these three events had in common was that, at the time, they baffled me. Why was the obviously superior, or at the very least equivalent product, seen as worse to the point where some buffoon feels the need to harass me out of nowhere, out of a seemingly misplaced sense of "holding someone accountable" for not using the BRAND that he liked? The headphones didn't even look like Beats for God's sake! Well, here's the answer, which is the key to why this very strange phenomenon happens, and is something that took me so long to realize. If you're a technology "enthusiast" type, someone who might watch my channel, visit my website, or read this article, then you probably view products, and technology products specifically, in a fundamentally different way to the vast majority of people. Most people view technology as a fashion accessory. Not as a tool to be used to improve your life, but rather as a piece of jewelery to be shown off. Whereas I might know every detail of my phone, from its Qualcomm Snapdragon SDM450 processor to its 2160x1080 TFT LCD display to its 3300 mAh lithium ion battery to the 64gb Sandisk microSD card I've installed to take music on the go, and have this same depth of knowledge about pretty much every electronic device I own, down to an almost comical degree in some cases, like knowing the BIOS revision or CMOS battery manufacturer off of the top of my head, your average Joe or Sally couldn't care less about any of that, doesn't know a thing about his or her computer (if they even have one) or phone besides maybe something in an advertisement or whatever the carrier representative said to close the sale. Most people seemingly don't even know what OS version they have. But who cares about any of that anyway? Why do research or make any effort to learn about the technology you've become so addicted to when you could just be mindlessly scrolling through Twitter or Instagram, getting those sweet sweet dopamine hits on your shiny new iPhone that all your friends got and all the "influencers" you follow promote! Wouldn't want to be one of those weirdos with a phone running Android or god forbid, dumb phone or phone running GNU/Linux that doesn't socially manipulate and datamine you and report every single thing you do to big tech corporations or three letter agencies. Who cares about privacy anyway? I've got nothing to hide! And changing any little thing regarding the way I go about my online life might require effort and for me to learn something! (which are big asks in this day and age) That's valuable time that could have been well spent watching TikTok, God damn it! And While slightly exaggerated for comedic effect, this is basically the reasoning behind what most people do online and what they buy to do it with nowadays. I've seen it, it's not hard to notice if you just pay attention.
So what does this mean for you, the non-brainwashed tech enthusiast who can think for yourself and just wants a good, durable, easy to repair device to get your work done? Who cares what other people think, you get made fun of for ANYTHING if you dare to stray outside of the socially acceptable mainstream, whether it's the clothes you wear, the way your hair is styled, the music you listen to, I certainly found all that out the hard way. Well, actually, it means a lot, unfortunately. You may have read recently that LG Electronics is leaving the smartphone market entirely. Why? Well, because nobody was buying their phones, obviously. Not NOBODY, actually. I got my Stylo 4 new, which has worked flawlessly for four years and counting, and isn't the first LG phone I've owned.
My Stylo 4. I don't use her often, but when I do, I'm glad she isn't an iPhone
Sadly, it will be the last. LG made a fatal mistake, which is that they tried to innovate, with devices like the Wing, instead of just blindly following the market segment leader, like Samsung does with Apple, for example. In addition, LG's product portfolio largely consisted of budget devices that would give you a good, functional phone at a price that didn't break the bank. My Stylo 4, and the Volt which I had before, were good examples. But who cares about value or bang for buck or prudential judgement when you could get the latest flagship for only 12 monthly payments of $100? Sure i'll never use that 1TB of internal storage, since now everything is on THE CLOUD anyways, but whatever! Those four camera lenses are completely unnecessary, but who cares! Everyone else is doing it, and I have to fit in! Who cares about all the resources being drained and e-waste being produced because of all our mindless consumerism? It's mostly all being shipped off to Africa or Asia anyway, out of sight, out of mind!
This sort of social shaming hivemind behavior actually has a profound effect on pretty much every product segment in every industry from which consumers purchase products. I own two Fujitsu Lifebooks (well actually more that that, but we only need to focus on two right now). The first is a T4210 from 2006. The second is a T904 from 2014. Pretty significant differences exist between these two products that were made less than a decade apart, by the same manufacturer. The T904 is slimmer, thinner, and designed to look "sleek", at the expense of durability, quality, thermals, modularity, repairability, and port and drive bay selection. It didn't NEED to be made thinner. The T4210's size is perfectly adequate for carrying around, so I highly doubt any customers complained to Fujitsu about it, but it was changed anyway.
