“SENT FROM MY iPHONE?”  WHO GIVES A CRAP?

Dear friends, I don’t blame you.  We are all busy people, and no one really has the time to go into their wireless device and click on whatever the hell you click on to get rid of the e-mail signature line that ends up appearing at the bottom of every freaking message sent from one’s handheld.  Just the same, let me make one thing perfectly clear: I have sent you an e-mail, and you have sent me one back.  That’s great. I do not give a good steaming pile what kick-ass technological milestone of a gadget you sent it from.   

In fact, it took me a long time to decide to get a Mac as my home computer.  Why?  Well, on top of the fact that I had to live on Top Ramen for a year just to afford it, it was because I did not want to be lumped in with all the other arrogant, holier-than-thou prigs who use the ownership of a Mac to confer upon them a lofty stature akin to those people who got a Hybrid way before they needed to.  There is also an unspoken belief among Mac users that they have a patina of creativity about them that others do not have.  As if possessing a computer that comes with GarageBand is tantamount to a position on the trend-ometer somewhere between David Blaine and Moby. 

And now, since everyone who has an iPhone is one step away from having a hospital tray surgically implanted into their collarbone so they can have a handy surface on which to rest their beloved wonder device and thus never be without it, they are almost always using it instead of any other computer.  So every time I hear from them, I also hear that their carefully-considered reply was “sent from my iPhone.”  Not that I have any urgent need to delve into the source of other e-mails, which are nonetheless tagged with “Sent from my Blackberry Wireless Handheld” and the like whether or not I ask, but there is something about the ubiquitous, join-or-die ethos of Mac enthusiasts that cuts a little deeper.  Each day I live without an iPhone, I feel like Luke Skywalker dangling from a tower with one hand cut off, while Lord Vader (either Steve Jobs or Justin Long) tells me he’s my father, and that I’ve always belonged with him. 

Of course, as I said at the outset, such signature tags come standard on these products, and it is up to the user to take them off (if indeed they even can: although a quick Google of this subject does turn up several tips for doing just that).  And, most of us have more important things to do than to customize an outgoing message line we will never actually see.  However, when I’m feeling less generosity of spirit, I begin to think that everyone is leaving these things on there on purpose, and that we have all succumbed to letting our identity, self-worth and, indeed, our standing in the community be dictated by what corporate brand with which we choose to identify.  And if that’s the case, I hold out very little hope for our society ever moving beyond its inexorable slide into unabashed consumerism, everyone buying up thing after thing after thing while blithely ignoring the fact that, as a species, we are basically circling the drain.  Yes, it sure would sadden me to think human beings have hit such a cultural low point in their evolutionary history.

Luckily, I do not fall prey to such superficial benchmarks of acceptability.  It’s easy to be above it all when you’re wearing hemp underwear. 

James Napoli’s new book The North Pole Employee Handbook will be released by Cider Mill Press in the fall of 2008.  He is an author and humorist who has also written and directed the award winning dramatic shorts “The Priests” and “Nobody Gets Hurt.” 

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