How do you know if someone has an iPhone? Because they tell you

Apple's iPhone 4 (Picture courtesty of Apple)

By Dan Morris

Is it me, or are the ‘older generation’ getting altogether, far too comfortable using 21st century gadgets.

Are you over the age of 40? Do you own an iPhone?

Can I ask why?

Without trying to sound like a moron, do you have any real reason to buy such a gadget?

I’m willing to put it out there, that before the iPhone, you didn’t even know who Apple were, or what they where about. Granny Smith is not the boss of Apple. So what persuaded you to part with such an excessive amount of money for something you'll almost certainly only get 25 per cent of the use out of.

Perhaps we just have to hold are hands up to the marketing prowess of Steve Jobs and his increasingly growing empire, or alternatively we can put it down to the sheer nature of consumerism, whereby even the complete technophobes among us now own one - without really knowing why.

There’s that saying; how do you know if someone has an iPhone? Well, because they tell you, and even the older generation of iPhone users are no stranger to this stereotype.  The thing is, every time I see them struggling to operate one, I feel compelled to ask: "WHY THE HELL DID YOU BUY SOMETHING YOU HAVE NO USE FOR?" - Of course I don't, but I sure as hell think it.

What's most annoying is the obvious reasons for having one; everybody has one. I don't begrudge people over 40 owning an iPhone but when they can't even download iTunes to make it work correctly, my patience runs thin. What's iTunes? Exactly.

Surely a Nokia 3310 would suffice, after all, these people don’t play mobile games, rarely send a text message, don’t Tweet and aren’t on Facebook. Oh wait, apparently they do all of the above.

The hahaha scale: Together we can defeat LOL

By Dan Morris

SAY someone tweets you, sends you a humorous text message or even writes an appealing status update, how do you respond? Please don’t tell me you write LOL.

It goes without saying that I am not the biggest fan of the phrase, in fact I despise it. Not only does it reminded me of the hours wasted, wallowing away on MSN messenger as an early teen but it’s clichéd, who actually means it when they use it?

Ok, so you are acknowledging that what you have read has humoured you in some way shape or form, but seriously are you laughing out loud – to yourself?

It’s overused and meaningless; I’ve witnessed people use it regarding the most serious of comments.

It lacks imagination and indicates a slender grasp on the English language.

Instead of writing LOL, I adopt what I like to call the hahaha scale.

Funny, sort of funny, not funny it has it covered: The hahaha scale

A scale which I will categorically predict you use, without even realising.

It’s a scale, albeit a trivial one, which is used to establish the necessary response to an interesting, entertaining, or downright hilarious instance – in fact it’s so versatile, it covers all eventualities.

The hahaha scale, concerns the necessary response to a particular occurrence, most will respond without even consulting the scale and hence its subconscious role within society.

It covers everything from a simple ha, to a full blown hahahahaha – each one has a meaning, you’ve just never given it the time of day.

There is without doubt a distinct difference between something that is actually funny, hahaha, and when you are just being sarcastic, ha.

For me LOL falls somewhere between, the actually funny marker and the mockingly funny, hahahahaha. It’s neither here nor there, no one quite knows what you mean and nor can they tell whether you’re being serious or not.

For these reasons alone it should never be used, despite the aforementioned.
Don’t get me wrong its cousins LMAO and ROTFL are far more nonsensical and none of which should be socially accepted – I defy anyone to actually, physically roll on the floor laughing, while continuing to type.

In a nutshell. Don’t use LOL, and next time you respond to a something with ha, check out the scale, I can assure you the comparisons will be uncanny.