Nothing gives some people more pleasure than ridiculing other people’s sad, antiquated technology. At a party two weeks ago, I gave an old friend a compact disc containing Mozart’s clarinet concerto.

“Who listens to CDs anymore?” sneered one of the guests. I do. I own 3,000 of them. I listen to them in my car, my office, my house, everywhere. My friend, defending me, said that he often played CDs on his portable music system. So it wasn’t like I’d given him a handful of vintage cartridges for his breech-loading musket, not realizing that he’d already sold it on eBay.

Nonetheless, people were eyeing me with pity, as the latest incarnation of Rip Van Winkle. As if I had given my friend a dot-matrix printer. Or a Nehru jacket.

I know that the CD has had it as a viable technology. Other ways of listening to music have superseded it, just as vinyl was tossed on the junk heap a generation ago. But there is always a possibility that a purged technology can climb back out of the crypt. In recent years, vinyl has made a remarkable comeback, in part because LPs sound better than compact discs or streaming music, and in part because vinyl aficionados love to be annoying. I myself own 1,000 LPs. And yes, I am annoying.

Why is it OK to continue to use some objects that have been around forever but moronic to use others? Nobody ever says: “You still use a frying pan? You pathetic loser.” Or, “Is that a glass you’re drinking water out of? A glass? I haven’t seen a glass since Foghat’s farewell tour.”

People scorn anyone who still listens to cassettes or watches VHS tapes. But hipsters can turn up in Starbucks with obsolete Smith-Corona typewriters, and somehow that’s cool. You are considered tragically unhip if you buy a desktop PC. But it’s OK to play the ukulele in public.

It’s not hard to see where this could lead.

“Are those shoes I see on your feet? I haven’t seen anyone wear shoes since the hottest computer operating system was DOS.”

“Let me get this straight: You still wear pants to work? Haven’t you ever heard of virtual relaxed-fit jeans?”

“Is that a BLT you’re gnawing on? BLTs went out with Zip drives.”

Once an object becomes scorned, it ceases to be talked about. Yet it continues to exist. Much like the PC, the CD is a zombie technology that is still used by millions of people even though it is dead. Amazon still sells CDs. So does Best Buy. CDs are like white bread or unfiltered cigarettes or Steven Seagal movies. They may be dead, but they’re not yet buried.

CDs resemble horrible American lagers. Everyone sneers at these ghastly beverages, trumpeting the virtues of craft beers. Yet hundreds of millions of people still drink what purists view as swill. There’s simply no accounting for bad taste.

I do not own a black-and-white television, a pager or a VHS machine. But, yes, I still listen to CDs. After being mocked for my technological obsolescence at that party, I have now learned my lesson. I will no longer give CDs as gifts. I will no longer play CDs in front of millennials. When people come to my house, I will hide my 3,000 CDs in the basement, along with my galoshes and my eight-track player and my Kahlil Gibran books.

That said, I dream of the day when I can be the one who gets to mock someone in public for clinging to a hopelessly anachronistic product.

“You still eat cupcakes?” I will say in utter disbelief. “Gourmet cupcakes? I thought everyone had switched to designer gruel by now.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal May 19, 2016 | By Joe Queenan