New Message: Cell Phone Companies Out Of Ideas!

Take out your cell, and stare at it for a moment (not that hard, creepy guy). Bet it’s new, right?

Chances are also good that you bought it because it had more features than your old (old in the cell phone world = over a year) “crappy” (I’m using this word subjectively) phone. It probably has a camera attached to it, am I lying? And it more than likely has a bunch of “boring” (not subjective, more like collective) games to play when you get tired of living in the real world, am I mistaken (probably not)? The reason for all this unnecessary garbage: year by year, the cell phone manufacturers continue to pile on the oddball features, in the hopes that you’ll keep buying their wares, even though your current phone is working just fine!

I now pose this question (be serious about it for once, ok?): do you use all those new features? Or did you just buy that phone to show it off to all your buddies who care about such trivialities? Truth be told, I use my cell phone (which, by the way is two years old) exactly the same way I used a phone the first time I picked one up: to make and receive calls only (only exception: I throw in like 20 text messages a week for good measures). Most new features are lost on me, and if you look at the book that came with your phone, you will start to realize that a considerable chunk of your phone’s new features are lost on you, too.

Yes, it’s nice to be able to scroll down through stored numbers, and yes, it’s kind of convenient to return a call with the press of a button, but really … what more is there than that? Nobody sends me any quality, un-drunk photos from their cell phone anyways (the reason: cell phone camera pics SUCK, and digital camera photos via e-mail RULE!). When I do get a pic by phone, I have to first decipher what the hell it is, and then I delete it because the quality just stinks! “Nice pic” I text back to the sender (of course, I’m lying. I’m not about hurting anyone’s feelings).

This is exactly my point: we, America, are not losing market shares to China, Japan or anywhere else because we can’t do what they do (the truth is: we can do it better [we’re Americans after all]). We’re losing market shares to these countries because of our primitive response to the unimportant things in life. We’re constantly buying foreign products (note: your phone is a foreign product – guaranteed!) because the goods are built with a new quirk or attribute that makes it seem to be more attractive than the products we currently own. And, as a culture, we need to reconsider this behavior of ours, or we’re heading for a bad, bad (I mean really bad) place.

Our children have been thoroughly programmed to believe that they need these newer, useless things, which makes me sick, by the way. I, on the other hand, subscribe to the theory that greed and panic are the two main factors that are driving the masses. This buying-a-new-cell-phone-every-twelve-months notion is the epitome of the greed factor, and the panic is coming straight from the marketers and advertisers who are controlling the media, in most of its forms.

So when I listen to jerks who tell me that I must get a new phone, because mine “looks” dated, do you know what I give them as my retort? Here goes two of them (you decide which is better): “F^$k off, you poser-ass loser!” or “If it ain’t broken, then why am I going to fix it?” Then I smile politely and tell them that my phone makes calls just like theirs, I can text just like theirs, and that mine can do something theirs can’t: take videos at the bottom of a pool (ok, this feature is pretty cool, but my previous phone was over 7 years old, and my old provider (Sprint) had the worst service in the world so I earned the right to buy this phone when I changed companies). Then I wind down the conversation by telling them that I’ll more than likely have this phone for a very long time (in real time, not cell phone world time)!

Just giving you something to think about — not trying to sound like your grandpa, who always tells you about his seven mile, uphill in the snow, trips to school every single day!