Ask Lemmy

Kids are like that. Most adults don’t care.

Some people need to justify their choice to overspend on something...

.. is there ever any logic to what people think are status symbols?

Only poor people think a phone is a sign of wealth

That is how they market their products.

Some Iphone users behave as if they're in a cult. Worse, Apple treats customers without Iphones/Macs as inferior to their golden children even while selling services that don't require Apple hardware.

I subscribed to Apple TV+ and dealing with the company was infuriating. Every single support rep instructed me to do something to solve a problem using my Iphone or Mac. The last straw was when I wanted to add another profile to my account and was told the company has made it impossible without Apple hardware. The rep actually told me to find someone with an Iphone to help. I cancelled Apple TV+ instead.

One member of the Iphone cult I know was going on and on about a problem she was having receiving calls. When I mentioned a relatively minor problem with my phone her immediate response was "That's because you have Android." It was comical.

People shallow enough to believe they're superior because they own an Iphone aren't worth being around anyway.

I see my deGoogled Android device as a higher status symbol than any overpriced stock Apple device.

It's expensive

Nobody will actually mind if you brag about how you bought a new phone. Also if you are not a rich person you having an expensive phone means you did something smart to "cheat the system."

As an example I had an old coworker when I used to work at a warehouse and he would combo things like service provider sales to buy an iphone.

He did sound smart when explaining the roundabout way he got the phone despite making same money as us. And I don't mind what other people chose to spend money on.

What I do mind is college students thinking macbooks are some "programmers' laptops."

I had to constantly hand-hold group members that think they can get away with not learning how to code and using AI for all the homeworks because they bought a mac and that makes them a good programmer anyway.

"But I thought the program should automatically wait for the threads on this line since it's POSIX."

Yes I love troubleshooting professor's makefile for an OS I don't have because you never learned your own laptop has a symlink from gcc to clang.

I remember a friend of mine whining about how my text bubble was a different color and it "made it weird" to text because of that.

By then I was already super over the whole tribalistic iphone/android bs from people I know when it wasn't being meme'd on, so I just told her "you can either get over it, or we can stop talking and being friends"

Wouldn't you know it, the color of a text bubble isn't enough to end a friendship over.

Tribalism didn't end when civilization started. Anyone not in the tribe is lesser, because the alternative would mean your tribe is lesser.

More specific to an iPhone, if you have one, you can do all the social iPhone things like FaceTime. Don't have one? You can't FaceTime, so there is a social friction or impediment to socializing. Then there is the "othering" of the green bubble and blue bubble thing. You can't share photos or videos the same if you don't have an iPhone. Since we are in a digital age and less physically present, not being able to digitally socialize the same way also inhibits socialization.

All of this is by design. Apple intentionally creates an ecosystem that will excert social pressure on people to buy their products so they can be part of the group like their friends.

Because they paid a lot of money for them and they need to convince themselves that it was worth the cost.

Cheapest iPhone is $600, cheapest android phone can go as low as $20 (like those walmart prepaid phones locked to a carrier).

When the average person think of android, instead of thinking about a flagship samsung phone, they think of the lowest budget phone.

So in their mind, if you have android, you're automatically categorized as "poor"/"cheap", regardless how much it actually costs.

Cuz they're overpriced? More money = More "exclusive."

Wait people really give a shit? Never seen or heard about that

Source: I’m also a college student

Uh, I don’t. It’s just a phone I use. That’s it.

Teenagers and students are just that; teenagers and students. Very often they care about ‘status symbol’ but also sometimes they don’t care.

I would recommend to stop generalizing.

Because they're teens

They don't. You do.

If there was another decent mobile phone, the same size as the SE, I would seriously consider it.

Once something becomes statusy, is seems pretty rare that it ever stops. You can't outcompete Apple at being Apple, and to stay exclusive they can just keep prices up.

It genuinely was revolutionary when it came out. I guess they managed to leverage that into being a luxury brand, when no further world-breaking innovations were forthcoming. The only thing those really have to worry about is staying relevant, as opposed to going the way of fine china and monocles.

It’s not the phone, it’s your age bracket. You can say the same thing for other stuff like shoes/clothes, cars, etc. It’s peer/societal pressure, FOMO, and other factors that teenagers and young adults feel are important. People care less when they get older. My iphone is a utility device to me, and I’ll keep using it until it dies or security updates stop, instead of upgrading every year.