Another Foxconn jumper, and you know who’s the real victim? Me


Because think about it. Why are these fuckers jumping out of buildings? What are they hoping to accomplish? Simple. They want to embarrass Apple — meaning, me — and make us — meaning, me — look bad. Truth is, this is all about me, and it has been from the start.

Well, excuse me, you ungrateful bastards, but what have I done that’s so awful? Other than giving you a great job where you build tremendous stamina and leg strength, with regularly scheduled bathroom breaks, a clean dorm to live in, two hot meals a day and $130 a month? That’s a pretty damn good deal. And this is how you repay me? By throwing yourselves off fucking buildings so that the sleazeballs in the media will jump all over it and blame it all on me?

Well, today Gizmodo has yet another report and this one even includes photos of the dead guy on the ground. Nice work, you sensationalist tabloid pricks. Nine suicides in five months and you want to make this out to be some kind of trend. Yeah. As if.

I’m especially appalled by the photos of the dead guy. You really think people need to see stuff like this? No, they do not. In fact this is exactly why we created iPad — because on the iPad eventually we’ll be able to block this kind of snuff porn. Right now we still have to deal with a general purpose browser. But down the road we’ll remove some functionality and add some content controls. We’ll call it Safari Plus, and tell you how magical it is, and people will line up to get it.

As for the jumpers, for those of you who are interested, I recommend taking a look at a document called Suicide Facts which attempts to explain why people do stuff like this. It even includes a section on suicide epidemics. Not saying that we have a suicide epidemic on our hands in China, because we certainly do not. In fact I’m not even saying that these people committed suicide, because that hasn’t been established.

The big point is that this phenomenon is nothing new, as explained in this bullet point about why groups of people commit suicide:

(4) Escape from an unbearable situation. This may be persecution, a terminal illness, or chronic misery. There is no lack of historical examples: Epidemics of suicide were frequent among Jews in medieval Europe; (sometimes they were given a choice between converting to Christianity and death). Later, both Indian and black slaves in the New World committed mass suicide to escape brutal treatment. One slave owner supposedly stopped such desertion among his slaves by threatening to kill himself and follow them into the next world, and impose worse repression there.

Not saying that our workers in China are slaves, or that they feel as if they are slaves, and I’m certainly not saying that I’m a slave owner, because I’m certainly not a slave owner, anymore than the mill owners who bought cotton produced in the South in the 18th century were slave owners, because they weren’t slave owners. All they did was buy the cotton.

That’s all I’m doing. Buying the cotton.

But again, the real point is that this has all happened many times before. This is nothing new. And it’s no big deal. You didn’t see the blogs and newspapers getting all hyped up about it when it was medieval Jews escaping persecution by the Roman Catholic Church, did you? No, you did not. Because the media gives the Catholics a pass.

But now that it’s us, well, that’s different. Now it’s Apple. Now it’s me. And honestly, when it comes to the media, I just can’t catch a break. Never have. Because Microsoft and Google and Adobe are out there promoting this story and pulling strings with their friends in the media to run these stories and try to smear us. It’s ugly and dirty and just plain wrong. Shame on you, media. Shame on you too, Foxconn jumpers. Shame on all of you.


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