On the Razr’s edge of glory.
Huffing the fumes of nostalgia's favorite phone.
I have a religious aversion to using the word cr*ng* in my writing (it conjures a sleep paralysis demon of Anna Kendrick doing the “cup song”), but I came so, so close to needing it for this edition of the newsletter. I’ve been researching a lot of old takes on tech, culture, and branding, but then, in the span of hours, I came across an Instagram post and a retrospective piece on the Motorola Razr. I hadn’t realized the phone is now 20 years old, so here’s the tech that taught us just how sexy, fun, and fashionable a phone could be.
Welcome to Public Service.
Nostalgia, ultra.
“The dumbest thing you’ll ever buy” is nothing if not honest. On October 18, anti-fashion meme page @patheticfashion posted that they’d now be selling “hand-made and completely unique” Motorola Razr flip phones that they’ve allegedly hand-embellished with crystals. It’s giving “NYC PR girly who ran out of Xanax is in her manic crafting era,” and I sincerely hope this is a joke but you can buy one right now for $120.00 (please don’t). I shouldn’t need to say that sticking fake jewels from Hobby Lobby on a pile of old phone you bulk-bought from someone on eBay should not take four to six weeks for shipping. But more importantly, I promise that buying this overpriced, desperate attempt to relive your youth (or, if you’re younger, tap into some mythical image of the 2000s) is more cringe than the 14 people who work in media who insist that “indie sleaze is back” (these people will almost certainly be buying the bedazzled Razr). This should not come as a shock, but the lightning of the original Razr’s release will not strike twice. To understand why (and to throw me deep into a spiral of nostalgia), we need to wind back the clock to two decades ago.
When the Motorola Razr V3 launched in 2004, it had enough memory to carry two MP3 songs and photo quality so bad that anyone papped by its lens looked like a Victorian-era ghost. None of that mattered. The phone was slim, sexy, and unlike any other device on the market. Motorola knew it, too. One of its first public unveilings happened not at a dreary trade show but at a “gadget fashion show” in Copenhagen’s Arken Museum of Modern Art. The Razr was encased in glass and on view for the assembled, design-oriented journalists — heralding a shift in how phones would soon become more than just tech to make calls on. It may feel alien now, but in 2004, our identities hadn’t yet become entwined in what devices we toted around. According to WWD’s December 2004 article “Technology Makes a Fashion Statement,” an Intel poll commissioned that year found that 30 percent of men and 24 percent of women ages 18 to 27 felt their computer ‘reflects their personal style.’” That stat feels like it would hover around 100 percent nowadays. The piece ends with a quote from former fashion director of Harper’s Bazaar, Mary Alice Stephenson, who says: “We’re starting to see more and more merging of fashion design and technology in a really big way.” One year later, Razr launched a special gold Dolce & Gabbana edition (with at least one absolute banger of a ringtone).
The phone, in all its variations, was an undeniable hit: Motorola sold 130 million units in four years, and the Razr found its way into the low-rise, hipbone-hugging pockets of celebrities like Paris Hilton, becoming a defining artifact of the era. But like most glimpses into the rearview of culture, the cache of coolness enveloping the phone obscures reality. In the same year that Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, the ubiquity of the Razr had already undercut its image as a status symbol. “I started being one of six people at the meeting with a Razr. It went pretty quickly from a coveted object to a commodity-design thing,” San Francisco designer Robert Brunner told the NYT in a 2007 article about Motorola’s plunging stock price.
The company has never hit the high mark of its heyday, but it sure has tried. Culture is in a perpetual state of conceptual bankruptcy, and so the Razr didn’t stay buried for long. Morotola exhumed its remains in November 2019, launching a foldable smartphone version that’s failed to catch on. The new Razr isn’t even the most popular foldable on the market; Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip and Fold phones have come closest to making modern flip phones hot again, though that’s largely thanks to their pervasive product placement in bland streaming content.
It was amusing to see a meme page hawk their corny, bedazzled phones and then, hours later, come across The Verge’s ode to the Razr as part of their very good 2004 tech retrospective series. The culture yearns for a simpler time, and this double-flashback made me reminisce about getting a Black V3 in my teen years. I felt like the baddest bitch in class with that sleek piece of hardware in my hand. Sure, over half the people in my school also had a Razr, and, yes, I was pimply, awkward, and struggling to even seem normal, much less a “bad bitch.” But the feeling of holding a cell phone that emanated such a potent vibe? I don’t know if that’ll ever happen again (nobody can convince me that an Apple Watch or VR headset will ever be cool).
I know we’re days away from Halloween, but I’m not here to start the fog machine and pull out a crystal ball to predict where culture goes from here. No magic eight ball is necessary to see that culture is in a crisis; we’re huffing the stale air at the bottom of the canister of nostalgia, seeing white spots. But we’ve also crossed a technocultural tipping point where cheap, wired Apple headphones are cooler than bulky, expensive AirPod Max’s, and people are seeking out tech that’s a bit dumber, slower, and switched off. Sure, we’re legally allowing people to say digital cameras and the 2000s are “retro.” Still, the pendulum seems to be swinging slightly toward a future where we’re all a little less online and a little more “in the moment” — and I promise you don’t need a meme page admin’s tacky “dumb phone” cash grab to get there.
Announcements:
Sorry to the dedicated fans of the newsletter for my gap in posting. I spent the middle of October either sick, stressed, or both.
I have two new features coming out next month that are very different, but they’ll both be very good reads (I hope).
At the start of November, I’ll go see mk.gee in concert and then head to Art Cologne for yet another day spent wandering art fair booths.
It’s now the final two weeks until the election and…….. I don’t want to think about that right now. I sent in my ballot from abroad, though, so let’s hope Nevada goes Democrat by one vote, and I can take all the credit.
I’ve watched a weird mix of movies lately, including seeing The Substance, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the original Halloween in theaters. I also rewatched But I’m a Cheerleader from the comfort of my bed and forgot how cursed parts of that movie are (making your gay son do straight Adam and Eve softcore cosplay was a choice).
If you have a recommendation for what to watch, read, listen to, etc, drop it in a comment.
Thanks for joining me, and have a nice day!