After Nokia bringing out its 6310 phone, will Apple bring out some good old iPods? This is what many young people barely born at the time of its release hope. They collect them today, aware of its revolutionary dimension, and especially vintage today.
Are people born before the 2000s already vintage? According to the young people of TikTok, we must believe so, as evidenced by this recent video becoming viral.
When TikTok hashtag #Vintage and #Antique iPods
We discover a teenage girl, @freckenbats , wondering about the operation of an iPod Shuffle, characterized by its rear part that works like a clip that can be easily hung on clothes to always have music within reach. tomorrow. With the caption written, " Does anyone know what this is ?!" ", The young woman then wonders aloud:" I came across this old iPod je-ne-sais-quoi hair clip. Then she clips it into her hair, asking her audience what she thinks of this vintage accessory in her eyes.
And as if her gesture wasn't enough, she tagged her TikTok with the keywords #Vintage, #Antique # VielÉlectronique, # Years2000core . So inevitably, this gave a shot of old to people born before the 2000s. They hastened to redistribute it massively, so that the TikTok published on December 17, 2021 has already exceeded 2.5 million views, and countless reactions and commented times.
That's why a Millennial (someone born between the early 1980s and late 1990s) was quick to react to the initial TikTok in dramatic fashion. In the written caption of the action, he thus indicates: * big millennial breaths *, before speaking out against the use of the hashtags #Vintage and #Antique. Even if all this is to be taken as a joke, it remains indicative of a trend as unexpected as it is obvious around iPods.
IPods, a new vintage accessory for the younger generations
In the same way as in fashion, today we may want to buy relics that marked our early youth without having the means or the authorization to afford them at the time (hello peach skin jogging , the butterfly top , the tube top , or even the No Name ankle boots and Buffalo sneakers ), some people have a similar approach when it comes to technology.
Thus, the media Dazed has just noticed a resurgence in popularity of the iPod among the twenties. Understand: yes, it's already vintage ! And if that surprises you, it's because you're not that young anymore (and neither am I) ...
The good old iPod is back in force, driven by the Y2K trend
Iconic Apple device , this digital music player in MP3 format was officially released on October 23, 2001. And it was a revolution for people who until then had to burden themselves with a Walkman to listen to tapes , then to a portable CD player or an often inefficient MP3 player.
Obviously, this flagship accessory from the 2000s which has just celebrated its 20th anniversary is now back in the spotlight, carried by the Y2K trend .
If anonymous people and personalities continue to use iPods, many young people are now adopting them first or second hand, notes the British fashion media Dazed .
The arguments of the iPod to seduce the youth of the 2020s
Several avenues can explain this approach.
First, the desire to cherish personally selected music, rather than the endless, potentially overwhelming offer of music streaming platforms that are becoming hegemonic.
It is also a way of being able to listen to music without having to be online for all that: enough to afford a feeling of disconnection , much less polluting than perpetual streaming. It also reminds us of the ridiculous lifespan of most smartphones today, compared to MP3 players of yesterday!
Unlike phones that are increasingly impossible to repair, iPods have the advantage of being difficult to break and even of being repairable by yourself or in a specialized store without costing an arm and a leg.
And I'm not even talking about the invaluable practicality of having wired headphones (so trendy, according to Vogue ...), simple, basic, which do not need to be recharged, and lend themselves so romantically to listening to music together.
Iconic, colorful, and endlessly derivative, the iPod is ready to be collected
In short, that's a lot of good reasons to indulge in the good old digital music players, especially as they lend themselves much more to the staging of the fact that we listen to music.
They are much more photogenic than a close-up of a smartphone crammed with notifications - especially since they come in several models, generations, and colors, which makes them particularly collectable .
A bit like others collect vinyl records , in the end: sometimes because they are music lovers, sometimes also because it looks nice in the decor and on Instagram ...
Another sign of the revolutionary character of the iPod: it is in reference to its name that we owe the creation of the term podcast by the tech journalist Ben Hammersley in the Guardian in 2004! Revolutionary, I tell you.
The Y2K trend or the time to sell old at a price of gold
In short, it is therefore a historic creation which has just celebrated its 20th anniversary, but has not aged a bit. However, at present, Apple still only markets the seventh generation iPod Touch .
But many fans are hoping that the apple brand will soon release an anniversary edition of the iconic Nano , Shuffle , Mini, and the original gray brick. A bit like Nokia which has just released its 6310 phone , sniffing the vein of nostalgia for the 2000s which allows it to (re) sell old at a high price .
Besides, if you have an old iPod in your working drawers that you don't use anymore, now is the time to easily sell it on second-hand sites. Just saying.
As the chemist Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier could have said about trend cycles, also in fashion: "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed" . And everything is resold on Vinted with the hashtag # Y2K?
photo credit: iconic ad of the original iPod © Apple.
