Over lunch I was flipping through the 24 April 2006 issue of Newsweek and came across a brief tech article (available online via MSNBC) on a new cell phone from Virgin Mobile that’s being marketed to tweens. (For those of you that don’t know, a tween is a kid aged between eight and twelve.) The title of the article is Technology: Calling All Tweens so it’s clear as to this device is for. Then the article says:
“As for entertainment features, the phone comes with three game demos (Lemonade Tycoon, Tony Hawk Underground 2 and Sexy Poker) and access to downloadable content from Comedy Central and MTV. [emphasis added]
Uh, what? A device for tweens that includes a game titled “Sexy Poker”. Maybe I’m misinterpreting the title of this game (unlikely) but they can’t be serious.
Who’s to blame? Is this people at Virgin being idiots or is it a reporter at Newsweek attributing a device for the older set to the younger set? We’ll probably never know.
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
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