MYIQ ///// Mobile Youth IQ

printable version

Suzanne

Suzanne is a 19-year-old MYIQ panelist. Her perspective on the ongoing trends and changes
in her wireless world is a monthly feature.

I’m finally finished with my homework for the night, as I stretch out on the living room couch and reach for the channel changer. I stop though as I notice my roommate in front of me. The carpet is littered with papers and she is sitting cross-legged in her pink sweats with a pair of scissors. “What are you doing?,” I ask with sudden interest.

“Cutting coupons,” she tells me simply, focusing intently on making a straight cut down the page she’s holding. “Here, aren’t you like obsessed with those cheesecake bar things?” She hands me one.

I sit up instantly. “Buy one get one free,” I shout. “Do you know how expensive these things are?” I place it carefully on the coffee table and suddenly coupons aren’t so Grandma-ish anymore. “So…what else do you have in there?”

It isn’t long until I’ve grabbed my own pair of scissors and we’re sitting together trading the squares of glossy paper like baseball cards. “I see your Lucky Charms,” I murmur glancing through my pile, “so how about we do a switch-a-roo for my 99-cent toilet paper and half-off toothpaste?”

The next day, of course, I left all of them at home when I went to the store…

Even though it was fun cutting out coupons with Chrisse, it would have been so much easier if I could have gotten them on my cell phone. I could maybe sign up for the brands that I want, and then not have to go through the hassle of searching for them. Plus, how much cooler would it be to hand a cashier my phone instead of searching my bag for coupons that are sitting on the kitchen counter at home?

Speaking of shopping, I’m suddenly reminded of a painful memory of a few weeks ago when I saw the billboard for the new Doritos.

I had been driving back from school when I saw it; an ad that read, “What is inNw?” with a number to text. Being a text aficionado, I nearly veered into the other lane while searching for my phone in my purse. I texted the number and then received a message back a few seconds later. Keeping my eye on the car ahead of me I looked down to see, “Doritos: Do you know Jack? Answer our quick quiz and u could win a customized ‘You Don’t know Jack’ CD-Rom game. Want 2 play? Reply ‘play’.”

“OK, not sure what this is about, but sounds intriguing…”

I followed the directions and texted back the answer to the question that insulted my intelligence. What is missing from Black___Jack’ Doritos? As if anyone would think it’s a)magic or c) nacho considering the whole campaign is for their new black pepper jack-flavor Doritos. Honestly.

A few seconds later I got a text telling me I had to enter a code online to see if I’d won a CD. That was when I threw my phone on the floor.

I was obviously driving past their billboard at the moment, not at home by my computer, why in the world would they make me wait potentially hours just to see if I’d won something they had sent me by text in the first place?

While it’s cool that brands are starting to use text, they definitely need to learn how to do it because all of this fake trivia and stuff is just not working out.