Pacco di Natale

Fake Steve Jobs dice che il Real Steve Jobs sta provando a fargli chiudere il blog. Negli ultimi giorni Apple si sta mettendo in pessima luce agli occhi della blogsfera americana; dopo aver fatto (di fatto) chiudere Think Secret, non sarebbe questa la prima volta che One Infinite Loop scaglia i propri avvocanti contro i blogger. Al netto del fatto che questa cosa la dice lunga sulla rilevanza dei maledetti "diari online" d'oltre oceano nelle vicende del Paese, e sottolineandovi che la saga FSJ vs RSJ è un po' che va avanti e merita d'essere letta tutta e che -infine- FSJ è un pazzo scriteriato che non sai mai quando è serio e quando no (e questa volta secondo me e molti altri non lo è), ebbene Daniel Lyons (l'autore che sta dietro al tutto) in conclusione all'ultimo post di oggi scrive una cosa che poco ha a che vedere con lo scherzo in sé (al di là del climax di un'ilarità grandiosa). Per la prima volta qualcuno, nel pieno di una parodia, mette due puntini sulle i, giusto per non sembrare - o non per sempre - quelli che credono alle cose tipo Fatima e Lurdes e alle aziende buone come il pane come ti coccolano sinché poi non ti addormenti, e mo' basta:

«He sits there. He says, I can go to four hundred thousand.

I go, Look, even if you're not a nice guy, even if you have nothing but a little tiny black piece of coal for a heart, can't you see why it's a lousy idea for Apple to pay reporters to go dark? Do you not realize how Putin-esque this is? And okay, sure, in Russia they're a bit less sophisticated and they just kill the reporters they don't like, so maybe you get points for being more civilized but do you really not get why this is a bad idea for you? Really? Because even if there are people who are willing to take the money and shut down, even if Nick Ciarelli really did want to shut down his blog, do you not realize how incredibly awful it looks for you to attach the payment of money to the shutdown of a blog? Do you realize what a terrifying precedent this sets?

Think about your brand. What does Apple stand for? It's about freedom. It's about independence. It's about people who think different. The crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. Maybe I'm an idiot but I actually believed that stuff. I guess I'm naive. I really wanted to believe that you meant that stuff, and maybe by wanting to believe in that I allowed myself to get duped.

But you guys put Martin Luther King Jr. in your ads. And John Lennon. You had Gandhi in your ads. Gandhi, dude. Think about that. Think about what Gandhi did in his life, what he stood for, the price he paid for freedom of expression. You drag out a symbol like that, it's a pretty loaded reference, isn't it? It's a pretty powerful metaphor. I mean Gandhi is not just some celebrity dipshit singer like John Mayer. He's not some guy you'd trot out just to flog a product. You drop the G-bomb and you're trying to say something about the kind of company you aspire to be. But now you're paying off reporters to stop writing about you? What the fuck has happened to you guys?

He says, I'm authorized to go as high as five hundred thousand dollars, but that's it.

I'm like, Dude, are you not even listening? No, dude! The answer is no! For your sake as well as mine, no! Please, for the love of all things holy, go back to Cupertino and tell them to stop doing this! I'm begging you. It's important. Tell them this: Siooma. Siooma, siooma, siooma.»