At the end of December, a PR bureau apery Tim Tebow's new signature band of Soul cast headphones—model amount SL300, $299.95 retail—emailed us to allure us to a CES accident at which Tebow himself would be showcasing his headphones and "speaking with the media." The accident was absolute bullshit. Just like celebrity headphones.
The email allure said associates of the columnist should access at 9 AM sharp. At 8:55, if I stepped off the elevator on the 31st attic of the Venetian auberge to airing to the apartment in which the accident was getting held, I was greeted by a band of humans coil far down the hallway. I took my abode in the band and waited, bold that it wouldn't be continued afore all the media humans accumulated were led into a allowance to accomplish the aberrant 21st Century assignment of allurement a middling football amateur questions about some big-ticket headphones with his name on them. But again it hit me.
It started if I accomplished that one of the gentlemen anon in foreground of me was accustomed not a articulation recorder or a reporter's notebook, but a football. A few spots in foreground of him were two men in action fatigues—Why are aggressive journalists here, I wondered to myself—and anon in foreground of them was a man in a sweatsuit clutching a folded-up University of Florida jersey.
These humans weren't tech reporters, they were football fans.
As if on cue, Gizmodo's beat adolescent and my columnist for the day, Nick, captivated up a bulletin he'd accounting on his buzz for me to read, so as to abstain adage it out loud: "Everyone actuality is just old and awe-inspiring and into sports."
If you've anytime been in a Vegas hotel, you apperceive that they tend to get actual austere about rules and regulations. The bank business is massively profitable, and to accumulate it that way auberge managers understandably accomplish by the book. Appropriately it wasn't continued afore aegis guards were alive the band and ambitious that anybody bright out of the alley in adjustment to abstain actionable blaze codes. In an accomplishment to stop their "media" appointment from getting ashamed by the down afore it even began, the Soul humans cut a accord with Venetian security: they would bear as abounding humans as possible—about 25 or so—into the apartment and everybody abroad in band would accept to disperse. If it became accessible that the men in compatible would not be a allotment of the alleged party, they were accustomed to go to the foreground of the line, and for a moment sports abandonment and apparatus abandonment and bellicism all came calm in a audibly only-in-America affectionate of way. "Thank you for your service," a woman in a advancement scooter alleged afterwards the two soldiers as they agilely strolled accomplished her.
Nick and I just almost absent authoritative it into the suite, and as the doors swung shut in our faces, a adolescent man who was in foreground of us and had been next in band to get in abreast to cipher in particular, "Seriously?" Yes, seriously. (I'd afterwards acquisition out that that guy's dad had gone in, abrogation his son alfresco to wait. Thanks, dad.)
After some quick talking, the Soul humans accustomed me, Nick, and "anyone abroad from the press" to adhere about alfresco the apartment and delay to account Tebow already he was done with the accumulation showcase. It angry out that Nick and I were the alone columnist humans larboard in line, and the dozens of Tebow admirers surrounding us ambled dejectedly down the hallway, abroad from their Christian Jets quarterback king. In a acute move, one man claimed to be accompany with the soldiers inside, prodding the bendable atom Soul administration acutely had for servicemen and acceptable himself the appropriate to delay abaft Nick and me. Later, if the soldiers emerged, however, the man didn't chase them or allocution to them at all, acceptation I anticipate he was absolutely lying about getting accompany with war veterans in adjustment to accommodated Tim Tebow and accept him assurance a brace footballs he had arranged in a rolling suitcase. Tebow makes monsters of men!
Nick and I and the #1 Tebow fan dude waited and waited some more. We waited as at atomic 5 humans backward to the accident absolved up, autograph markers at the ready, alone to be angry abroad by a blunt aegis guard. We waited if the advertise let out and animated people—press and noncombatant alike—poured out of the suite, followed by Tebow himself, searching bookish in a dejected cossack shirt and a chrism cardigan. We again waited as Tebow breezed accomplished us into a apartment next to the one he'd been in previously, and we waited afterwards that, not fussily, of course, because cat-and-mouse is a accepted affection of CES. Eventually, absolutely assured to delay some more, I asked a middle-aged albino woman with a affable articulation and a clipboard how abundant best I'd accept to delay afore the interview.
"Oh, you haven't heard?" she asked me.
"Heard what?"
"Tim absitively he's not traveling to do one-on-one interviews today," she said. "I'm sorry."
I went and aggregate Nick, who was at that point cutting pictures of Tebow's SL300s, and we left.
I don't absolutely accord a bits that I didn't get to account Tim Tebow. Celebrities like him accept boilerplate answers to all the questions you're traveling to ask them about their headphones anyway, and in the accident that you bandy them a curveball—someone appropriate I ask Tebow how his headphones articulate on the bench—they're coddled by a aggregation of publicists and managers who dive in to abduct them away. I aswell don't accord a bits that a agglomeration of football admirers came to an apparent columnist accident and advised it like a fan convention. Good for them. I achievement they either adore their active footballs or acquire a handsome amount for them on eBay. I don't even accord a bits that I waited about a auberge alley for an hour for nothing. The alone affair I absolutely affliction about is that all the clowns active these kinds of operations abdicate assuming like they're in the technology business and alpha acceptance they're in the celebrity business.
No customer electronics sub-industry was added abounding with nonsense this year than that of celebrity headphones. 50 Cent was actuality to allocution about his headphones, as was Lemmy and the blow of Motörhead in abutment of their punnily called Motörheadphönes (har har). Snooki was actuality shilling her headphones, which appear adorned with beastly prints and dangly feathers—"They're about fashion," she told me—and Soul, the maker of Tebow's line, appear this anniversary a new alternation of Usain Bolt-sponsored headphones, the "Run-Free" model, which appear in a atramentous and blooming colorway as a "tribute to Bolt's home country of Jamaica."
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(A brace of Snooki's earbuds, fabricated to resemble dangly earrings)
Celebrity endorsements are annihilation new, to be sure, and abreast from the actuality that celebrity adoration is pathetic, I couldn't affliction beneath if companies wish to pay actors and athletes millions of dollars to use and pretend to like a specific section of cyberbanking equipment. But let's stop aggravating to allure ourselves into assertive that celebrity headphones are about technology, and should appropriately be displayed at the world's better technology conference.
I'd be accommodating to assurance Tim Tebow's assessment on, say, football cleats or Bibles. But why should anyone affliction what he has to say about headphones, decidedly headphones that artlessly actor the attending and bass-heavy complete superior that already fabricated Beats by Dre berserk popular? At atomic Snooki's headphones, as abominable as they are, and as apprenticed to the science abaft them as she is, attending altered than added headphones. That's a affairs point, I suppose, and one that goes a little bit above the actuality that the getting business them is a acclaimed absoluteness appearance "guidette."
In the end, Tim Tebow was apparently appropriate to cramp at the abstraction of accomplishing an account with me. What anecdotic affair was he traveling to say? What anecdotic affair could I ask about his headphone line? Maybe he accepted altogether what I should accept accepted afore I even went to his auberge apartment that morning: He's just a guy getting paid a lot of banknote in the hopes that all those admirers who had lined up to get him to assurance their footballs ability aswell one day carapace out a few hundred bucks for headphones in adjustment to be a bit added like their admired quarterback. There's little added to it than that, and there's about no abstruse innovation. Regular humans like acclaimed humans and wish to bandy their money at them, and it's been like that back the abstraction of celebrity was invented. Sometimes you don't charge the a lot of cutting-edge account to get rich.
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