Yesterday developer Armin Heinrich posted an iPhone app to the App Store called I Am Rich. The program displays a red gem, has no function but to display your wealth to others through ownership, and costs $1000. It has since been removed from the App Store, although no one knows whether Apple or Heinrich pulled it.
Here is more.
…….and the status treadmill hums along.
http://i35.tinypic.com/vfeo5.png
Would anybody see the red gem? Or would they have to download the free Who Is Rich app first?
Fools! I bought a $13 million iPhone encrusted with genuine rubies and floating in a tank of formaldehyde, entitled Melancholia Which Transcends All Wit, from some guy named Damien.
The flip-side to this signaling topic of course is that the only people who really care what someone else uses/owns/drives/etc, are signaling their own acute awareness of such material matters.
Some people see a blackberry or a bluetooth earpiece and automatically assume poseur, but such an attitude holds certain negative implications in and of itself.
He should either up the price or change the name to I Am Moderately Well Off But Can Not Afford a True Status Symbol Like a Ferrari.
I’m pretty sure this is not about signaling. For it to be a signal doesn’t some segment of society have to accept that it is one. Couldn’t some relatively poor person put this on the credit card without actually being rich in any sense? I think this is more about the “developer” scoring a lot of money if some fool actually goes through with it. Here’s a possibly fake story on Gizmodo:
http://gizmodo.com/5034122/guy-buys-999-im-rich-app-discovers-hes-just-dumb
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