So I just traded in my Samsung Galaxy S20 for a new iPhone and it’s crazy—and infuriating, I’d like to point out—how it feels like I’ve rejoined a lost community. Or said another way, it’s fucking awful how excluded you feel from your friends and family the instant you stop using an iPhone in America, even though statistically speaking, Android users far outnumber iPhone users. When you include the global south as you should and as you must, it’s not even close.
There are all these subtle and in-your-face ways that Apple and Samsung punish exogamy, literally squeezing out customers who enter into other product and discourse communities that’s absolutely intentional.
Suddenly, you can’t airdrop people sitting right next to you, you can’t FaceTime your fam, you have to do all your video chats on Messenger (or Line もし日本人なら), you can’t see people’s locations unless you can convince them to add each other on Google Maps, which was never going to happen, & the videos you send each other will all become distorted and microscopic cross-OS. There are all these subtle and in-your-face ways that Apple and Samsung punish exogamy, literally squeezing out customers who enter into other product and discourse communities that’s absolutely intentional. Because this is all by design.
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