My Fujitsu Lifebook T4210 (left) and her younger sister T904 (right), with very apt wallpapers
Who can you thank for this? Well, mainly Apple, of course. Or more accurately, the people who promote and buy Apple products. I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but over time, in America especially, Apple has become the market segment leader when it comes to laptops. A MacBook is the most "socially acceptable" laptop to own. Anything that isn't a MacBook, and especially anything that doesn't look similar to one, well it just simply isn't cool! It must be for the out of touch, old, or poor people! This market and SOCIAL dominion has caused basically every manufacturer to shift its product's' designs to be more like Apple's. After all, they're making all the money! Why be original or try to carve out a niche market yourself when you could just shamelessly copy whatever the guy at the top is doing? Much easier! Samsung made an advertisement mocking Apple for removing the 3.5mm jack on the iPhone, and then shortly after, did the exact same thing on the Galaxy. So, everything Apple does is reflected across the industry. It even affects my beloved Lifebooks which are made in Japan, by a Japanese company. MacBooks are big over there too. But forget about my Fujitsus, even Lenovo Thinkpads have succumbed to this trend. Even Panasonic Toughbooks have! This is madness! These aren't supposed to be cheap disposable systems for use in a home office, or "stylish" MacBook clones for latte-sipping hipsters, they're marketed for industrial and military use! What gives?
But you'd be mistaken if you foolishly thought that this trend stayed within the bounds of the laptop computer market. I've given you three stories so far, here's another. This is also from when I was back in school. So one day, I was standing by a door in the hallway, waiting for class to start or something, and I overheard a conversation between two guys. I don't remember the entire thing, but the important part I recall is when the first dude said "Hey, give that back!" and the second guy said "What, heh, is your battery gonna fall out?" This was most likely an iPhone user, who had grabbed someone's non-Apple phone, and, though perhaps jokingly, MADE FUN OF HIM for the grave sin of having a user-replaceable battery. At the time, and even to this day, that absolutely baffled me. That people feel smug and superior over having to do more work, or possibly risk damaging their device in the process, to repair its battery. (Though it seems most don't even consider the option of fixing something yourself in the first place.) This kind of braindead fanboyism-driven cheering on of anti-consumer practices has undeniably damaged the state of the entire consumer electronics industry.
Apple obviously isn't the only entity at fault for this issue, and they're just a corporation that wants to make money after all. However, as I've mentioned previously, they're the premier example of these practices, and due to their position as the market leader with the most social acceptance, Apple products are given special treatment that almost NO OTHER COMPANY would be able to get away with. Simply put, by some, Apple is treated like a religion. Like a cult, even. There are few other companies that have the same level of blind feverish fanboys willing to defend them no matter what. Maybe Tesla is the only other real example I can think of, it's like the Apple of cars. I'm not saying that every person who buys an Apple product is like this, and there are genuinely valid reasons why an Apple product may be the best choice for some people (if you're involved in digital art or music production, for example), but when Apple removed the headphone jack on the iPhone 7, you had hordes of Apple fans declaring that the headphone jack is unnecessary. "You should have AirPods anyway, what are you, poor?" They'd pay $35 for a thing that hangs off the phone and does nothing other than restore previously built-in functionality, while the cost to the end user increases and all these dongles and adapters take up way more space than needed, and cause yet more waste.
Only $35 to get a feature now that you used to get for free! What a deal!
