TKO-Mobile

I was Christmas shopping at the Scottsdale Fashion Square a few days ago and wandered into the T-Mobile store to play with the new Blackberry Pearl. Within minutes a sixteen year old girl and her mother broke into a fist fight at the check-out counter -- that's right, holding nothing back -- with another teen and her mother. Four different customers had to restrain these holiday bundles of joy. The language was right out of HBO. Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Holy Moses -- what is happening to us? Mobile connectivity is growing exponentially. We text each other. We talk on the phone while we walk. While we shop. While we eat. Drive. Even while we converse with others yet I wonder if we are really communicating better. Admittedly, this example is not representative of our new mobile culture (I hope). But I haven't been able to get this incident out of my mind. Somehow I get the feeling that advertisers, utilities and media companies are piling on our next generation. Soon the messages they may want to deliver will not be heard even if they can deliver them to an entire generation's left ear. The commercialization of Gen Y's world is now in progress. Coke will be doing a deal with MySpace to allow members to choose free online holiday "cards". The door is open, the onslaught of messages is coming in the name of monetization. So hopefully I am just shell shocked about the phone store incident, but maybe I've got a point to mull -- is corporate America treading where it wiser to tread lightly -- on the next generation's electronic, digital, Internet toys? I'm thinking, we may soon be dealing with over-commercialization that will make the next generation even more fighting mad.