iPhone Fans Really Need To Separate Blogs And Reality

Hey, iPhone fanatics: Lighten up. And stop taking what you read on-line so seriously.

Last Friday, I wrote a brilliant piece of satire titled, 10 Or More Reasons I Still Don't Want an iPhone.

Then on Monday, my colleague Damon Poeter wrote another satire which was almost as funny as mine entitled, 6.7 Billion Say 'No Thanks' To Apple's 3G IPhone.

Both were, we thought, obvious tongue-in-cheek looks at the crazy hype around the initial sales days for the iPhone. But what they turned up was actually quite disturbing hilarious and disturbing at the same time.

In both instances, Damon and I were flamed as being poor journalists who didn't know what we were writing about. The comments from some of the responders were even funnier than Damon's story. (But not funnier than mine. . . .)

While calling us ignorant, many of the responses showed a widespread ignorance themselves on what should not even be an issue: Just What Is A Blog.

Now I'll be the first to admit I don't read many blogs. Way too many bloggers write the kind of garbage that I wrote in my 10 Or More Reasons I Still Don't Want an iPhone blog. The difference? I wasn't even a bit serious about the topic. Yet so many people responded as if they were reading a serious news analysis.

Here are a few choice comments:

The third respondent (the first a reminder of the one technical error in my story, the second being my response) wrote a 266-word which started, "OMG, the ignorance, the lack of logical explanation, and the overall disparity of this user to write this blog gives me a feeling of sorrow as I realize there still are people out there who are so humbled by technology that they need to vomit through their keyboards like this."

The next writer called it an "utterly worthless article," and wondered why anyone would be interested in my "inane" thoughts. I sometimes wonder about that, too, but that's a different story for another day.

It got worse, which is to say, even more disturbing and funny because I was starting to realize that these people thought I was serious.

One guy read my "sorry excuse for an article" three times trying to see if I was serious or not, and then advised me to go back to junior college for journalism classes. Back? Never went. And if my story was so bad, why read it three times?

That same person then said his 10-year-old sister has more knowledge on the subject than I do. He may be right. But I wonder if his 10-year-old sister would know that it was satire. . . .

My teenage daughter, who I referred to in my blog as probably stealing any iPhone I got before I could learn to use it, then got on to defend me, telling the previous writer to get a life. Bless her heart. The next writer then started flaming her and said the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. When I look at my daughter, I say, Amen.

Then the mother of responses: an 869-word treatise about how wonderful the iPhone is, and about how as a reviewer (which I'm not) I should try one before criticizing it. At least that writer realized that there was a chance that I was joking (which I was), but that it was probably a bad joke (nah, it was really funny).

The next response was a 561-word flame on my daughter. Other serious responses questioning my journalistic skills continued until the last couple, when people were starting to realize that my blog was a joke. And a damn funny one, if I might say so myself.

Damon's almost-equally-funny article, written as if it were a news item, also caught a lot of readers off-guard. But as I was reading the responses, I started getting paranoid. Were these people for real? Or were the responses satire in themselves.

One person called it possibly the worst article ever, and wrote, "Obviously, the iPhone isn't available to all 6.7 Billion (actually over 6.8) people in the world. There isn't even a deal yet signed with China or Russia, both home to very large populations."

Another called him a moron, and said, "Next time you get paid to write an article by the competition try not to make it blatantly obvious to world."

However, to my credit and Damon's everlasting shame, respondents to his story seem to have figured out much faster that his was satire.

I really worry about many of the responses to these two satirical pieces. Many of them betray the fact that the writers were having trouble separating true iPhone news from phony stories, and were willing to take any drivel as serious attempts at journalism.

Could it be overload from reading too many iPhone stories? Or could it be that Apple or iPhone fanatics sense blood any time some says something bad about their gods?

These were BLOGs, for God's sake, people. There are a gazillion bloggers out there, and the vast majority write pretty much nothing worth looking at. And when blogs are written by people who do understand what they are saying, most of them are slanted to meet the writer's viewpoint.

A tiny part of the blogosphere is legitimate journalism, with "legitimate" meaning unbiased reporting, at least in my own definition. The job of the reader is to know the difference.

Yeah, I'll probably get flamed about this blog, too. About not understanding the iPhone (I admit it). Or about not understanding the iPhone/Apple fanatic mindset (oh, yeah, I'm first to admit it). Or about being anti-blog (yeah, for the most part). Or for my lack of journalistic skills (I'll ask you to read my non-blog stuff first before I respond).

That's OK. I have my record, and my daughter, and maybe even Damon (if he's still on speaking terms with me) to defend me.