De-pression electronics buying advice

Sunday, March 1st, 2009 | Economics, Tech |

I was pointing Marko to this brilliant rant about bleeding-edge electronic gadgets from former Gizmodo editor Joel Johnson. When I re-read Johnson’s jeremiad I realized it had useful advice for these tough economic times:

Stop buying this crap. Just stop it. You don’t need it. Wait a year until the reviews come out and the other suckers too addicted to having the very latest and greatest buy it, put up a review, and have moved on to something else. Stop buying broken products and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn’t do what it is supposed to. Stop buying products that serve any other master than you. Use older stuff that works. Make it yourself. Only buy new stuff from companies that have proven themselves good servants of their customers in the past. Complaining online about this stuff helps, but really, just stop buying it.

You want to know the punchline? The average Joe that makes up the market is smarter than you saps. The market-at-large waits until a clear leader emerges, then takes a modest plunge. You may think you’re making up the “bleeding edge” of “gadget pimpatude” but you’re really just a loose confederation of marks the consumer electronics industry uses as free market research and easy money. “Give me the latest version,” you coo, hiking up your skirt another inch over your exposed wallet. “Point Oh One upgrades make me so hot.”

I remember reading one of those futurist authors years ago predicing the accelerating surge of electronics. One of his conclusions was that technology would bring a lot of expensive temptations.

Tags: This Here De-pression

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