What I want to know is this: what was the real reason the Joneses were so anxious to get their hands on the new iPhone 5?
Well, it’s a disease. Or more precisely, a couple of them— which I’ll get to in a minute.
If you don’t know about the iPhone 5, you should read a newspaper or turn on the TV or talk to your kids once in a while. According to the unanimous opinion of the press, the new Apple smartphone is likely to replace oxygen and food as the most necessary item for human beings.
(Give Apple a couple more years and I’m sure we’ll be going to the bathroom differently. There’s probably an iPhoneFlush in the works that’ll even wipe.)
Yeah, let some ordinary company try to cure cancer. Apple has solved the biggest problem in corporate America today: how to get free publicity in a society where hype is a currency more valuable than the greenback (although pretty soon, if the Federal Reserve has its way, Frosted Flakes might even be more valuable than dollars).
The iPhone 5 is 20 percent lighter and 18 percent thinner than the iPhone 4 that I am embarrassed to say I still carry in my pocket despite having had a week to rid myself of this antique.
I might soon be too humiliated to even make a phone call in public on my old iPhone.
You probably don’t need an introduction to the Joneses, although you might have to be reminded.
They’re the people who typically are the first to buy the latest Apple product that is being talked about incessantly.
The Joneses are also the folks who wait in around-the-block lines for overpriced Nike status symbols and who would change religions in exchange for two tickets for “The Book of Mormon.”
The Joneses, of course, are the people we lesser humans are supposed to keep up with.
Apple, as those who read newspapers are aware, has already sold out of all the iPhone 5s it has on hand. Don’t worry, it’ll make more.
And shortly after that, you will start hearing about the upcoming iPhone 6, which is likely to be so thin that you can use it as dental floss.
Apple isn’t stupid. Oh, no, no, no. It’s not like the US Postal Service, which came up with the Forever Stamp. How do you top something that will never become obsolete?
Nope, Apple puts numbers on its products — 4, 5, 6, 7 — just like royal families line up heirs to the throne. Until it runs out of numbers, Apple will be pumping out newer, better, hypier products.
But I didn’t really intend to write today about the inadequacy — or even the tingle — I feel when my iPhone 4 is vibrating in my pocket.
I wanted to write about the strange maladies that come with new technology — the reasons the Joneses wait on line. And I bet you weren’t even aware of these tech sicknesses.
For instance, have you ever heard of nomophobia?
Neither had I, until I recently found out that I suffer from this disease. Don’t bother sending me get-well cards because you probably have it, too.
The Brits came up with the term (hey, they have to invent something every hundred years or so) to denote the anxiety people feel when they don’t have access to their cell phones.
You think it’s not real: try leaving your phone at home for a day. I once drove miles back to my house because I had forgotten mine — and I hardly ever get any calls. (No friends or creditors, you understand.)
Dr. Elizabeth Waterman, a top addiction expert at Morningside Recovery Center in Newport Beach, Calif., says she’s seeing more patients with nomophobia. “Their phone is a safety blanket,” she told me the other day. One of her clients has three phones, despite being unemployed, so that she doesn’t miss anything.
“It’s the need to be up-to-date,” Waterman says, adding that cell phones are like any other substance that is being abused. As part of the treatment, “We take everybody’s phone away for 10 days.”
Oh, no! Not that!
Actually, I’m going to see if either my health insurance or ObamaCare will cover my cell-phone addiction. Newport Beach around Christmastime must be pretty nice.
There’s also a malady that’s being called FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out. It’s what forces people to want to be the first to own things. It’s even what makes people post every little achievement on social-networking sites like Facebook. “Oh, I just got married, my dog died, I just pee’d myself after my dog died, here’s a picture.”
Ann Mack, director of trend spotting at JWT, says the whole concept behind FOMO and online blabbing is to tell everyone, “I’m more witty, worldly and on the go than you.” And owning the latest, greatest thing on the market “is a way of upping their social status.”
Thank goodness I don’t have FOMO, too!
But I do have a motto I’ll call BRAINS, which stands for Buy Right After Its Newness Subsides. I just made that up, so don’t try Googling it.
In other words, I let the Joneses have the first crack at everything. I’d rather get a good night’s sleep than wait on line. I catch the latest hip thing when it goes on sale two un-hip weeks later.