There is a very interesting parallel that has been ongoing for years, a parallel that should make most reasonable human beings stop and think. Apple and Lance Armstrong. Examining the trajectories of these two entities should make us realize how shitty we really are. Modern media has done everything in it's power to turn every single story into an epic. We cheer the rise of a hero...but we find even more satisfaction in the fall of that same hero. Just as Lance Armstrong was built up to be this impossibly great athlete, Apple was inflated to levels never substantiated. Apple's "creator" attained god-like status when in reality he was an a-hole who's real talent was marketing. Projected sales numbers placed at unattainable levels then required the doctoring of the "actual" numbers...all of this led to a massive bubble. As we all know painfully well, bubbles burst. Just as Lance is experiencing his fall from glory, Apple is slowly sinking. Fans don't understand what's going on, just as non-fans couldn't understand the uncontrolled ascension. It doesn't make any sense because it shouldn't have happened in the first place. But now the paper hero is exposed, and the cycle will begin again. All the while the media tycoons rake in the profits, and we just follow, ready to gobble up the next epic they create.