Since their debut in 2016, Airpods – wireless Bluetooth earbuds created by Apple – have grown to become a millennial status symbol that those obsessed with getting a pair, feel initiated and connected to the AirPods culture by affiliation and ownership.
When airpods hit the market, trading at USD 159 a pair, consumers were reluctant to throw money at the product as they perceived them as weird looking. Viral tweets and YouTube videos have largely contributed to an ongoing joke on the wealth of AirPod owners courtesy of its over-quoted market price, making the headphones increasingly popular.
AirPod owners are perceived to have money and unafraid to show off to the world fueling the common notion that those without these headphones are financially challenged.
A Toronto-based YouTube comedian Kurtis Conner captured this notion in meme he tweeted captioning “This is how it feels when you use airpods,” which received more than 4,000 retweets and over 26,000 likes.
this is how it feels when you use airpods pic.twitter.com/KHru5JZEdL
— kurtis conner (@kurtisconner) January 3, 2019
Being a member of the Airpod Owners Club gives one a sense of belonging to the wealthy and well-connected, necessitating meet ups for networking. A series of independently organized Facebook events for AirPods owners get lots of “interested” or “going” responses on from consumers all over who have zero intentions of making an appearance at the meetups.
Ideally, responding to these Facebook events is a way of declaring to the world that you belong to the Airpod Owners Club, publicly promoting the concept.
The very first, “AirPod Owners Meetup” which was slated for Boston in January 19 didn’t attract a real crowd, yet it got over 8,000 “interested” or “going” responses on Facebook. Another scheduled for New York’s Union Square could barely hit the set target of 500 people. Not sure if the meetup set to occur in Oslo Norway will pull the numbers.
Funny how uninterested parties respond to such events, just to belong to an elite group, but fail to show up during real meetups. Are the so-called Airpod Owners legit or they are a bunch of fanatics caught up in the Airpod culture as a status symbol?