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August 30th, 2024 @ 1:46 pm
At the beginning of this month, I entered an offer war on eBay --- a seller had listed two working iPod Nanos (one 2nd gen, one 4th,) for $29.99 US.
Given the current state of the iPod market, this mark was not farfetched. A working 4th gen iPod Nano can go anywhere from $40 to $100. But I just wasn't having it.
Thus, a skirmish ensued.
We passed offers & counters back and forth for many minutes. We were getting uncomfortably close to the $29.99 mark I had, until that point, dedicated my life to not paying.
Suddenly, after a moment of eerie silence, my sparrer sent the following message:
COUNTER OFFER: $25.00 [FREE SHIPPING]
"How about inthrow in a silver 3rd gen 4 gb nano . It s in need of a battery change though"
. . . I'd never been more romanced. Needless to say, I obliged.
$26.94 later (including tax,) I had obtained 3 iPods. My brothers agreed to split the cost with me, and I got to pick the one of my affection; a florescent purple, 8 GB iPod Nano, 4th generation (pictured center in hi-def.)
So, I stopped the streaming madness and ripped my CD collection, as well as my friend Abby's, onto my 'Pod!
Coinciding with the arrival of this device was my deletion of the Spotify app; it was really getting on my nerves. Between "daylists" and "AI shuffle," I kept getting recommended artists I already knew of and wasn't super keen on, but nevertheless, they'd keep pushing them (probably to fulfill some $$$ quota they have with their biggest partners.) They also added an endless scroll feature to their app --- as an anti-short-form-content advocate, this made me lose respect for them (of which I was already in a deficit.)
Not to mention they don't pay their small artists. So, in efforts of being a better ally to independent musicians, I now purchase musicians' work in CD or digital download format, instead of just streaming. That way, the compensation they deserve is going straight into their pockets.
I have been LOVING every minute with this iPod! I listen to albums I normally don't reach for, discovering and re-discovering music between both my & Abby's CD collections --- I don't think I had given Tori Amos a truly intentional listen before this month. I can't imagine why, Scarlet's Walk is GOATED.
So many people move through life completely oblivious to their endless consumption of short-form content, as well as their perpetuation of that same cycle through content creation. Through algorithms, we're told what we like, what we want, what we believe, how we should look, etc. Algorithms have the most luck preying on the lowest common denominator of all these things; whatever is most palatable prevails. This makes us all think the same, look the same, act the same, even have the same taste in music. Social media is a disguised means of forced conformity; controlling the collective by having the collective control themselves.
As such, acquiring this iPod was apart of my venture to make my iPhone as hostile as possible, so as to dissuade myself from reaching for it.
I hoped to achieve this through a process called "dumb-ifying," in which one takes advanced technology and strips it down so it only features essential functions (I first heard about this through this YouTube video by Digging the Greats, which, ironically, I discovered through a social media platform.)
To dumb-ify my iPhone, I deleted the applications that over-convenience me, and only kept what needed keeping; I can text, call, use the GPS, flashlight, calculator, and camera. That's pretty much it. I even put my color settings on grayscale so it's kind of depressing look at.
Dumb-ifying is MAGICAL! Even though I've had social media off my phone for over a year, only after this process can I truly say I hate my phone! Woohoo!
However, I think I subconsciously took the hostility-mongering prompt a bit too far, because two weeks ago I deleted the voice memos app by accident. To some that wouldn't be such a big deal, but I'm a songwriter. I kept all of my musical ideas on my phone... over 1,200 audio files, gone!
So now do I not only hate my phone conceptually, but I hate it in a personal way. It has wronged me.
So I guess that's good. It takes a loss :P
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