This new tech gadget was recently released by a big-name company to much fanfare. Only it is doomed to failure!
Why? Because the device sucks. It's a flimsy over-hyped piece of junk with a really stupid name. The only thing holding it up is a ridiculously expensive carpet-bombing of sexist ads and the drooling tech boys that blindly buy it.
It's called the Motorola Droid. Surely you've heard of it, right?
Here's a sample of the sexist add copy surrounding the Droid:
"Droid. Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara-wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen? Or should it be fast? Racehorse duct-taped to a Scud missile fast. We say the latter. So we built the phone that does. Does rip through the Web like a circular saw through a ripe banana. Is it a precious porcelain figurine of a phone? In truth? No. It’s not a princess. It’s a robot. A phone that trades hair-do for can-do."It's a toss-up as to whether the sexism or the dork-as-macho hype [1] make me more nauseous.
Meanwhile, Apple has released the iPad. I agree with Lance Ulanoff that this thing is going to be a blue ocean if Apple plays it right: a female business school classmate of Snwodevil already switched to a Mac after getting belittled and bitterly cussed out by Dell support; iPhone apps are already advertised on the back of Bon Appetit; and my Mom already wants an iPad.
If Apple reaches that blue ocean, it will be much to the chagrin of the tech dudes, who bitterly resent the thought of women invading their digitally-privileged boys club [see #48: Privilege of Tech].
The same tech dudes that liked associating their Droids to the image of an ungulate being strapped to a decrepit old rocket favored by dictators, that tolerate their macho phone being left in the lurch by Verizon and left behind by Google, will suddenly become discriminating consumers when it will help them to (passive-aggressively) oppose a product that threatens their gender-based status as the gatekeepers of technology.
So expect lots of whining, armchair marketing, and "MaxiPad" jokes from these tech dudes for the foreseeable future.
*Sigh*
[1] The idea that it is macho for nerds to pretend that their phones are robots may sound insane, but there is a logic to their madness. Machismo is defined by domination. Thus, any action that men do, no matter how stupid, is macho so long as it excludes, denigrates, or oppresses women.
