So Apple finally released OSX 10.5 (a.k.a. Leopard this week). It has some neat little details but overall is rather underwhelming (and some ‘improvements’ are really annoying). Anyways, I’m not here to chat about Leopard but its release did remind me of another meme that needs to die — unboxing photos.
If you don’t travel in the same nerdy and geeky circles I do this may be all new to you. If you follow videogames or gadgets online you know what I’m talking about. There’s 8 billion blogs out there and another 61 trillion individuals posting on forums, Flickr and Facebook and they are all running out of ways to talk about the things they like. Things like the launch of videogame consoles and iPhones.
So what’s a person to do? The obvious answer — apparently — is to take a bunch of pictures of the unboxing process of said items of interest. Ooooo! An instruction book! Ahhhhhh! Miscellaneous wires and connectors! Wowie! Registration card! Holy moley! Is that the foam that keeps everything snug during shipping? Nice!
Then you need to take a bunch of photos of everything all artistically laid out across your deep cherry red dining room table. Then you need to blog about it or throw it up with the 8,000 unboxing photos on Flickr.
Argh! Die meme die!
3 Comments
This ranks right up there with the photo galleries entirely dedicated to tearing new hardware apart, as if most people looking at the pictures will divine anything from them.
Ohhhhh, chips! Oooo, wires! Ahhhhh, flash memory modules!
It really reached fever pitch with the iPhone. Apple products are nicely packaged, but gah. What a waste of bandwidth.
Speaking of which… “Will it blend” as a meme must die.
It would be fun if someone did a tally of all the shit they’ve put through the Will It Blend blender to see how much wealth has been shredded.
Not to be a complete hippie, but it always reminds me of the Simpsons bit about the food-wasting trend sweeping the nation, and a guy chucking a fully-roasted turkey straight into the trash. Will! It! Blend! strikes me as only slightly less wasteful.
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