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Comment by snowwrestler | Hacker News Reader

Blaming Apple for the general human desire to demonstrate status to one another seems like a bit much, and IMO grants them a level of implied power over society that they haven’t earned.

I mean... is your theory that if Apple didn’t exist, people wouldn’t buy things to look cool?

> A lot of people are intelligent and strong enough to resist this brainwash, but a lot of others are not.

Speaking of signaling status... somehow comments like this are always posted by folks who sort themselves into the first category.

Maybe people buy things you don’t want to buy just because they like them, not because they’re too dumb to resist “brainwashing.”

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I'm sorry if I came off as a virtue signaler. No I'm not blaming Apple, and of course people would buy cool things to look cool even without them. What I'm saying is that Apple is especially good at applying pressure in right spots: as you said, the human desire for status and fear of being left behind. Some still haven't recognized it and I've seen countless people make poor financial decisions because of their blindness to what is moving them to buy. Maybe I should have used "aware" instead of "intelligent", since intelligent people can fall for it too. Of course I'm generalizing and as you said, people also buy Apple just because they like it and can afford it, I did that too. But too many times I've seen people really torn and staying there thinking to themselves for half an hour if they should buy it or not, because they know they shouldn't. If you just like a thing, but you know that buying it will have very bad financial consequences for you for the next 10-20 months, it's not difficult to resist. So the fact that all these people were buying anyways, makes me come to the conclusion that there were more powerful internal forces moving them, then just "liking Apple".

> Speaking of signaling status... somehow comments like this are always posted by folks who sort themselves into the first category.

I mean, I can't think of a person who'd be aware enough of it and be willing to state this as a member of the second category?

Which makes it hard to distinguish between a real phenomenon, and a rationalization that people employ to frame their consumer choices as superior to others'.

Baffling the more vulnerable customers with bullshit to sell them expensive things is hardly a phenomenon isolated to Apple or even to the United States. That's a proud cornerstone of Capitalism.

One could argue a whole lot of highly valued startups are built on the premise of selling conveniences to people with far too much money and not enough sense.

Agreed.

US = Apple = Capitalism

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