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Mental health professionals across the country are reporting an alarming rise in iPod Grief Syndrome, as consumers are thrown into deep depression upon losing their expensive, high-capacity MP3 players.
"We're creating a generation of casualties," writes Stanford University researcher Stephanie Cupertino in her book Greatly Insane: iGS and the Future of America. "One careless moment on a subway or at the gym, and iGS sets in. Not only did iGS sufferers invest large amounts of their barista tips in their now-lost iPods, they also store their most beloved music on the devices' ample hard drives.
"Entire neighborhoods, like Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Logan Square in Chicago, look like the sets of zombie movies," Cupertino continues. "Their streets are haunted by hollow-eyed young people, eerily humming snatches of Carl Craig remixes and Franz Ferdinand b-sides, just so they won't walk in silence."
Experts now recommend cheaper MP3 players with less storage capacity for those at risk of iGS. "Let's face it: people lose things, things get stolen," says Dr. Brandon Carlsburg, an iGS specialist in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, another epicenter of the epidemic. "With a player like the SanDisk 1GB MP3 Player, that inevitable loss is much less acute. You're out, like, eighteen bucks. And while 1GB stores plenty of music for normal commuting or workout purposes, nobody's going to use it as their sole music-storage device.
"I always tell my clients 'buy two or three, if you can.'"
At a group session for iGS sufferers in Queens, New York, Maya Schulte agonized over everything she'd lost when her iPod evidently fell out of her knapsack during a street festival last week. "My whole music collection - gone, like that," Schulte said. "It was like the whole world slipped out from under me. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't stand up. Do you have any idea what favors I had to do to get those advance MP3s of the new Hold Steady album? Oh my God...and I never even got a chance to listen to it."
Carlsburg says such stories are commonplace.
"We thought we were getting a Utopia," he says. "Thousands of portable songs, a totally cool-looking design. But we never asked ourselves: what happens when somebody slashes open our backpack and steals Utopia?"
Warranty: 90 Day Woot
Features:
- Plays MP3, MWA, WAV, Audible files
- 1GB storage capacity can hold approx 250 MP3s or 500 WMA encoded files
- Digital FM tuner with 20 preset stations
- Voice Recorder with built-in microphone
- Up to 19 hours continuous play on 1 AAA battery
- Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port for fast and easy transfer of files
- Equalizer Factory Presets: Rock, Jazz, Pop, Classic
- Indigo backlit LCD display shows ID3 track recording information
Box Contents:
- Digital Audio Player
- Stereo Earphones
- USB 2.0 Cable
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