If we can draw a lesson from Yegor Sak's adventure, it's never to underestimate the public's desire to watch an iPod be destroyed.
We know this, because Sak, a 19-year-old Toronto concierge who goes by "Yegor Simpson" on-line, is the force behind SmashMyiPod.com, a website that's gained global attention for its violent premise. Sak made web surfers an offer: If they could raise $400 toward the purchase of a new iPod, he would videotape it being smashed to pieces right in the showroom.
After an overwhelming response, that's exactly what happened.
Sak says he hatched the idea partly as revenge for being sold a defective iPod two years ago, but mostly as "a shout-out against consumerism." Whatever his motives, his plan certainly hit a nerve on the Internet. Nine short days after launching his appeal, he had surpassed his target, with funds coming in from 63 donors, each contributing between $3 and $30.
So it was that, on Oct. 21, Sak and three accomplices headed for the Apple Store at Toronto's tony Yorkdale shopping mall, where they began filming their video. The iPod-smashing is preceded by a protracted iPod-buying; the clerk tries to sell the filmmakers an extended warranty, which they knowingly decline. He then admonishes that the iPod's health "depends on the care you take of it."
Five minutes later, in the corner of the store, we see the iPod being taken care of with a boot heel. After the crew is ejected by Apple staff, the dirty deed is finished outside with a rubber mallet; the poor iPod flies apart, parts scattered across the pavement.
The video is perhaps not a masterpiece, full of ponderous stretches and clumsy giggling. But by the time it was released, a huge buzz about the project had built up, stretching from some of the Internet's best-read weblogs to the on-line digest of Business Week. In the weeks that followed, Sak says it's been downloaded over 250,000 times. Commentary from fans and foes flooded in; Sak says it's been a 50/50 split between the two.
(Sak, meanwhile, has moved on to other projects, including "Smash My XBox" -- which has already raised $270 from readers.) The huge interest in Smash My iPod is about more than the gadget's popularity; it reflects a growing frustration that the iPod cult has become slavish and ubiquitous.
A scattering of protest sites have popped up, including the vehement anti-ipod.co.uk, a site by a British teen, and I Hate Your iPod (ihateyouripod.com), a weblog that rails against the sycophancy of pod culture -- the Halloween revellers dressed as iPods, the custom lanyards that will turn the tiny white iPod Shuffle into a crucifix pendant.
Their anger is only fuelled by evangelical users -- and a fawning media -- who seem convinced that iPod ownership is a fact of life. And the numbers are increasingly behind them: a national study by the Media Awareness Network says that a full 41 per cent of Canadian students between Grades 4 and 11 have their own digital music players, a market which Apple dominates.
Small wonder, then that wickedly satirical ads for the "Apple iProduct" have emerged on-line ("Get ready for iProduct. You'll be blown away. No matter what it is."). To a certain extent, the iPod craze has begun to satirize itself, with deadly-earnest accessories from the likes of iPod My Baby (outfits that turn babies into misshapen iPods) and H2O Audio (cases that let you take your iPod underwater, of all places).
Earlier this year, a New Yorker named Andy Rementer put up posters in Manhattan, showing a crudely-drawn iPod, with the words "You don't need me" written on its screen. Photos of the posters became popular on-line; like Sak's video, they quickly stirred up a debate.
"I was frustrated by the way iPods were forced upon us," says Rementer, adding that protest is tough in an iPod world. "Most people were complaining about the fact that I drew the wrong number of buttons on the iPod."
But for all the rumblings of discontent, the scattered anti-iPod movement hasn't rallied around a champion, until now -- which brings us back to Sak's video. When Apple first launched the Macintosh -- its original cult product -- it produced a famous 1984 SuperBowl commercial that depicted a young woman throwing a sledgehammer through a giant screen, on which a Big Brother-like face is speaking; the screen explodes, the Orwellian drones are liberated, and Apple's message to the IBM monoculture of the day came through loud and clear.
We're a long way from 1984. But Yegor Sak's rubber mallet, watched by the world, should be familiar enough to make Apple squirm, just a little.