You’re speeding on the highway, and a police car pulls you over, asking to see your drivers license, writing you a ticket, etc. What do you do?
If you answered “Wait very impatiently for the cop to finish, occasionally telling him to hurry the fuck up I’m late, then after he writes you the ticket, immediately start speeding again”…you’re wrong. But it’s what Steve Jobs would do. DID do. Possibly many times.
That is one example of the Reality Distortion Field. Be prepared to enter the Twilight Zone, because this is where things get reeeeeeaaaly iffy and weird.
Steve Jobs exercised this Distortion Field every time he was at a meeting. He would get everyone believing in an idea. For the purposes of making things at least kind of understandable, let’s use the really stupid idea of sticking a pink plastic ball on the back of the iPhone. Steve wouldn’t look twice at the idea, but just deal.
The meeting starts, Steve sits down at his silver CEO chair and starts ranting about how fun it would be to put a plastic ball on the back of the iPhone. “It’ll be pink and it would reflect the fun nature of the iPhone!” He said joyfully. His coworkers look at him as if he’s lost his mind. Then it starts. He begins piling what he calls “logic” on the idea: “The ball reflects the fun nature, pink represents serenity and that joyful kid-like feeling, and people can find their own unique way to hold the iPhone!” The rip in space-time appears: The coworkers get excited, smiles appearing on their faces. The rift expands as Jobs continues to enthuse the idea in a passionate voice, jumping around, his voice rising. The coworkers are now giving Jobs a standing ovation, clapping up a storm.
Have they all lost their minds? At the time that the rift is open, it’s really hard to say. Steve leaves the room to pursue this new idea. The coworkers are all talking about how this idea will change the way people look at iPhones and how great it will be……then the rift collapses. The coworkers start to think “wait a minute…does Steve have any idea how stupid that would look? Is it just me or can everyone see a billion problems with this? And how would the hardware design team react to this?”
The rest of it is the coworkers then try to convince Steve that it’s a horrible idea, then Steve gets mad and fires everyone in the meeting because they have instantly gone from “A players” to “B players”.
This is a bleak picture of Steve. An asshole kid who thinks the world belongs to him. But he managed to get a whole company…no, START a whole company…and amazed everyone–how does this happen?? I honestly think were it not for the Reality Distortion Field, Apple would never exist. Maybe it would for just long enough for the Apple I and Apple II to come out, but then people would’ve gone “Screw Steve, he’s an asshole”, and no one would have let him keep Apple.
Maybe you believe this is “an act of God” or “magical hocus-pocus”…and if either of those things existed (and I’m not saying they do or don’t), then maybe I would say that.
That’s for you to decide. Maybe he was abducted by aliens. Maybe there is such a thing as a part of the brain that can change other people’s thoughts. Speculation! Rumors! Arguments! Opinions! What fun!