Hell Is Other iPods

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

The aural loneliness of the long-distance shuffler

I don't have an iPod, but it's only a matter of time. I can feel the pressure building up around me -- the groovy TV ads, the smug folks with the telltale white headphones on the subway making me feel unhip, the proliferating choice of colors.

And yet something in me resists, and it's not just the inner cheapskate. Something feels not quite right, and it's not only that the iPod comes in a special red and black U2 collector's edition.

I read an article recently in USA Today about the new "gospel of iPod," the emergence of "the iPod nation." Well, okay, the piece is gently parodying Apple's conventionally hyped-up marketing and loyal, not to say fanatical, user base. (There is no zeal like the zeal of an Apple Mac user; just try asking one innocently, as I once did, if there really is any substantial difference between a Mac and a PC.) So perhaps we shouldn't take it too seriously, but try these statements on for size:

"My friends all have [an iPod], and I just felt it was time to catch up." Fair enough, typical teenage logic, and if not for such sentiments, where would the hula hoop or the Rubix cube ever have got?

But how about this? "The iPod has changed my life," says Andrea Kozek, perhaps revealing a lack of robustness in her life in the first place. "When I need to block out the rest of the world, I turn it on." And let's face it, the one thing we really need to do is block out the rest of that pesky old world. But why not just listen to the radio, Andrea? "Do I really want to hear Britney Spears doing Bobby Brown's 'My Prerogative'? It wasn't a good song in the first place," she answers, revealing some talent for music criticism but poor taste in radio stations, which I wonder if her iPod can really resolve. (By the way, Andrea has nicknamed her iPod 'My Precious,' a tribute to Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.)

It's easy to mock. So let's continue. One choice statement explains how iPod can calm the turbulent waters of family life by resolving the thorny subject of who gets to choose the music: "We'll all be listening to music at the same time," says an iPod mom from Williamsburg, New York. "I'll be connected to iTunes on my laptop, my kids will have their iPods on, and my husband likes to listen to his while he's surfing around on eBay." Remind me not to accept an invitation to dinner at their place, or at least to bring a good book with me.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print