The key to iHappiness
THE SHAME BEGAN Jan. 11, when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. I was so inundated with reports about the world’s first totally perfect gadget that, when I had to check my messages at dinner that night, I cupped my hands around my phone to hide it. I was convinced that everyone in the restaurant had an iPhone, and they were using it to play some kind of new Brazilian dance hall mash-up they heard about in iPhone texts from their new supermodel friends, all the while sliding caviar into their mouths off the perfectly smooth iPhones whose glowing screens bathed their faces in soft light like a Caravaggio painting.
My Treo -- which until that morning seemed like a gift from eager-to-please aliens from the future -- humiliated me. And shame is not something I feel easily, as anyone who works at 20/20 Video knows.
It wasn’t until I looked out at the sea of BlackBerrys that I remembered the iPhone wasn’t coming out for almost six months, which made me feel a little better. But not much.
After all, people in Los Angeles and New York don’t wait for movies to open. We see them at screenings. I’ve seen “Superbad” twice already and am bored talking about it. I’ve already watched the entire fall season’s new shows. I’ve overplayed the not-yet-released Ryan Adams album. So it seems impossible to me that everyone hasn’t gotten an iPhone and already begun mocking me as I punch away on my tiny, caveman raised-bump keyboard, calling me “Thumbsy” or “Helen Keller” or whatever super-clever insult iPhone users are in on that I have no idea about.
I know, for a fact, that if I can just have an iPhone, I will be completely happy forever. I will be really careful and never drop it and charge it every night and use it only for very important things -- like texting everyone I know messages such as “I have an iPhone!”
The saddest part is that when the iPhone comes out at 6 p.m. next Friday, I won’t buy one. Because people who buy new technology right away are losers. They’re the kids at school who tried too hard with the weird Japanese sneakers, the guy who bought his own Segway. Whipping out an iPhone next week would make me look desperate, like wearing a shiny shirt to go out on the weekend, or eating lunch at the Ivy or pitching to the CW. I want people to know I’m the smart guy who waits for Apple to fix the bugs, lower the price, make it thinner, increase battery life, add three gigs, offer more service providers and install a retina scan that prevents people my age from going on MySpace.
But even though I know better, my tech-lust will rage. I will walk up to iPhone-sporting strangers, like a pigeon to a bus driver, and beg them to let me use theirs. None of that lust will come from any genuine desire to listen to music on the same machine I use to make phone calls. Unless I move to New York or Tokyo or actually go running, I don’t need my music with me at all times. Who are these people who are over 25 and are still obsessed with their own music collections anyway? Do they believe they can create a whole new aural experience by hearing “Baba O’Reilly” right after “99 Luftballons”?
My jealousy will stem from the simple fact that an iPhone makes a person both important and cool. The iPhone Dude is a guy who might, at any second, get a key work e-mail, send a photo of his date to friends, surreptitiously read a text-displayed voicemail from another date or listen to the new Akon song -- and he doesn’t have time to pull out a bunch of different gadgets. Which means that his time is more valuable than Batman’s.
As a guy, gadgets are the only tools we have for expressing our importance. Women have jewelry, clothes and social lives. We’ve got cars, phones, large TV screens and women.
So I’m going to hold off as long as I can before buying an iPhone. I’m going to learn that the only way to be happy is to understand that I have everything I need, and I need nothing I don’t have. That the consumerist culture is a prescription for permanent suffering. That my bulky, lumbering Treo with its tiny screen, cluttered buttons, limited Web browsing and pathetic “Pocket Tunes” is just fine.
But it’s definitely time I get a flat-screen TV.
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