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Duration:04:07
Uploaded:2010-04-08
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Good morning, it's April 8th, the 8th day of April, in which I am doing vlog every day in April. Totally runnin' out of topics, so please leave them in the comments.

I just watched the Blendtec iPad video. Blendtec, the company that blends stuff and then people watch it on the internet.

I don't know, I guess it's an advertising thing. They're actually a blender company and you can buy their blenders if you're really impressed by the fact that they can blend expensive electronic devices.

So these are advertisements, they are people advertising their product. In a way it is entertaining, in the way that some people enjoy watching. I, I enjoy watching it, let's be honest.

But 2 things struck me as kind of amazing about this Blendtec video.

Number 1: the dude, to get the iPad into the blender, had to break the iPad in half and like fold it. I'm subdividing. Thing A that amazed me about the first thing that amazed me is that it can fold and it didn't break, it like folded. Electronics are very strange now. I just expect things to snap in half, but that is not what happened.

Second, you can watch as he's doing it (I'll link to the video in my pants) that he's breaking it, breaking it and he's hit it like a hundred times trying to break it in half, and the screen is still displaying the stuff that the operating system is feeding to it. Its still working.

I'm sure the touch screen doesn't work anymore and I'm sure that the battery is not going to work for much longer, but at that moment it's cracked, it's bent, it is like it is at a degree angle, and it's still operating. That's fascinating to me. That thing is well constructed.

The other thing that amazed me about this is I was reading the comments. I'm a comment reader, even on videos that are not mine. I like to read comments and see what people think.

And like every third comment, there was something that was like "what a waste of money" or "what a travesty to destroy this device. I wish i could get one of these but you just blended yours. "why didnt you give it away why didnt you do..." and that- just- what? really?

And there's a funny thing here, cause I can see where they're coming from. Like you just took this thing that is brand new and everybody wants it, not everybody but like 450,000 people bought one of these, so they care and people want them and its kind of a beautiful device and its a wonderful thing, and they took it and they destroyed it, and people are getting upset about this. They feel like there is something special about this thing and that you should not destroy it.

The idea that its a waste of money is absolutely ridiculous. Some people were saying "why didn't you give that 500 dollars to support malaria research?" It's marketing, why didn't apple give the 4 billion dollars that they spent marketing the ipad to malaria research? Because blendtec want people to watch their videos so they can sell blenders. Thats why people spend marketing dollars marketing things. To sell stuff.

I think there's something deeper and more interesting to those comments than the commenters are realizing. They feel like there is something sacred about this ipad. It has instrinsic value, and they don't want to see it destroyed, especially the day after it comes out, when it has its kind of maximum intrinsic value because once everyone has them for a few years, let's be honest, you'll be able to get them on ebay for $100, and then three years after that we're lucky if theyre being recycled and refurbished instead of just sent to the landfill.

The way that we care about things, I dont think it's a cultural thing even. I think the way we care about things, no matter what society you live in. Things have value, and their value changes, and I remember watching an iphone get blended and feeling this like oh my god they're blending an iphone. And now, blending an iphone be like eh, y'know as long as it's not a 3gs.

I guess my point is that the value of these things, while extremely fleeting, is significant, especially at the moment of release.  Cause Steve Jobs, his job is to create something that we want and we dont know why we want it. He wants to make us feel like there's an empty space in us that can be filled up by an ipad. And when the hype happens, if you're paying attention, its hard not to feel that at least just a little bit.