Txt Msgs r a Skam
Scenario 1: I’m in southern California. My cousin is in northern Maine. I want to mail her a packet of poems I wrote in honor of Justin Timberlake. As of this week, it’ll cost me 41 cents. That’s 41 cents to go 3,500 miles.
Scenario 2: I’m in my living room. My brother is in the bathroom, painfully relieving his GI tract of tonight’s taco surprise. I want to text him a message making fun of his predicament. Depending on our relative data plans with our cell providers, it could cost up to 20 cents. 20 cents to send 6 words (”lol, u have teh explosive diarrhea”) of insignificant digital data over a gigantic digital network.
I could drive my 5,000 pound truck (editor’s note: holy crap!!) almost a twentieth of a mile on 20 cents, and Verizon/AT&T can’t push a bloody hundred or so bytes of data for less? I can send 53 stanzas of steamy JT love 3,500 miles for 41 cents, but it costs me half that to send 6 virtual words a few feet?
That, my friends, is what we in the Channukah music box industry call a “scam”. Or, what my friends in the Churro industry more appropriately call the ol’ “Irish McSwindle.”
