The Journey to Pocketing the iPhone 6

So I finally got my own hands on an iPhone 6.

It is my first iPhone. I have officially lost my iPhone virginity. This is when you go, "Ooh~ ahh~ dayummm girlllll~~~~" in your head or out loud to your laptop screen--whatever works, really. Yet the extreme satisfaction of owning this gadget that is so, so, so, so, so, so, so, very fucking much coveted by like so many people around the world... isn't really present with me. What's the shorter way of putting it? Umm.

#Disappointment. 

a) I just blew almost a grand on a goddamn calling device.

b) And that grand is totally hard frickin' sweat, man. I worked my glands off mopping floors, making really bad coffee, and selling it for a ridiculous amount of price to brainwashed consumers at Starbucks.

c) I don't even know whether it really was the iPhone's existence that made me purchase it or whether it was the constant iPhone-related articles that were popping up on the internet left, right, and center.

d) I think I was brainwashed to buy it.

e) Then the iCloud hack happened and it was just like MY INTERNET = APPLE NEWS.

f) Unfortunately, this MY INTERNET = APPLE NEWS still continues. Can people just STOP POSTING ANYTHING RELATED TO "BENDING."

g) People should also stop "wittily" mentioning the "bend" thing to me, too. It's so old. There must be another #EpicMegaUltimateDesignFail worth writing a Mashable "velocity report" article on. (Maybe not, actually).

h) The quality of content on Mashable is laughable (I rhymed)! Is Mashable now a personal Apple-PR-runner? Apple-channel? Apple-website? Apple-speaker? Apple-funnel? Apple-core???? I really need to unsubscribe from them. They are driving me nuts.

i) I stalked Apple Canada's RESERVE AND PICK UP site day and night to no avail.

j) I just buried myself in self-created sadness because I was so ritually refreshing iPhone Reservation website with tiny hopes of seeing an "Unavailable" turn into "Available." Funny how the Albertan locations would always have like one model available. #TheOnlyTimeIWishIWereLivingInAlberta #VancouverSnobiety

k) Then the AVAILABLE happened! And being a jittery fool, I made the wrong finger movement of reserving the SPACE GREY instead of Gold... I tried to reserve again, but I'm only allowed one reservation per day and of course everything is AUTOMATED and nobody wants to help me/has access to actually switching my precious once-per-day reservation...

l) I LITERALLY CRIED on my bed. I was so burnt out of clicking refresh per every 20 minutes for more than a week for this super expensive phone that just had me wanting it without any logical reasoning... Except that it's an iPhone 6? All sorts of angst and frustration that were previously unknown to me surged inside out.

m) I gave up on everything and cleared my mind. Through mindfulness over attending university classes, I went over to Pacific Center to pick up my iPhone 6 in 16 gb (non-optimal storage size) in space grey (nobody wants this colour, right?) and paid everything in full in cash.

n) I just kept thinking that I really need to learn the Craigslist know-how's to purchasing electronics.

And this is how my journey to pocketing the iPhone 6 started and ended.

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I'm actually an Apple fan, but their technology's functionality rating plus the designs are failing my expectations here and there.

For sure, the iPhone 6 is the best phone I've owned, but it has too many aspects that could be improved. This room for improvement outshines and outweighs all of its "value-adding and innovative" features. Like, yeah, the camera's better. Well, iPhone had such shit camera specs anyways, it's the easiest thing you could improve to meet the industry standard -- set by Samsung. How about focusing on actually shaving down on the camera's jutting out part instead of just photoshopping it in all images used on websites and campaigns? I can only just laugh out loud with pangs of sadness.

It really is true; the world needs Steve Jobs but he is no longer here. Post-Jobs-Apple is no longer the Apple I fawned over and grew up with. It has almost become a laughing figure of a stalemate. No wonder they split their shares, Jony Ives is doing interviews, Tim Cook is made fun of in the most blatant ways, and iOS8 had bugs that limited your phone to an iPod. 

This post turned out to become an emotional rant on Apple, but actually I was aiming to outline Apple's power as a trusted brand with a scary fanatic cult following. For Apple, the product quality does not even matter, the apps that are exclusively offered on the iOS (e.g. VSCO Cam) drive their cult following. The above-you / above-Microsoft / above-all stigma that Jobs had created before he left is still prevalent amongst the consumer groups and drives sales numbers. Any kind of negative feedback or negative social marketing remarks against Apple actually works FOR them, transforming into more earned media for them. As you can see from my previous steps within buying my iPhone 6, the number of Apple-related news from the internet (whether the sentiments were positive or negative) affected my decision to purchase the phone. The more talked about this product or brand is, the more it stays within your mind. 

Tjaco Walvis says that purchasing decisions are made subconsciously even before the consumer goes through the analysis of their consideration set brands/products. I can definitely concur with this. Even before I weighed out my pros and cons of buying the iPhone and while I was shuffling through all sorts of iPhone 6 related articles, updates, news, comments, and status updates, I was already more than 100% sure that no matter the end utility gained, I will purchase this HOT HOT HOT GADGET. 

Funny how much easier it is for me to admit that I have fallen into a victim of clever, 360-degree consumer touchpoint marketing trap, now that I am in this industry. I love what I do because I know it works on me--rather beautifully.

