“OOOOAAARRRGGGHHH!”. Having watched all 9 seasons of The Walking Dead, I am now accustomed to hearing the endless shouts and moans of zombies. It being my favorite show, I remember being so sucked into it that I would do anything in order to keep up with the constant action. Just last month, I remember coming home after my SAT being completely exhausted and hungry. Although my family already had lunch, my mom prepared food for me and laid it out on the table. After taking a seat, I took out my phone, opened Netflix, and reentered my post-apocalyptic world. I was completely oblivious to the fact that my mom was sitting across from me, wanting to have a conversation in another show called “real life”. I had made it clear that I wanted to spend …show more content…
In today’s world, companies take advantage of a concept known as “planned obsolescence” as well as marketing and advertising (as discussed earlier) to help achieve their goals. It is no shock that tech companies constantly push out new devices. Apple, Samsung, and Google all release new phones every year. However, these “brand new” phones often look the exact same as before, just with slightly stronger processors or better looking cameras. “Many of these updates are so incremental that the average human may have trouble seeing the improved processor speed, or wider color gamut” (Bonnington). Recently, Apple has admitted to intentionally slowing down older phones after long speculation, which was done so that its customers would upgrade to the latest device (Toh). Through heavy marketing as well societal norms, it has become normal to spend hundreds of dollars on a new device even though our current ones are fine or can be easily fixed. For example, the recent iPhone X has a starting price of $999, which is incredibly expensive compared to its counterparts (Bonnington). With constrained production as well as its new, iconic design, its price has become a “feature” of the phone itself and makes the device a status symbol more than anything else (Titcomb). In Fahrenheit 451, Mildred’s obsession with her parlors highlights consumerism. She asks Montag to buy her a new one, despite already having three. “It’s only two thousand dollars”, she pleads, despite that being one third of his annual salary (20). It has become normal in their society to spend thousands on these walls. She is so obsessed that she is willing to live without a few things in order to get her hands on something that is completely digital: “we’re already doing without a few things to pay for the third wall” said Montag, in response to Mildred’s request (21). Like expensive smartphones, she is asking