Deep Thoughts On MP3 Players

On the Tube, we see each other. People with MP3 players. We'd like to sneer at people with Discmen, but they just don't care. That's why they're using a Discman.
When I bought my player, I was buying for practical reasons. Well, I just wanted one, but I didn't buy, you know, a metallic teal iPod the size of a Post-It note just to be trendy.
In fact, I didn't buy an iPod. I bought a Creative Labs thingy. Wait, let me glance to the left. A Creative Labs Zen Xtra (so good they had to put a muzzle on the word 'extra'). It's not an iPod. Silhouette people to not do awesome breaking moves on coloured backdrops with a Creative Labs Zen Xtra. (Xtra!)

I bought it because for the same price in an iPod you only got half the memory. I didn't think I cared about the fashion fads of electronic consumer goods. Yet, when I'm on the Tube, I get all defensive. I can see other MP3-player owners looking at it.
You see, the case is very handy. It clips on your belt. But it makes the player look big.
And big equals technologically inferior.
Sometimes I want to take the (brushed aluminium) player out of the slightly bulky case and shout at them "Enough withering looks! It's only the same size as a deck of cards! It's the case that makes it look big! It's the case!"

But I don't.

Because you're not allowed to talk to people on the Tube.

I thought I didn't care whether or not my MP3 player was trendy but maybe I do. Maybe I should take it out of the case when I'm on the Tube.
So that people can see it in all its brushed aluminum, roughly the same size as a deck of cards glory. Then they won't be so disdainful.
We'll be secure in the knowledge that we all have acceptably miniscule, roughly equal MP3 players.

Except for that smug guy without earphones, reading the Metro. He's got a nanotechnology implant in each ear that beams his music collection down from a satellite via microwave transmissions or something.