Apple watch colors and the need for collective guilt

This always happens because people are people.

MacRumors has a story today focusing on the selection of colors available for the cases on the new Apple Watch Series 7 (pre-orders start today): Some Customers Unhappy With Apple Watch Series 7 Color Options

A few observations:

  • It is somewhat odd that Apple dropped the two “standard” neutral tones of silver and space gray (their answer to black)
  • The new colors that are closest are Starlight, a sort of silver/gold mix, and Midnight, which looks black but on close inspection is actually a very dark blue. Neither of these really match the dropped tones.
  • In the grand scheme of things this is not a huge deal because “eh, close enough” and with enough negative feedback Apple might bring the other two tones back–possibly even before the Series 8 that will no doubt launch a year from now
  • The discussion on MacRumors has several people complaining about people complaining about the colors. I am now going to complain about the people complaining about the complainers below.

Here’s one quote from early in the discussion:

Meanwhile some hungry people in Brazil are searching for food on cities landfills.

Author of “You are bad and should feel bad”

Yes, good ol’ moral outrage. How dare you complain about something when hungry people in Brazil are searching landfills for food! Only when all of these people are well-fed will it be deemed okay to offer contrary opinions on mundane things in your life (especially if those opinions are shared on the internet). Wait. No, actually, it won’t be okay, because other people are starving around the world, too, not to mention all the other horrible things happening on this planet:

  • hunger (as mentioned)
  • poverty
  • political oppression and violence
  • war
  • global warming
  • let’s throw in cancer, too

So really, it will never be okay to complain about mundane things, because context doesn’t matter, everything is terrible and be happy with your Starlight Apple Watch, you ungrateful, spoiled consumer!

I mean, yes, it is genuinely bad that people are starving, but reading and posting to a discussion on MacRumors is already self-selecting to a very high degree, and doing so specifically to upbraid people for complaining about anything when there are Serious Issues out there basically makes you look like a self-important asshole who probably doesn’t provide more than lip service to the horrible things you use as examples of things actually worthy of complaint.

This kind of self-righteous stuff has always rankled me, and now I’ve ranted about it, so it shall never be discussed again.

(I’d go for the Midnight, it’s close to enough to black for me.)

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