An image of the Mona Lisa, with her enigmatic smile and wireless earbuds photoshopped onto her ears, is a meme for the millennial generation. It is one of hundreds of memes about AirPods, the $159 earbuds you buy to show off to your friends.
A regular pair of earphones can cost as little as $10, and an off-brand wireless earbud set can be less than $40. But Apple’s AirPods, white bumblebees you put in your ears before sneezing on a $100 bill, cost enough to garner envy and viral jokes.
The product has been on the market for more than two years, so why is it just now becoming a viral sensation? Perhaps millennials finally stopped buying so much avocado toast that they had the money to afford them. We’ve reached a new horizon of conspicuous consumption, where designer labels and traditional brands mean less than the technology we flaunt on our bodies.
While more of our status symbols are becoming virtual — how many Instagram or Twitter followers we have, whether we have that blue check mark — it makes sense that we’d want some of that digital prestige to be visible on our persons in real life.
Take smartwatches, for example. The devices allow us to stay virtually connected with a flick of the wrist. Remember in your youth, when you used to have to pick up an actual phone to read a text? Ah, the good, old days.
With AirPods, you can listen to music, make phone calls, and get directions to wherever you’d like to go. They’re smooth and slick, less fumbly and imperfect than the tangled wad of headphones you used to keep in your pocket. They make you both busy and, since they impose upon your eardrums, unavailable — the ultimate sign of superiority.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with smartwatches or cordless headphones, except perhaps for the price tag. But the AirPod meme can teach us something. While the supreme status symbol used to be a Gucci belt or a Rolex watch, millennials don’t have to blow $1,000 to prove they’ve arrived. All they need is $159, and maybe a phone call to make them appear plugged in.
