It's less prominent if you were already 20-30 when the first iPhone came out. In slightly-affluent primary schools, owning an iPhone was your inroad to a cult of iMessage games and insular group chats. If you didn't beg mommy and daddy to fork over $600 and tax to Verizon then you didn't join the cool group chats.

It sounds petty, but not very abnormal for growing up in America.

Respectfully, you can't extrapolate a single experience to _every_ "slightly-affluent primary school". Even the most miniscule of cultural differences can and will lead to different outcomes such as "did you just judge me for a green bubble? what sort of asshole thinks that's worth judging someone over?" (group proceeds to make fun of the iPhone user)

> Even the most miniscule of cultural differences can and will lead to different outcomes

I certainly didn't say it was the only outcome. I switched schools three times in my youth, and each place I went had different kids but the same materialist obsessions. Some people did mock the Apple users, for what little it did to get them into the iMessage chats. Every school I went to had an 'iPhone in group' though, and if you didn't have the right phone you didn't get to chat, period.

My larger point, which you really don't need to extrapolate for, is that Apple knew they were making a FOMO-based service that would predate on kids and adults with maligned priorities. They understood the social clusterfuck that they engineered, and marketed the hell out of it; because it worked, bragging about iMessage does sell iPhones.

Fair enough. I went to public school and (I believe) more people do in general. In my particular public school it was frowned upon to brag about your privilege as many had less fortunate upbringings. Mind you, this was still in a (relatively) affluent area - so general amenities were okay but many people still didn't come from extravagant or even mild wealth.

Excessive privilege really fucks with people's worldview.