Early on this year I finally got a Blackberry. It was a very exciting moment for me. All that functionality at my fingertips. I was excited. Unfortunately, not long after getting my Blackberry Bold (9000) things started to happen. Strange things. Bad things.
At first it was just a strange pressure in that spot right above the nose, between the eyebrows. Then, there came the burning feeling. A few seconds checking email and I felt like I had spent the day laying out in the sun. My face even started turning red.
Everybody thought I was making things up. I wasn't. The phone has a couple of neat little features. You can set it to turn off and on at a specific time and as soon as it would turn on I would know because I would feel it. I started turning it off unless I needed to make a call and then I discovered that if somebody sends you a meeting request and the reminder for the meeting comes on, the phone turns itself on. I found out because all of a sudden I felt it be on despite having turned it off.
So, anyway, busy life and too much to do and I went over the 30 day return period. So, after six weeks it turned into dealing with arrogant people telling me they'd never heard of these problems and I was out of luck.
Now, it is end of April and it's been four months. Suddenly the tone has changed. They aren't acting like they haven't heard of anything like it. Sounds to me like I'm not as crazy as they thought. A quick web search and at the risk of being accused of self-diagnosis, sounds like I have Electrosensitivity. Now there is a word that even the spell checker has a problem with.
Long and short of it is that even though an increasingly large number of people are suffering from it, it is not recognized as legit and attracts a huge amount of criticism. There is no shortage of cyberhate. Just check out these links for some samples of propaganda of those intimidated by the thought of somebody having a problem with the opium of the 21st Century.
http://www.radiationresearch.org/conference/downloads/011555_rubin_extra.pdf
http://depletedcranium.com/the-blog-of-an-electrosensitive-no-this-is-not-a-joke/
So finally hubby decided he'd humor me and lo and behold the conversation has changed. They were much more willing to talk. It seems people are starting to take this a bit more seriously.
Still, it is a bit frightening. These days we are surrounded by smart phones and when somebody near me is using them I feel its effects. I find myself sitting in my car at a stop light and not watching the insides of other people's cars and then suddenly feeling it. I look and see the person in the car beside me on their Blackberry or iPhone.
Well today there are people who are convinced that it is all in my head but keep in mind that this is exactly how women are treated in medicine anyway. A guy comes and complains about something and he gets taken seriously. A woman is accused of being female.
Now I'm just venting.
Anyway, they agreed to take back the phone and exchange it for something less "smart" but here comes in a common frustration when it comes to mobile device sales: The deployment of Confusion Marketing. I think they go through a special tactical course on how to confuse the consumer.
I have a very hard time believing that the average person can easily navigate the waters of the mobile sales lingo. That industry has basically invented an entire new language, spiced and peppered with acronyms and TLAs. The employees are hired based on their ability to slur all their words and do it as quickly as possible, followed by looking at you like you should be ashamed if you aren't following the most basic of things.
The truth is that very few of them understand the technology and even fewer can explain it properly. This is especially frightening considering the amount of power going through these little things. They keeping getting smaller and able to do more.
You can't just walk in, get straightforward, accurate answers and walk out feeling like you understand what just happened. What you can do is go in and sort of kind of feel like you can justify agreeing to pay too much money for more than you'll ever use, that has a very questionable ability not to cause long term harm to your health.
Cell phones are scary. Bottom line. The only thing scarier than the actual devices are the people who sell them because there is nothing more frightening than arrogant ignorance.
