I swore I wasn’t going to write anything about Apple’s newly announced iPad, but I suppose it’s unavoidable. Instead of its benefits or flaws, however, what’s interested me the most about the gadget is the public reaction to its name.
It seems that back in 2007, MadTV wrote a spoof of Apple’s raging devicitude, in the form of a parodic advertisement for a product they called iPad—except their iPad was, well, a feminine hygiene product.
It’s a funny sketch, but after Apple’s announcement, it seems many people took the name seriously, and not in a good way.
And the vast majority of tweets referencing the iTampon are issued or retweeted by women. And adding Apple’s self-inflicted insult to that injury is the Apple iPad video itself, presented by three white male Apple senior level employees and including no women, and one very provocative segment where a man is using the iPad, where it’s placed between his legs and at his crouch, and the woman points to a feature on the iPad right near his crotch.
Some compared the purportedly poorly chosen name to the Nintendo Wii, which secured its own guffaws when announced in 2006. Despite the curious spelling, it still seemed to refer to urination or worse, a diminutive for the device that accomplishes such acts. The Wii’s unique, uh, pointer only reinforced such ideas. Still, eventually people stopped hearing the gag. The elderly bowled with it. The young swung their lightsabers.
With the iPad, some of the reaction turned from amusement to apparently earnest outrage. I saw several tweets link to this list of Apple executive profiles, arguing that a senior executive roster comprised of all white men clearly explained why the “inappropriateness” of the name “iPad” would have escaped the company’s notice. Some more measured responses claimed not to express affront themselves, but rather embarrassment at Apple’s “cluelessness.”
I’m going to avoid editorializing about the matter myself. Instead, I want to make an observation that I haven’t yet heard, but that should be obvious: the reaction to iPad shows that internet infantilism has gone mainstream. No longer are toilet and body part jokes relegated to the locker room or the slumber party or the IRC channel or the web forum. Or even the weekend variety show, which serves as a carnivalesque respite from the week. Now, apparently, we can feel free to unfurl it anywhere.
What to think about such a shift in the expectations for discourse? It’s hard to say yet. Some might argue that it’s a part of a larger shift in privacy expectations. Others might say that its an example of an increasingly banal depravity. As for me, I’m not sure. If I get any ideas, I’ll make sure I keep a notepad on the nightstand, so I can pad them out without having to pad across the floor, in the dark, to find my iPad.
Comments
Chris DeLeon
Excellent connection to Nintendo Wii, and one that I hadn’t heard yet. The fervor is immediately comparable. And, sure enough, the jokes and concerns from before its release are the last thing on my mind now when people discuss the platform, and by any indication it doesn’t seem to have affected anyone’s perception of the platform.
Is it fair though, to accuse the internet of being the source of this infantilism? The article even acknowledges that equally at roots of the joke is TV infantilism. While the internet has given a loud voice to the infantile – whether through social networks, (micro-)blogs, or YouTube’s notorious comments – my impression is that such things have long been said by the majority of people everywhere, just that these were once said only in backyard barbecues and downtime between meetings. The occasional racist or sexist slip from older white male journalists and senators reminds us that vulgarity didn’t begin with online computing.
That overstated, faulty, group think and biased ramblings which have long been said are now brought to the surface may even do us the favor: this increases odds that someone able to articulate the value of calmer response has no choice but to face its prevalence. This, in an opportunity unique to the internet as a channel, may lead occasionally to articulately pushing back on such childishness. Often, this chance to respond comes through these same public forums, ensuring many of the same eyes and ears of the offending peanut gallery – instead of such corrective contemplation being similarly limited to tighter social or professional circles (intellectual, in this case).
While no doubt the medium has had a non-trivial effect on discourse, branding the vulgarity here ‘internet infantilism’ doesn’t seem any more fair to me than blaming the printing press for some of the lower quality opinions and tones that may have been spread by its use.
Ernest Adams
Where the hell is the damned slash on a Swedish keyboard?! OK, found it. Anyway: what I want to know is, can you get it with wings? Banal depravity FTW!
Hunter
I don’t understand; how are you correlating a bunch of internet posts to “this has gone beyond the internet”? I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion until I saw iPad jokes on the nightly news, or in the newspaper.
Also, in light of your “battle with Chumby”, I expected your response to the iPad to be much more about its DRM and decision to run the iPhone OS over OSX than about people thinking it’s name is funny.
Liz Losh
Agreed. Here is my take on the iPad rhetoric, with a little gender and a little tool-being thrown in: http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/2010/01/coach-potatoes.html
Ian Bogost
@Chris, Hunter
My point is precisely that the basement morés of internet subculture have expanded all throughout it, including to professional online conversation and the formerly respectable news coverage.
@Ernest
I guess I asked for that one.
@Hunter
On that topic, this piece is worth reading: http://al3x.net/2010/01/28/ipad.html
@Liz
Thanks for the link. I’ll admit that I didn’t even watch the keynote this time. I wonder if part of the reaction I’m discussing here has something to do with the way different people attend to Apple’s products and announcements. Despite the unavoidability of these product announcements (even the evening news considers them worthy), for most people these iThings are just products, not saviors.