If you’ve been vacationing with a remote community that has no contact with the outside world for the last six months, you might have missed the fact that Samsung’s most recent phablet has an unnerving tendency to catch fire. All reasonable human beings have returned their phones, as requested by Samsung, cell carriers, and the laws of common sense.
But it’s 2017, there’s an internet out there, and among the internet-dwellers are those who figure it’s a smart and adult decision to hang onto their toys with both hands, consequences be damned.
Samsung, and the cell carriers that sold the phone, have taken every reasonable step to take Galaxy Note 7 devices out of the wild. Owners have had ample opportunity to turn them in, and cell carriers are now forcing updates on the phone that prevent it from charging, or stop outgoing cell calls.
But that hasn’t stopped a few particular users from Reddit’s Galaxy Note 7 subreddit. The users take a peculiar delight in their objectively dumb decision, mostly rationalizing that the chances of their specific phone exploding is small, and anyway, they don’t go on airplanes all that often.
This is true. Despite the recall, the chances of one particular Galaxy Note 7 spontaneously combusting is relatively low, and using one is probably safer than driving on US roads.
Still, I won’t try and argue their case for them. As internet commenters, they’re perfectly capable of doing that themselves:
My new 🔥 headset. Bought all this for only $50. No SIM, no updates, no problems.
“I rarely fly, and when I do I don’t take the phone. I am a heavy S-pen user, and will not get stuck with old technology when a new one is on the horizon. What the company and carriers want is irrelevant… once a phone is bought it is no longer their property to decide.”
– Afflink
“Go away cry baby. Did you miss your nap time? I know that it is hard for you liberals to realize that some of us are capable of making our own decisions, but we are. Regardless of what the govt, Saumsung, or those running around on here crying their eyes out.”
Then, you’ve got all the threads of users trying to get around technological blocks. When it was first announced that Samsung would be pushing updates to brick devices, users started working out how to prevent updates and still use their phones.
Now that Verizon has begun blacklisting Note 7 devices from its network, users are discussing how to spoof the IMEI to pose as a different device on the cellular network.
To their credit, the majority of users on Reddit seem to have given up their phones, and are actively trying to get other people to do the same. But as per usual, a small minority of internet trolls seem determined to ruin it for everyone.