But anything less than unwaivering allegiance would be heresy. All just because a company guessed, correctly, that it could get away with milking a few extra dollars out of its cult members, uh, I mean customers. Further, a lot of Apple fans, or users of Apple devices in general, seemingly have Stockholm syndrome. Here's another story, last one I swear. Someone who I know had an iPhone 8. Respectable choice I suppose, not one I'd make obviously, but I could understand it, since this person had owned Apple devices before, and was "in the ecosystem" (another creepily cult-like concept that I am very opposed to, but it's a reality for most people, as many brands now do this.) Now, I say HAD, the device broke in a very iPhone-like fashion, this person leaned on it a little too hard for the screen, which then promptly shattered. So what did this person do, the now almost unusable iPhone being well past the warranty period? Well, "upgraded" to the newest model, of course! What else to do? Switch to a more durable brand? Well, you couldn't do that! To most people, if they bought, say, a Ford, and it broke down all the time or gave them all sorts of problems, they would switch to, for example, a Toyota for their next vehicle. If my desk broke under normal use, or was badly designed or something, I would naturally switch to a different brand of desk. Same with my keyboard, or my microphone, or for someone NOT IN THE APPLE "ECOSYSTEM", my phone, or the laptop I wrote this script on. Apple is one of the only companies from which someone would buy a product, get burned due to some stupid design flaw or weakness that likely won't be fixed or even adknowledged, and then promptly keep coming back to the abuser, time after time. Surely worse to leave, right?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you need to go out and buy an old Thinkpad, Lifebook, or an LG phone, or that you should hate Apple and never consider any of their products. As I've said, there's legitimate reasons why an Apple product could be the best choice for you, and could improve your life. I'm certainly not saying that you should go out and CONSOOM all sorts of PRODUCT. Use what you have, for as long as it works for you. However, that is what you should be keeping in mind. Whether the technology you use is working for you, and improving your life, instead of the other way around, the tech using you, making you a slave to consumerism, mindlessly upgrading to the slightly better, slightly shinier newest model every year, never satisfied. If something is shoddily built for planned obsolescence, don't make the same mistake twice. If a product removes useful features that you need, for no reason, switch to a brand that doesn't do that. Resist the "ecosystems". They're designed for the manufacturer's benefit, not yours. Don't be a fanboy of any brand. No corporation, in any industry, is on your side. No, not even that one that said the thing you agree with on social media. There's nothing wrong with taking recommendations from someone. Not everyone has the time to do copious amounts of research on every little thing they buy. I know nothing about air fryers, for example, and would probably just pick the cheapest, best reviewed one on the shelf or website. Everyone's life and workflow is different, I get that. There's also nothing wrong with having a different set of priorities than maybe I do when it comes to choosing a product, or letting appearance take a part in your purchasing decision. Hell, I find old business laptops attractive in their own sort of way. Just don't buy into the hype, don't let society, or "influencers", or advertisements coerce you into spending money you don't have on products you don't need to impress people you don't care about. There's also no reason to instantly jump to whatever brand new technology comes out, the instant it's available. I don't use any of these stupid IOT devices, I don't use smart TVs, smart lights, smart plugs, those wiretap assistant speaker things, any of that, which is a great decision for my privacy and wallet, and my life is simpler and easier for it. No need to complicate things for no reason which work perfectly fine as is. (However, this wasn't always the case, I will have a dedicated article detailing my experience with IOT devices coming at some point). I also don't preorder games, devices, anything, and I always wait for all the early adopter problems to get ironed out (and also the price to come down), which has saved me a lot of time, money, and headaches. Do not fall into the trap of believing that new technology is always better. More and more, it seems to me that the opposite turns out to be true. Don't discount old tech or get scared off by the term "EOL", and here's a tech tip: business and government auctions and surplus sales are great ways to get older, higher quality, commerical or enterprise-grade equipment for great prices. Just buying used in general is also a good idea, both for your wallet and to support your fellow countrymen instead of massive multinational corporations. I still use CRT and CCFL monitors, computers with pre-Intel i series processors, and audio equipment from the nineties, and all that works great for me. I'd recommend critically examining your life and your workflow and determining what you really need to get your work (and play) done, and sell all the bloat. Or, even better, donate it. There's always less fortunate people that could use something that you don't need anymore. It can be difficult to unlearn the brainwashing and break free from the systems intentionally designed to keep you trapped, and I can't guarantee anything, but I'll say I personally have, over the course of the last few years, gone through this process (and still am) and it has made me a happier, more productive, and less dependent person over all. Just a thought. Gray out.
Made with love by gray
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