An interesting thing happened on Christmas Day this year: thousand upon thousands of hopeful children didn’t get an iPhone under the tree. While some were still happy to get anything at all, others gathered the shattered remains of their dreams, and cast the biting shards out to Twitter, saying things like “No Iphone. I hate my dad.“, “My parents are the worst mother Fucking parents in the world fuck you mom and dad for not getting me a Iphone. FUCK YOU. FML. #Iphone“, and “Didn’t get the iPhone for Christmas #pissed #nottalkingtomyparentsagain“. Similar tweets aired the unbridled fury of teens who got a black iPad instead of a white one.
While it’s sad to see kids stooping to such depths, I doubt it’s anything really new. What’s new is that people are casting the spotlights on these spoiled kids by retweeting and otherwise sharing these posts. Now, the public backlash to these individuals may be overkill for what was an off-hand comment, but in a lot of ways, I’m all for appropriate public shaming through social media. A great example of this phenomenon is Ocean Marketing, who recently made a series of poorly-worded e-mails with a customer and one of the biggest influencers in their industry. Once the misstep went viral, it put the marketing company out of business, and left a permanent dent in the product’s brand. Then there were the Vancouver riots earlier this year, where hockey fans were throwing a childish city-wide tantrum because their team lost. In an age where everybody has a camera thanks to their smartphones, social networking made identifying some of the unmasked rabble-rousers a breeze.
With any luck, the amount of negative attention these kids are getting will help them realize that they can’t get away with that kind of attitude in the real world. The worst-case scenario is that their parents cave, buy them the damned iPhone, teach them that they can get whatever they want, and those kids grow up to be self-entitled assholes.
Here’s a great great little song putting together just some of the spoiled tweets. Kids these days, eh?
[via @fart]