Dear AirPods,

I cannot stand you any longer, and something needs to be done. Ever since your release in 2018, I knew that we were going to have some problems. Let’s start from the beginning.

Initially, when Apple Inc. unveiled you to the public in September 2016, I thought there was nothing to worry about. The public, for the most part, broke you down like the useless piece of technology you are. I mean, nobody in their right mind would spend $159 of their hard earned (or inherited) money on some wireless music listeners. In all honesty, I thought you and I were going to be just fine until the social media memes began to pile up.

It all started when I was browsing through my Snapchat discover stories, and I came across some rather disturbing footage of these children, not far from my own age, cutting the wires off their Apple earbuds. Keep in mind these earbuds were functioning perfectly fine, and you acquire a pair of them (for free!) with the purchase of any iPhone. Yet, these kids, especially on an account called “AirPods Everywhere,” decided to demonstrate their comedic genius by pretending to make their very own pair of you. Memes became so dry and over done that all I saw were videos captioned, “It smell like broke in here.”

There are no words to describe how disappointing it is to see this type of behavior from my own high school peers — the way teenagers boost their own financial status over some headphones is mind-numbing. If I had a nickel for every individual I saw pretending they couldn’t hear someone because they had AirPods lodged in their earlobes, I could make more money than Apple did off these idiotic status symbols.

People have the nerve to belittle high schoolers who are smart with their money and perfectly happy with a standard pair of wired earbuds. These kids don’t badger their parents to go out and buy you to fit in with the latest trend. Yet, you made them feel inadequate, as if the standard protocol for this generation to evaluate someone’s net worth is to examine how expensive their listening devices are. You have created an invisible caste system, a hierarchy, and everyone who doesn’t own a pair of you might as well be worthless.

I am not even going to mention the fact that outside of having no wires, there’s nothing that makes you special in comparison to your wired counterpart. Between the two, there is no difference in sound quality. I would expect for a price tag that hefty, it should offer something that the older version did not. Although, for some reason, the one thing that makes you unique, also makes you so easy to lose and never find again.

It’s almost as if Apple wanted you to be wireless just so you could get lost in the deep, dark depths of one’s couch cushions long enough that they find themselves buying a brand new pair, and wasting another 159 in the process, only to find you sitting on top of their night stand where they meant to leave you the night before. This has to stop!

In the words of the great of the great Joe Pesci, “I’m done with this guy.”

Worst Regards,

Kamyar Moradi