Stop me if you've heard this one: a geek leaves his phone in a bar, and... oh, you have heard that one? It turns out that Brian Lam, the Gizmodo editor involved in the iPhone 4 "bar heist" saga and one of the biggest tech scandals of 2010, left his cell phone in a restaurant the other day. How did the aftermath play out? Lam, apparently blind to the irony, posted about it on Twitter: "left my phone at lunch, lady turned it in. good thing we were nice, earlier, and gave her the chair she asked for #karma"Lam couldn't have been blind to the irony for long, because he's now locked his Twitter account. And apparently, he also doesn't understand how karma works.
This would have been real karma: the lady who found his phone would have realized what she'd got her hands on, then offered his phone to the highest-bidding (and least scrupulous) media outlet willing to pay for it.
After the transaction, whoever paid out the most for Lam's phone would have dissected it, then posted photos and videos of the aftermath online. Next, they would have posted all of Lam's contact info on their site, opening him to ridicule and jeopardizing his career. As a final indignity, they then would have sent a letter to Lam's lawyer assuring that he'd get the (now broken) phone back as long as he publicly admitted it was his phone.
That would have been karma.
P.S. I know at least one person will be tempted to call me out on my use of the word "irony." Please read this Oatmeal comic on irony first, then we'll talk.
[via Daring Fireball]
