AirPods Are a Tragedy
Being willing to ignore the weird appearance of AirPods makes a statement: if you’re okay with overlooking how strange-looking they are, then you must be somewhat proud to be wearing them. Commodities like AirPods are social products. AirPods display the social message of wealth because AirPods derive their value from the invisible, social chain of production that’s necessary to make them in the first place. Thus, AirPods strategically glue together an ecosystem of luxury products. They are only so “convenient” because, by eliminating the headphone jack, Apple made the iPhone less user-friendly. AirPods are disposable products that are also impossible to throw away. On a global scale, our economic system is predicated on a disregard for longevity, because it’s more profitable for companies to make products that die than it is to make products that last. They’re physical manifestations of a global economic system that allows some people to buy and easily lose $160 headphones, and leaves other people at risk of death to produce those products. If AirPods are anything, they’re future fossils of capitalism.