AirPods = Sinful?

"AirPods - Bounce - Apple." YouTube, Apple, 2019, https://youtu.be/yyNtm0LZiKc.

When looking at this Apple advertisement, a few key components jump out at the viewer. For one, the entire video is in black and white, even at the end when the product is titled, none of the text deviates from this B&W tone. Secondly, the man wearing AirPods in this video is able to interact with his environment in a way that all the other people - non AirPod wearers - cannot. Once the viewer has established these two persisting realities for the video, other peculiarities begin to pop out as well. When the camera cuts to a shot of a large group of people waiting at a bus stop, we then quickly see the man jump over this group of people, dancing absent-mindedly on the stop's roof. In another shot we see people walking across a cross-walk, but then our AirPod endowed man gallops across, displaying gross ignorance of those around him. Another part of the video that Apple includes is a moment where this man jumps across the roofs of multiple cars, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there are people within them. The last shot of the advertisement shows the man bouncing extremely high up; the camera then changes angles to view him from a bird's eye view, displaying the massive difference between his height and the people standing on the street below him. To finish the advertisement, it then cuts to the man sitting down on the roof of a tall building; here, there are no other people present, only birds accompany him.

Throughout the video it became obvious what Apple was trying to convey. This man, this AirPod customer, is inherently better than all those around him. We saw this relationship displayed many times throughout the video. Whether it be when he dances over those at the bus stop, jumps on people's cars, or when he runs across the cross walk, this man always seems to be having a more fun, easy going, and light hearted time. The direct symbolism showed when he jumps over the random pedestrians illustrates how AirPods have allowed for him to reach a higher status than they could ever hope to achieve. Even the way that the man interacts with the environment shoves his superiority into the viewers face. The man does not even succumb to the basic laws of physics. If he wants to defy gravity or bounce on concrete, then the AirPods seem to give him that capability. These effects are only magnified due to the B&W colors that are ever present. This color palette creates a sense of refinement and high class that parallels the tones being communicated by the man's interactions.

The final shot of the advertisement is an important one. When the man does his final bounce, and rises so high that he can rest on the roof a building, Apple is concluding in a resounding way. The camera angle they use to place him high above the street below once again reiterates to the viewer that the lowly pedestrians below cannot compete. The fact that once he gets to the roof, only birds are there with him, shows that he is able to reach extremes nobody else can.

When looking at all of these components as a whole, it becomes glaringly obvious how sinful AirPods really are. This man, and we can assume all other AirPod owners by extension, works as the perfect example of one of the 7 deadly sins: Pride. Enabled by these haughty status symbols, AirPod users everywhere act as if they are above those around them. Ads like this only perpetuate this delusion in AirPod owners' heads. Apple knows their audience, knows who buys the AirPods, and markets reactively. Upon the release of AirPods in late 2016, they quickly became synonymous with elitism and pretentiousness and Apple quickly bought onto this trend and began growing the connotation. After almost three years now, AirPods have become a luxury of the rich, and a pathway to high social status for the poor. The attitudes of those that own them, coupled with the marketing efforts by Apple, has created a positive feedback loop where those that own AirPods only grow further and further away from the normal plebeians of society. Competitors like Samsung, Bose, or Beats, simply don't have the means to compete. Apple has once again done what they do best: become the powerhouse of the industry where the only way for upward movement is by buying their product.