PlayStation Lures Dumb Nation

I’m afraid the Federlines will have to wait their turn to be the subjects of my rantings. Tonight I am more irritated by other lines–the ones at Best Buy, Circuit City, and wherever else they sell PlayStation 3. And NOT, I assure you, because I was standing in one. What in the name of all that is sane are people thinking???

Where I live, it was chilly, windy, and rainy from midnight last night (this morning) right on through. I saw a guy on the news, wrapped in a tarp, in the middle of the night, in a line of hundreds at a local Best Buy store. He wasn’t a kid and didn’t appear to be buying for a kid, not that either of those things would lend any justification to this stupidity. And he was thrilled to death to be there, like he was waiting to meet Dale Jr. or something.

If I had taken economics at any time in my life, I would have failed. Economics and related subjects bore and confuse me. But even I can see this flagrant manipulation by manufacturers becoming worse every year. They create this frenzy by distributing only a certain number of a given item just to get the public to go to any length and pay top dollar to get it.

Is it backfiring this year with people standing in line to buy the PS3 for one price only to turn around and sell it on ebay for twice or more as much? I don’t know because, as I said, I’m no economics professor. Could one call me though, please, and let me know? I really want to see it blow up in their corporate faces!!

Is it a “no duh” for me to say that it seems the distributors of these sought after holiday items would make more money by simply selling as many as people will buy? Don’t worry, guys–the public will still be dumb enough to pay top dollar. What do you get out of having them stand in line for days, threatening to kill anyone who gets between them and the object of their obsession?

None of us like it when we are forced to pay outrageous gas prices. It boils our red, white, and blue blood when we coast up to the pumps only to find plastic bags over all of them because of the “shortage of the week.” So, what do we do? We voluntarily participate in the same type of hoax every year near the holidays.

I’m quite certain that most if not all of those freezing their Nintendos off standing in line this year have PlayStation 1 and 2. Let me ask you this: Were your lives magically transformed with those purchases? Will this one, like those, not go by the wayside or to the pawn shop when PS4 or 400 tiptoe off the assembly line?

We’re up to number 3 this year with Tickle Me Elmo too. How much more advanced than the first one could that possibly be? Does this one throw up instead of just laughing when tickled? What is it?

Whatever.

It’s your business but when I’m curled up in my house reading a used book, nice and toasty warm, while you are perpetuating “the dumbing of America,” don’t expect me to feel sorry if you are number 230 and there are only 229 PS3s at Best Buy.

PS–this used to mean post script–(At least drop that tarp off to a homeless person on your way home. You can get another one next year unless this stupidity creates a run on those too.)