So Apple and U2 thought it would be cool to give every
iTunes user a free copy of the super group’s latest album, eh? How silly of them to think folks might
welcome 11 free songs! In fact, what
kind of nerve do these giant corporate monsters have to have to take up that
much room on the free cloud space they’ve provided us in the first place? And free music? Americans don’t want free music. We recognize the effort artists put into
making it, record companies put into manufacturing, promoting, and
distributing it, radio stations put into
disseminating it, etc. and so on. No way
do we expect to get that for free! NEVER!
Do these bon-bon-eating, yacht-sailing billionaires not
realize the burden they’ve imposed on folks who, for a variety of reasons,
simply cannot have free music on their devices? Really…the NERVE… forcing people to have to
delete content if they don’t want it!
That could take seconds out of our busy days! This invasion is almost as evil as including
sample songs or pictures or videos in a copy of Windows! It’s as invasive as buying a computer with a
web browser or security software already installed! It’s almost as evil as a 90-day trial version
of productivity suite software that lets you use it to create all kinds of
useful content, but then requires you to buy it AFTER you’ve created that
content IF you want to maintain access to those things you’ve created! What blatant disregard for our valuable
memory space and personal time! This
ranks right up there with McD’s handing out free coffee for two weeks, or advertisers
flooding our snail mail boxes with flyers and free offers that we then have to
pass on to overcrowded landfills. We haven’t seen such disregard for personal
privacy and safety since Little Caesar’s Pizza gave customers a second pizza
for the price of the first! That 2nd
pizza was clearly a ploy to get customers used to getting something for
nothing, setting the stage for a communist deluge wherein people actually
expect to receive the fruits of no one’s labor!
That would be like Burger King getting all the benefits of running a
business in America – military protection, safe drinking water, regulated
sewage, highways, power grids, stable government, police and fire protection,
hundreds of millions of customers who can afford their products, etc. – and yet
not having to pay their share of maintaining all of those benefits! As Americans, the very thought simply sickens
us!
Or do we just like to pretend it does?
I work for an organization with over a quarter of a million
employees. All too often, folks will
“reply to all” on an email sent out to a large chunk of those employees. Shortly thereafter, someone else will “reply
to all” with a message asking to be removed from that particular thread of
messages, as if it actually took less time to type that message and send it
than it would to simply ignore, or delete the original message in the first
place. But that’s not why they send the
message asking to be left out. They send
that message (and take more time to do so than just deleting it would) in order
to tell everyone on the list that their time is more important than anyone
else’s, and surely more important than this message someone thought might apply
to everyone on the mail list in the first place.
Oh sure, some of the whiners are complaining that it’s
simply a matter of U2 or Apple being presumptuous by assuming that anyone could
possibly like this U2 album in the first place.
As individuals, we like to pretend that our musical tastes are so
refined and so important that receiving free, unsolicited music is an affront
to our highly refined taste…that we may succumb to something new or different…
and that such acquiescence would somehow have detrimental sway over the
delicate balance of the universe. We use
the opportunity to rail against “sell outs” like U2 (or any other artist who
has toiled away for years to gain some tiny little place, and – the horror –
make a lot of money, in an industry that
breeds homogeneity.) But that’s just
another way of “replying to all” in order to demonstrate to the captive
audience how important we are…how delicate our sensibility is…how much we need
our insignificant complaint to be heard by ALL!
The uproar over having to do something with a free gift (other
than just ignore or delete it) has become our forum to tell the world to LOOK
AT ME. I’m too important to get free
music and my time is too important to be used by deleting or ignoring it. I
didn’t get selected for a reality TV show, not enough people have seen my new
tattoo…or beard…or newly adopted clothing fad or precious car. I’m too important to have to ignore an email
or music download that only slightly pertains to me, but the world will only
know this if I reply to all and complain about it.
What people are really saying when they are offended,
bothered, interrupted (or whatever the actual complaint is supposed to be) when
they sound off about the burden of receiving free music on their iTunes device
is this: I am an ungrateful, whiny, low-self-esteemed
cog in a giant wheel who wants some grease…not THIS grease that U2 and Apple
teamed up to give me at significant expense, but some other grease that I’m not
really willing to pay for except through my whiny complaining and all that it’s
worth. (ha! The uproar is a lot like this ‘blog! …and yet
here you are, reading it!)
Unlike U2 and Apple, who provided no possible method for the
world to hear what people actually think about their generosity, I offer my
many readers an easy-to-use comments section wherein you can tell me how much
this post has benefited you and made your life better. Feel free to use it, but please do NOT reply
to ALL! (my readers are WAY too busy
doing important things to have to deal with that!)
Luth
Out
