Nokia Beta Test Lumia Ad

The Nokia "Beta Test" miss the point entirely of originality. You can't sell originality on its own. Originality sells when it comes from being on the crest of the cool wave. So being one of a few people who had an iPhone three years ago was original and cool, but not just because iPhones were not widespread. It was because iPhones were cool, and they happened to not be widespread. Coolness is augmented by originality, not determined by originality. And by trying to sell the phone on its originality means that they don't really understand what makes something cool and so the phone is probably not cool.

To translate this into economics:

Pleasure from good consumption = f(coolness of good, originality of good)

Not:

Pleasure from good consumption = f(coolness of good) = f(originality of good)

Or:

Originality does not imply Coolness

Although often:

Coolness implies Originality

Junior High

I can't sleep--it's 5:51 and I've been tossing and turning since ~4:30. I awoke from a dream about Trevor Beatty, a junior high bulley that fit the stereotype to a "t". He was tall, chubby enough to appear bumbling, had a wide head with beady eyes, had a stupid laugh, and had an abusive sense of humor. In the dream I had punched him in the face, but then me and some friends had to outsmart him in some sort of weird mechanical, snake-arm twisting game. But throughout the dream, and what has become a common theme in my dreams and daydreams, I knew that punching him in the face wasn't enough to stop him from attacking me again. It is never enough for me to confront my aggressors. Even if I beat them all to bloody pulps, or let them go after having a knife to their necks or a gun to their heads, they will always come back with more henchman and with more resolve to hurt me. I don't think I've ever had a dream where I successfully deterred an attack, permanently. In a way, it's almost as if I'm operating from the mentality that {EEE{} condemns for being unrealistic in Ender's Game: I can't trust an adult or authority figure to protect me. In the real world, I operate pretty well under that assumption, but when it comes to the manias in my mind, I am utterly alone, and solely reliant on my own strength for defense. The scary thing is that I know without authority to protect me, I'm someone's bitch.

Now that I make the comparison, Junior High did feel a lot like prison. No, I never got anal-raped, and if I had I probably would have committed suicide. Fuck. I say that for my little brother's sake who was constantly ridiculed for being gay (he isn't) and for having his friend beat him up. But anyway, in Junior High I was trapped in this hostile place with no one to go to for help. And I was surrounded by these jerks who ruled over things.

Blah. I feel like I'm whining and spewing a bunch of crap that doesn't make sense. Okay, let's try again: I still think about Junior High; I still feel the same kind of terror and isolation; I still feel like I don't belong; I still feel I'm faking when I interact socially--I put on this confident face, "Oh yeah. I feel completely normal and confident talking with you," when I really feel like, "if I leveled with these people they'd see me for the spineless, idiotic, driveling douche bag that I am".

I never ate lunch with anyone throughout Junior High. Thinking this over as I lay in bed this morning, I have a hard time recollecting three years of lunches beyond, 1. eating at a corner table with some other boys (Robert, Brady, and Justin) and hardly talking to them and never sitting directly by them, 2. hanging out in the "blue" with Lance and some other kid whose name I can't remember, but I knew he was a bad kid because he had earrings I think. Thinking about it, I still feel trapped. I was stuck in a room with hundreds of kids, none of whom I thought wanted to eat lunch with me, and I was supposed to sit somewhere or I couldn't eat.

What's really frustrating about this is when I think about talking this out with my wife, I expect to get sympathy but in the form of "yeah that can be really stressful to be in a situation like that." Yeah, I know, and I appreciate that on some level you aren't grinding the shame back in my face, but I am still tormented by this after 15 years. My junior high experience defined my psyche, and I can't seem to redefine it. Even here in graduate school, passing my classes when I'm definitely not at the top of my game, I still feel like an impostor. I feel like I'm just faking like I've been faking since junior high and that eventually I will fail and I can stop faking.

God I'm depressing.

Built on Inconsistencies--City Creek Mall in Salt Lake City.

So the city creek mall has just opened up, and the Trib has a video of the First Presidency and some other black suits cutting a ribbon and shouting in unison, "Let's go shopping!". A lot of people are saying that it seems blatantly hypocritical that a Church based on the teachings of Jesus Christ is building shopping malls for high-end clothing and jewelery retailers. The Tree of Life vision from the Book of Mormon condemns the rich-and-proud in their spacious building. While all of us exmo's are reduced to repeating how dumbfounded we are that no one in the Church is making any connections, it seems to be the same dumfoundedness that accompanies consideration of any of the other inconsistencies in the Church. So, to no one's benefit, I enumerate some of the inconsistencies I see:

1. Ascetic teachings of Christ: Matt. 19:21; but then again, Christ did say spending money for his anointing was better than giving it to the poor, so maybe a mall is ok?

2. Book of Mormon on the fine apparel of the proud and great and the great and spacious building: Alma 4:6 ; 1 Ne. 8:33.

3. Brigham Young on the riches of the saints:

"The worst fear that I have about this people is that they will get rich in this country, forget God and His people, wax fat, and kick themselves out of the Church and go to hell. This people will stand mobbing, robbing, poverty, and all manner of persecution, and be true. But my greatest fear for them is that they cannot stand wealth; and yet they have to be tried with riches, for they will become the richest people on this earth" (Brigham Young, reported in James S. Brown, Life of a Pioneer [1900], 122-23).

4. Closed on Sundays: I don't really understand this at all. The mall is going to sell clothes you can't wear with garments, coffee, and alcohol (all things that would prevent you from going to the temple), but they won't operate on Sunday.

5. The use of tithing funds: Apostles do not hesitate to remind BYU students that they are benefiting from the widows mite:

Elder Holland said, “There is no money in the Church except what our members offer.” To students in particular, Elder Holland stated, “What you get, you get because of the contributions of people all over the world who will never get a temple or a university in their community.”

Maybe confusion is arising from the definition of tithing that the Brethren use. If you define tithing as money in the bank account of the LDS Church used for clearly not-for-profit operations, then how could they have used tithing to build the mall? Any money donated by members in Guatemala is relabeled as non-tithing as soon as it is used in a for-profit venture by definition!

Of course, very few LDS people think twice about any of this.