:: The Blurst of Times ::

:: 10.31.2004 ::

Suck-nology

If I see another Sprint, Nextell, AT&T, T-Mobile, IPod, Dell, IBM, Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, Phillips, Hummer, GM, ADT, Ford, or UPS commercial or ad again, I’m gonna puke. Alright, I’m bluffing, I won’t really puke, but I should. Commercials make me sick. They make me more than sick, they make me almost irate because they are such blatant lies and so many people are completely unable to see through the bullshit and understand the forces really at work. But I could go on for days about how much commercials suck and how ridiculous they are, but I guess we can just chalk that up to super-companies being super-companies. No, what really gets to me is all the problems that these companies cause and force the common consumer to live with.

For a company, obviously, it’s all about making money. Duh. Fine, whatever, that’s their right. But no one is even trying to make money in the honest way anymore. It's all about coming up with the next big thing just as fast as we can, to get as many impatient consumers to buy as many as they can as fast as they can, and bailing adn coming up with something “even newer and greater.” We're moving so fast and trying so hard that we never stop to fix the bugs that were in the original version. Which would be fine if we were throwing out the old and replacing it with the new, but we're not, we're building the new right on top of the old.

Example: You are going to build a house, so you start with the foundation. The foundation is on weak soil and when cold season comes around that soil will heave and the foundation will crack itself apart. But people are starting to pay attention to this house. They want one, too. So you tell them you'll build them one. Then you frame up the walls. More people are noticing. You get more requests to build houses. You put on the roof, the sheet rock, the trim, the shingles, etc. You're trying to build this house so fast (to show everyone you can do it, or to sell it quicker, or more likely, to sell as many as you possibly can), you never go back to correct the mistakes you made. Well, winter rolls in, everyone is snug as a bug in a rug in their new custom home, when they start noticing that their doors don't shut right - some too tight, some too loose, some swing. They call you up: "Hey Buddy, house is great, but the doors don't shut right." You know what's wrong; but you say "Loosen the hinges, straighten the door in the frame, tighten the hinges." Easy-peasy-japanesey. Until their paint starts to chip, their drywall cracks, their cabinet drawers don't shut right, and come about springtime there's kind of a funky smell coming from the basement rec room. You say "Paint it up, patch it up, tighten it up, and get a fan to move that air around." They do it and ignore it for another year. Maybe two or three. Now the house is falling apart - walls warping, visible rot in the basement, floors are uneven. People are unhappy. They complain "Hey Buddy, this house sucks." You say "Yeah, you know, that's just the best we can do with the technology we have. I can't control mother nature, it's going to frost and heave." Now they're going to get pissed, so you scramble "Hey Pal, how about I get you a sweet deal on this new house we’re building over yonder. It's better than that old dump - look we've got walkout basements, granite countertops, a whirlpool in the bathroom. Plus one more bedroom than your last place. Whaddaya say, man, you're buyin up!" And what do they say? "Heck yeah, sounds like a great deal." Never think about how you're going to cut the same corners from one house to the next. Plus, they don’t need all that extra shit, and they still aren’t going to have a house that can shelter them properly.

Okay, that was a long example, and everyone who didn’t make it all the way through the example is exactly the kind of consumer these companies want - no time to read all the details make it work fast and now and I’m off at a million miles an hour again no time to think no time to worry about stuff working no time for quality or a job well done because I got places to go man I’m multinational...

Quality never improves because it never has to. We accept the idea that as long as we can have a hundred of them cheap, then who cares if they work or not. And if we can't have a hundred of them then they'd sure as hell better be multifunctional. If I can't get service in my house, well, I can at least take pictures, check my email, send text messages, play games, check my stocks, and download a million and six different rings tones that turn out to be all the exact same amount of annoying when your phone rings on the bus. We choose (as a society) to continue to purchase items even after we don't like them anymore. Pissed because your phone won't work? Switch companies, switch phones, chuck the cell and get a land line. Don't like buying CDs with so much anti-piracy shit on them that you can't make a simple mix tape anymore? Stop buying CDs, stop buying albums, wait for a bit. The consumer can almost always outwait the supplier. They need our money to keep alive - music isn't going to die when sony records goes bankrupt.

Maybe I’m just fed up by losing phone conversations with people when both of us are just sitting in our respective living rooms. Maybe I’m tired of trying to watch movies on DVD and being unable to finish it because the damn thing skips out and won’t go back to where I had it. Maybe I’m just really really really fucking tired of hearing all these phone companies tell me how much shit I can get for just “$39.99*” when * equals only a million fucking service charges, surcharges, taxes, fees, rate hikes, blackout hours, waivers, tithes, patronages, bribes, firstborns, plus there is no fucking service in your living room.

“Once there were parking lots, now it’s a peaceful oasis...”

:: Freddy F. at 7:01 PM [+] ::