I sit at a computer like 50 hours a week. So much in fact, that I haven’t had an actual computer at my house in almost a year and have managed not to miss it at all. Generally, I find that I can do anything I absolutely have to do while away from work on my trusty old blackberry and it’ll work out just fine. I love my blackberry. In fact, I’m on blackberry #5 at this point and even when faced with this most recent bb purchase and intense pressure to switch to an iPhone, I ultimately decided on my gorgeous little bold 9700 and have yet to regret it.
One of my favorite features is Blackberry Messenger or BBM as us cool kids call it. Until now, BBM has been like a secret club for Blackberry users. “Oh! You have a Blackberry! Why aren’t we BBM friends?! Give me your PIN/Let me scan your barcode!” This conversation has become so common it’s not shocking to look through your Blackberry contacts and realize that your BBM-slutty self has someone’s PIN and open conversations in BBM but you don’t even have their actual phone number. Freaking BBM sluts….
So just now I am on one of the music blogs I tend to frequent during the work week and I realize that their margins are filled with adds for Blackberry. These adds apparently entirely aim to sell the mobile devices through selling the cool kids on the idea of BBM. “Love What You Do On BBM” is the over-arching theme here and let me tell you, Blackberry, there have been many…many times where I wake up in the morning and absolutely do NOT love what I’ve done on BBM. My BBM conversations have at times been more awkward and/or embarrassing than some text conversations and with me, a drunk text champion (if the aim is to have ridiculous and incriminating conversations via drunk text then yes, I am a champion), that’s saying A LOT.
The sub-points of this campaign are even more ridiculous: “Hang With Friends. Without any Hesitation” Uhm… if these are my friends, why am I hesitating to hang out with them? Am I suddenly that weird kid everyone knew in high school who was somehow always around as a pity hang but no one ever really claimed me as their friend and I just finally became aware of this fact so now I’m hesitant? And couldn’t I just text or call or Tweet or Facebook (or 800 other things) my friends to hang out? BBM isn’t a new technology last time I checked.
The next sub-point is “Know when your message is sent, received and read”. Sweet, every stalker/Type A’s dream come true! Way to make us all sound like total creeper control freaks, Blackberry. Heaven forbid we just count on the idea that, if someone wants to get back to us and hang out, they will. This must be a godsend for controlling girlfriends everywhere. I can imagine the ridiculous fights now: “I know you read my BBM, it took you 26 minutes to respond?! What were you doing? Who were you with?” Yup… I have a few friends who probably have intimate knowledge of that circumstance actually….
The final sub-point Blackberry is trying to sell us with is “A place to be open and honest with your closest friends.” Well shit….. all those BBM sluts I mentioned above already ruined the “closet friends” part. And open and honest? I was unaware there was some sort of either A)creepy chat room quality like AOL chats rooms circa 1994 (A/S/L anyone?) where we all pretended the technology=honesty rather than creepy pervs sitting in their mom’s basements while hitting on other men by claiming they were 16/F/Los Angeles. and B)I hate to tell you, but I can lie to you over BBM just as easily as I can via text. And every good BBMer knows not to “Read” a message if they think there may be an issue with no immediate response. Finally, we have “On BBM, anything goes and no one knows.” This point feels almost like some sort of fun flirty “What Happens on BBM, Stays on BBM” sort of a tactic and we know how dirty those things always turn out when in reference to Vegas so why not here? I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Blackberry has had copy and paste capabilities since Day 1 so we’ve all been reading each others incriminating conversations for years. Take that BBM!
I Say Some Shit 
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