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P.S. Because I don't want to sound like a miserable and spoiled capitalistic consumer, my actual desperation for owning this new phone ASAP stemmed from the fact that I was currently using a Samsung Galaxy S2 (circa 2011). I think this is the single valid reason I can state.

Salinger, the documentary

When a person is dead, then there is no stopping what the living will speak. This applies to everyone, regardless of power, status, respect nor dignity. 
- My key takeaway of the documentary.

My life on Netflix is pretty unexciting. Whenever I really want to spend time on it, it stops loading. Like #foreverPIXELATED!!!! [Insert all kinds of worldly profanity here]. I then proceed yelling at everyone in my family to turn off their phone wifi to maybe perhaps get less pixelation... But of course, to no avail. When it's working though, I'm usually shuffling through the documentaries.

As always, my reviews of stuff come way later than when I actually viewed them. This one, I viewed a long time ago. "SALINGER" came out in 2013 and has a lovely unimaginative poster that resembles a book cover. SO CLEVER!!!!..... Not.  Apparently this director guy (Shane Salerno) had spent about a decade working on this documentary. SO WORTH HIS TIME!!!!...... Not. I sound sour because the documentary leaves you feeling sad and sour to the extreme. I watched it to kill some time in between the two FIFA games of the day, and because I knew I'd learn something new. I was also never a big fan of The Catcher in the Rye and Holden Caulfield, so I was mildly intrigued in what ways would this documentary glorify the book even more than it already is. In fact, "Salinger" glorifies EVERYTHING even down to the unpublished characters of JD Salinger's work. Go figure. Making the documentary pretty "phony." LOL! Get it??? hahaha..... (insert awkward turtle hand gesture here..)

Source: chicagonow.com

Most of the interviews are quite generic (more and more extraordinary compliments of JD Salinger, his looks, his writing, his style, his perfection-obsessed personality, yaddayaddablahblah), except for Jean Miller's as she gets pretty deep, personal, and sentimental when revealing her side of the story. This is when I was shocked about how a person could keep silent for more than half a century and spill the beans on EVERYTHING when Saliger's gone off to the heavens. Same sentiments ensued when I watched the other interviews of the women Salinger had encountered (pretty much countless). Then I went onwards to assure myself to never fall for word-masters who are suave, brilliant, and veiled-in-secrecy-in-super-mysterious-sexy-ways. Hard. Very hard. I think I'll fall for a personality like Salinger's just for the sake of self-destructing my emotional self. Anyways, back to the documentary review... Not only is the privacy-invading content from these women pretty disturbing, but it is more about the documentary's existence itself. Salinger had spent his whole life with a mission to seclude himself from the outside world, truly pursuing the art of living in secrecy and in insane mental state. One can't blame him as his fame did not merely bring money and happiness, but also heavy burdens; there were three--not one--murders in America where the killers quoted Holden Caulfield in the court testimonies. The most famous incident would be the murder of John Lennon. This topic is also briefly covered in "Salinger." Despite all of Salinger's troubles and wishes to remain away from the world, this entire documentary is about divulging his life, tearing his secrecy apart, and publicizing almost everything he had wanted to keep silent about. It fucking starts with this guy stalking around to take paparazzi photos of JD Salinger walking out of the mail depot. RUDE. Just so rude! Poor JD Salinger... He will definitely not rest in peace now, would he? :( :( :(

Yet there are still good parts to this mediocre documentary. There is a somewhat ridiculous amount of time spent on Salinger serving the state in WWII. I never took the effort to read JD Salinger's wiki page, so I had no idea how long he had served, how hard he tried to get enlisted, what kind of position he undertook, how he came back, et cetera. This part and his survival through WWII is enriching and complements his subsequent life events well. Needless to say, this fact-driven history lesson in the middle shines out and stays with you after the documentary, because it clearly juxtaposes against all the emotional, sappy, and overtly pretentious interviews and viewpoints on JD Salinger.

Still interested?
Watch the trailer below. 

*** See you on TUMBLR ***

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*** See you on TUMBLR ***

Just for a laugh

Let me quote Ann Romney:

“Why should women be paid equal to men? Men have been in the working world a lot longer and deserve to be paid at a higher rate. Heck, I’m a working mom and I’m not paid a dime. I depend on my husband to provide for me and my family, as should most women… and if a woman does work, she should be happy just to be out there in the working world and quit complaining that she’s not making as much as her male counterparts. I mean really, all this wanting to be equal nonsense is going to be detrimental to the future of women everywhere. Who’s going to want to hire a woman, or for that matter, even marry a woman who thinks she is the same, if not better than a man at any job. It’s almost laughable. C’mon now ladies, are you with me on this?” 

SO ARE YOU??? ARE YOU... ARE WE WITH HER ON THIS?!!??!! 

#CrazyBitch

#BitchStupidAssBitch

#OldPunkassBitch

#OldDumbassBitch

#JustABitch

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PS. Note that this article may be SPOOF/NOT REAL (says Google...)

PPS. But whatever. 

PPPS. If you think those hashtags are TOO MUCH, well they are lyrics from a song. Guess which!!! 

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Are you thinking....!? Which song......?????

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Yes! You're correct!  Roses by Outkast!!!! 

....okay. This guessing game was lame. I know. 

I'm sorry.

I just had a really rough day; I wanted to be perky.