Dignity Won’t Impress My Rich Friends
Old news now but perhaps you missed it. Some iBooks were being sold off at $50 (super cheap) because Henrico County (somewhere in America) switched from Apple to Dell for its school laptops. MacBlog:
Some people reportedly began camping out at 2 AM just for the first crack at a laptop which in all probability is caked in four years worth of school lunches and generally beat to hell, and I don’t even want to think about what else those kids have done to them. But at $50 you can’t say no. You also can’t help but stampede children and the elderly to get your hands on one, which is exactly what happened.
This is not the first time we have heard about this sort of thing. This was really the next level though. Let’s roll some quotations.
People threw themselves forward, screaming and pushing each other. A stroller was crushed. Witnesses said an elderly man was thrown to the pavement, and someone tried to drive his car through the crowd.
…
Jesse Sandler said he was one of the people pushing forward, using a folding chair to beat back people who tried to cut in line. “I took my chair here and I threw it over my shoulder and I went, ‘Bam,’” the 20-year-old said nonchalantly, his eyes glued to the screen of his new iBook, tapping away on the keyboard at a testing station. “They were getting in front of me and I was there a lot earlier than them, so I thought that it was just,” he said.
And my favourite:
Blandine Alexander, 33, said one woman in front of her was so desperate to retain her place in line that she urinated on herself.
Stories and photos at Times Dispatch and BBC News.
Quote from “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser. It’s part of an account of a motivational business “success” conference, where all sorts of famous people give vague, unhelpful advice to desperate white collar capitalists:
“As the loudspeakers play the theme song from ‘Chariots of Fire’, Lowe wheels Christopher Reeve onstage. The crowd wildly applauds… “I’vehad to leave the physical world,” Reeve says… “By the time I was twenty-four, I was making millions… I was pretty pleased with myself… I was selfish and neglected my family… Since my accident, I’ve been realising… that success means something quite different… I see people who achieve these conventional goals… None of it matters”.
His words cut through all the snake oil of the last few hours, calmly and with great precision. Everybody in the arena, no matter how greedy or eager for promotion, all eighteen thousand of them, know deep in their hearts that what Reeve has just said is true – too true. Their latest schemes, their plans to market and subdivide and franchise their way up, whatever the cost, the whole spirit now gripping Colorado, vanish in an instant. Men and women up and down the aisles wipe away tears, touched not only by what this famous man has been through but also by a sudden awareness of something hollow about their own lives, something gnawing and unfullfilled.”
Comment by Santa Dog — September 6, 2005 @ 12:55 am
[...] It’s important to express yourself as a nation. So, when a new mall opens, it is only appropriate that Auckland shoppers cause motorway chaos. Regular readers may remember last year’s iBook stampede (much more impressive, as us Kiwis don’t do consumerism nearly as well as the US or UK). On this occasion, the Auckland motorway network was gridlocked because there were Bargains. I saw the coverage on the news, shots of people just carrying boxed TVs around. It was like watching ants, or as the commentator called it, “sheeple.” And it was horrible. [...]
Pingback by Who Put These People In Charge, Anyway? | db.rambleschmack.net — June 10, 2006 @ 1:28 am