Socien's Blog

A local store in Ukraine was giving away an iPhone 7 plus to the first twenty people to change their names to iPhone 7 just after its release. Moved by the news, Olexander Turin (then 20) legally ceased to be known by such a bad name after changing it to iPhone Sim (translated: iPhone Seven), a decision that was praised by his family. Half a decade back (2011), a Chinese teenager (17), Xiao Wang sold his kidney to buy an iPad and an iPhone 4. In 2019, Phone Arena reported that he was now suffering from renal failure.

It did not take more than four years after the above report for the same mistake to be repeated in Nigeria where a student at UNIPORT University sold his kidney to buy an iPhone for a girlfriend. The comment section praised his actions. That very year the Thai Red Cross was all out conducting campaigns on social media against the sale of kidneys to buy the iPhone 14 series in response to a viral meme from Laos where users were pretending to have sold their kidneys. This inexhaustible list peaked at a climax when an Indian couple sold a baby to buy the latest iPhone. Quite clever, huh? You can run out of kidneys but you can have as many babies as you want and make as many travel Instagram posts as you want.

The iPhone earned itself not only a cult of followers. Its loyal followers are a movement, the biggest we have seen in this century. It goes as far as refusing to date or marry non-iPhone users. It is an identity that has left many wounds among subscribers and non-subscribers of the movement.

The founder and late CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, was known to bend reality to deliver a product ahead of the capabilities of the technology of the time in a short period putting more stress on his workforce. He bribed supply chains like a revolutionary storage chip from Toshiba which allowed a tiny iPod (450 million unit of iPods were sold) to store from a 1000 songs in 2001 and was produced exclusively for Apple after a 10 million bid for exlusive rights. He assembled Silicon Valley’s most gifted team which he pushed beyond known limits of human performance. It is no surprise that phrases like “distortion field” and “bending reality” were used by Isaacson in an official biography of Steve Jobs to describe the traits of Apple’s founder. His traits made him a famous man in Silicon Valley but they brought his death untimely when he refused to undergo a crucial surgery at a very earliest possible time. Having lost track of the reality, Steve simply believed good food and a vegetarian diet could save him until it was too late.

Examples of people selling kidneys or an Indian couple selling a baby do not capture people in developed countries. There, citizens believe that anyone can buy an iPhone. Thus, when they can afford to buy the newest release, the movement has found different means to bend the reality that have nothing to do with selling kidneys. For example, when the first iPhone came out, a Couple in America travelled to Australia to be the first to buy by cheating the timezone on the day Apple stores were said to be start selling the iPhones.

Decisions on whether to upgrade our current arsenal of devices are made from what the comment section is endorsing. Yet in practice, it’s only a handful of us who need the most recent flagships to be as productive as we can be. For example, I find inspiration to write when I have a non-folding phone with a screen as big as 7.0 inches in my hands rather than a smaller screen size. My hits on the virtual keyboard are lower when I am using screen sizes around 6.8 and smaller. Yet, 6.8 is the new maximum standard we have seen flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S Ultra line coming with. The 7.0-inch hype on non-foldables died in 2022 when Vivo X Note became the last non-foldable flagship to come with a 7.0-inch screen. The iPhone 16 Pro Max is the biggest iPhone yet at 6.9 inches because, without a foldable release yet, Apple has no choice but to expand the iPhone’s screen. Samsung followed suit with the S25 Ultra.

Productivity does benefit from faster tech and the most efficient hardware. Creativity on the other hand is different. An author can benefit more from typing on a Blackberry Priv (It’s a sliding Android phone with 5.3 inches of screen and a Physical Qwerty keyboard) that was released in 2015—dodging the problems caused by the obsoleteness of the tech by side-loading older versions of productivity apps. (I believe changing the scenery, picking up old stuff, shifting occasionally from paper to tech, and from old to new, and shifting from one room or library to another is on of the best of the strategies to burst a writer’s block).

Another hype that was given up in 2021: A V-logger or that Indian couple may need a Samsung Galaxy A 80 (2019, April) and Asus ZenPhone 8 Flip (2021) because main cameras (motorised and flipping) on these, doubling as selfie cameras, are powerful than selfies of any flagship on the market currently and are cheap as well (I recently came across Galaxy A 80 going for $160 in my town; anyone can afford one without selling a kidney). The telephoto lenses on them allows the user to put more distance between him and the camera, creating good videos without distorting his shape or botch the nose. The examples of old tech that can relevant today is inexhaustible. We might not see them on iPhones but buying an older iPhone is not a deal breaker.

Most of these people who put urgency on tech purchases do not intend to be productive or just to get the best looking travel videos. They just want exclusivity at the cost of everything in their lives. Exclusivity is the new definition of luxury. It has created a movement that bends realities, skip timezones, sell kidneys and babies just to have its hands on the latest iPhone.

The other burden, members of the movement must bear is that of upgrades. Unlike a Rolex watch that can still be valid ten years after its purchase, tech collectibles needs upgrades. How does a kidney seller keep up? Because they are buying these gadgets to have something to show, they feel like they have lost everything when they fail to keep up.

The iPhone movement has created room for one purchase in one’s life that can cripple him forever. The kidney sellers in a bid to shine, and look good while feeling empty, have taken an oath of poverty. They are cursed to spend their lives not only in regret of a phase they can only wish to have spent in a comma. Due to the haste they put on selling their organs, they find themselves going through a nonclinical surgery which deposits foreign elements into their bodies. Baby sellers create an illusion to society that babies are not as special.

Things that are supposed not to be taken for granted like life, health, happiness and a happy united family, are no longer as special as an iPhone.