Especially teens and college students
Source: i’m a college student
Kids are like that. Most adults don’t care.
Bullshit. Adults absolutely care. It’s human nature to try to project your status in the social hierarchy. That takes different forms and may instead be projecting status with a Stanley flask or Canada Goose jacket, or whatever.
Most adults don’t use their iphones as status symbols. Look at 10 random adults iphones and over 9 of them will be damaged.
I’ve managed iphones for hundreds of people and only encountered a few that care at all.
BlackBerry holdovers would be a different discussion though.
Those aren’t adults. Those are geriatric children.
Soooo, adults?
Don’t pretend we’ve ever been better than that as a species. The exact form it takes changes (who does ermine fur anymore?) but the idea stays the same.
Don’t pretend we’ve ever been better than that as a species.
Will you make the argument that people who refuse to follow such fashion trends are somehow inhuman?
If you are unwilling to make such an argument, I will not accept your premise that this is a trait of the “species”.
What you (and the parent comment) are describing is a characteristic of certain childish behaviors, philosophies and cultures.
The sophomoric behavior of these geriatric children is not an indictment of humanity in general.
More like, most common allele within the species.
What’s the culture where people don’t covet meaningless status symbols? Even hunter gatherer cultures have generated examples, and they can’t own much more than they can carry.
What’s the culture where people don’t covet meaningless status symbols?
While there are numerous examples of such philosophies and cultures around the globe, I don’t actually need to identify such a culture to demonstrate my point.
If one can remain human without engaging in this behavior, this behavior is not a characteristic of the human condition.
The question before you is whether the members of such a hypothetical culture are inhuman specifically because they do not engage in that covetous behavior.
The abhorrent behaviors being described are conditions of ideas held by certain members of the species. The species is not lessened by the rejection of such ideas. The “certain members” are lessened by their adherence to those ideas.
“Adults”.
I may consider “many adults”… I still get grief about it from older adults (I’m talking people in their 40’s and older). Though either of us could be correct.
These are people who can’t be bothered with how things work, but… are amazing at what they do. So it’s an interesting circumstance to observe, and I haven’t come to any strong conclusions.
Those adults might still be children.
Ah, no true
scottsmanadult, then.
I disagree, kids are taught by adults, so whatever they are learning its from their teachers and families. In my experience I have seen more adults give a status symbols to Apple products than children.
That is how they market their products.
And those demographics are very susceptible to marketing and peer pressure. The chat bubble colors are designed to make you think of alternative phone users as outcasts. Used to be the same with photos and videos in MMS.
By your late 20s most people don’t give a shit about being labeled outcast, but by then you’re locked into their ecosystem.
… is there ever any logic to what people think are status symbols?
My labubu bandolier says there is.
labubu
What the hell is that? Are beanie babies popular again?
Pretty much, yeah.
cost is an easy reason/ barrier. but there’s others like membership and other exclusivity options being offered out there.
I see my deGoogled Android device as a higher status symbol than any overpriced stock Apple device.
Tribalism didn’t end when civilization started. Anyone not in the tribe is lesser, because the alternative would mean your tribe is lesser.
More specific to an iPhone, if you have one, you can do all the social iPhone things like FaceTime. Don’t have one? You can’t FaceTime, so there is a social friction or impediment to socializing. Then there is the “othering” of the green bubble and blue bubble thing. You can’t share photos or videos the same if you don’t have an iPhone. Since we are in a digital age and less physically present, not being able to digitally socialize the same way also inhibits socialization.
All of this is by design. Apple intentionally creates an ecosystem that will excert social pressure on people to buy their products so they can be part of the group like their friends.
I remember a friend of mine whining about how my text bubble was a different color and it “made it weird” to text because of that.
By then I was already super over the whole tribalistic iphone/android bs from people I know when it wasn’t being meme’d on, so I just told her “you can either get over it, or we can stop talking and being friends”
Wouldn’t you know it, the color of a text bubble isn’t enough to end a friendship over.
Because they paid a lot of money for them and they need to convince themselves that it was worth the cost.
Cheapest iPhone is $600, cheapest android phone can go as low as $20 (like those walmart prepaid phones locked to a carrier).
When the average person think of android, instead of thinking about a flagship samsung phone, they think of the lowest budget phone.
So in their mind, if you have android, you’re automatically categorized as “poor”/“cheap”, regardless how much it actually costs.
Wait people really give a shit? Never seen or heard about that
Source: I’m also a college student
It used to be much worse. I remember being excluded from group chats in high school because of the color of the chat bubble for android was different or some shit lol
Some people really got to get a personality outside of the shit they own
You weren’t ousted because of the colour, that’s ridiculous. You were ousted because your phone didn’t support group chats with iPhones. Obviously still an Apple issue but it’s pretty stupid to claim it was because of the colour.
Her iPhone is a status symbol to my wife. Filipinos are kinda weird about brand names as symbols, like they’re living in the 80s.
I see it frequently on tinder where women say to not bother when you don’t own an iphone/ no android/ at least iphone xx
Uh, I don’t. It’s just a phone I use. That’s it.
Teenagers and students are just that; teenagers and students. Very often they care about ‘status symbol’ but also sometimes they don’t care.
I would recommend to stop generalizing.
Apple tells them to.
How does that telling happen, actually?
Companies pay groups to run marketing campaigns that push the idea that their product is missing from your life. Exact methods vary but it’s often in the form of video and printed advertising. Sometimes you’ll see celebrity endorsements or conspicuous product placement in TV/movies. Whatever the people-nerds think will convince the general public to buy.
Marketing.
Go back to the Apple/PC ads in the 90’s,where the Apple guy was hip, and the PC guy was an old fuddy-duddy in a brown suit.
Apple has always traded on the slickness of their products. They often claim to be the “first” at something, when they really just developed the first seriously marketable version.
iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone by years. Just the first one that was slick enough for consumers to bite on, when a year before it was geeky to have such a device.
Their entire premise is “Are you too stupid to work a computer? Now you can do computer things without being a nerd!”
Marketing.
Duh.
But what does that marketing include?
This 39-year-old north-European doesn’t seem to get reached by Apple’s marketing at all.
Simulated intellect. The same way that big, fake boobs sell products to a particular demographic, so do fake, big brains appeal to another.
It’s not the phone, it’s your age bracket. You can say the same thing for other stuff like shoes/clothes, cars, etc. It’s peer/societal pressure, FOMO, and other factors that teenagers and young adults feel are important. People care less when they get older. My iphone is a utility device to me, and I’ll keep using it until it dies or security updates stop, instead of upgrading every year.
Once something becomes statusy, is seems pretty rare that it ever stops. You can’t outcompete Apple at being Apple, and to stay exclusive they can just keep prices up.
It genuinely was revolutionary when it came out. I guess they managed to leverage that into being a luxury brand, when no further world-breaking innovations were forthcoming. The only thing those really have to worry about is staying relevant, as opposed to going the way of fine china and monocles.
They don’t. You do.
It’s just a phone? I’d have an android or fairphone if my job didn’t have apple devices and apps I use all the time. Just makes sense to not need two sets of a lot of things.
Why do you think they do? That’s not a thing in reality. That said, I don’t chat about mobile phones with a lot of college students at this point.
