Is good the enemy of the best, or is more the enemy of enough?

 

Please bear with me as I share a very first-world problem.  But since you, my constant readers, almost certainly share in my first world, I hope for some understanding.

My dilemma has its roots in my starting a YouTube channel.  A couple of friends thought I had something to share with the world, so I eagerly agreed.  What I had to share were the insights I had gathered many years ago from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Alvin Toffler, and Marshall McLuhan.  Material for maybe five videos, which I more or less made and which quickly gathered me maybe eleven subscribers.  And then I fell into the black hole of unboxing.

I think I started with a video about unboxing the unboxing phenomenon.  And then I actually started unboxing stuff.  I dare not add up how much money I spent (look at it as stimulating the economy, stupid) buying stuff I didn't really need because it would make videos.  I even unboxed books, but of course it was the unboxing of electronics that, over maybe two years, brought me about 350 subscribers.  And a good YouTuber who follows tech has to keep up with all the developments on all the major platforms, right, so soon I had a pile of devices all nicely unboxed and videoed and stacked.

Now I have long been an Android kinda guy.  I guess maybe because I'm old, since it seems that teenagers only buy iPhones, but whatever, I thought I should try the most orthodox of Android experiences and buy a Pixel Phone.  But when I got to the store, I didn't like the way it felt.  What I did enjoy in my hand was a shiny new iPhone, which I bought in projectRed, fighting aids and my own prejudice against all things Apple in one convenient purchase.

So I explored the iPhone, and--more unboxings--all the wonders of the 'Apple ecosystem'.  I must confess I liked something about most of the devices except the MacBook.  It was a pretty little thing, but to someone accustomed to using a Chromebook, Mac OS just seemed a clutttered fuck.  I sold it.  But as time went by, I found myself feeling that the Apple devices were using me rather than my using them, and because all good YouTubers have at least two phones, I bought another Android phone, a nice and inexpensive LG Stylo 6.  Short story short, within a month I had sold all my Apple devices because I really preferred having electronics that work for me instead of my working for them.

And I have loved using the Stylo 6. It's a little slow opening the camera app, but no slower than the time it took to remove the lens cover on the Nikon I had when I was a 'real' photographer.  It has kinda big bezels, but they allow me to get a good grip on the phone without instigating something happening on the screen.  And the LG done gone and gone out of the smart phone business.  I haven't felt so orphaned since Saab got bought by GM.  

Enter the first-world problem of choices.  (One of which I confess remains ditching everything electronic and moving into a cave with one big book and maybe a small bear.)

Unfortunately, caves are relatively hard to find on-line and new electronic wonders are easy, so I was seduced by T-Mobile's offer of LG's ultimate phone, the Velvet, for half-price.  I pushed all the little buttons, and now it's on its way to my little tin can in the woods.  It was like offering an Edesel lover a 1961 Edsel for $1000.

But I am feeling like a traitor to my faithful Stylo 6, which is not nearly so flashy as the Velvet,  nor will it likely be supported for so long, but which has been my faithful friend in sickness and in health and which does everything I  ask it to do and it's paid for.

Which finally, constant reader, brings me to my point, if I have one.  Why is adequate not considered sufficient?  Or, to put it in McLuhan's terms of our devices as extensions of ourselves, why, when I am perfectly adequately extended by my Stylo, which is a bit slow and dated in appearance, but which more or less matches my sitz im leben, want to put on airs with a stylish and flashy Velvet? Or, to put it in Toffler's terms, am I just feeling too much future shock?

It is of course a small thing, this deciding whether to accept delivery of a  new phone or to keep the old wineskin.  But it is, I think, an example of the sorts of decisions that make living in the first world so stressful.  Do any of you constant readers know of a good cave, preferably with air-conditioning and high speed internet?  I have a nice big book.