Gold Phones

Apple’s pushing the iPhone 5s in gold now, like that’s the move everyone’s been waiting for. And I look at it and genuinely wonder: what is wrong with wanting a gold phone?

I have an iPhone. Black. Works great. It’s last year’s model and I don’t care. But watching people actually want the gold version is its own kind of painful. It’s like watching someone buy a gold-painted car or order a gold debit card—you can’t look away from the bad taste.

The weird part is that it doesn’t look expensive. It looks cheap. Gold on a phone just screams I paid more for this which is, ironically, the cheapest possible reason to want something. It’s desperation playing dress-up as luxury.

I realize I’m being a snob about it. Some people probably like how it looks and good for them. But the appeal of gold as a status symbol only works if you’re announcing the money, and the second you have to announce it, the whole thing falls apart. That’s not luxury—that’s performing luxury.

My black phone doesn’t perform anything. It just is.