Form follows function

Dear iPod user,

Thank you for sending us your blipcard. We must admit to being a little shocked at today's image which appears to show you rating one of Ne-Yo's songs with one star. There are a number of reasons you may have done this, but as you saw fit to not say why we will assume the reason was one of malice. Ne-Yo may not be your cup of tea, but let me assure you that thousands of people think very highly of Ne-Yo and his music and would be very upset to know that you disagree with their collective thinking.

We asked Ne-Yo for his thoughts on the matter and he was, to put it bluntly, a little upset. Having talked to his other celebrity music friends, the situation has escalated somewhat and now other artists are starting to complain that iPod users can anonymously rate their songs with one star. When we gave you the option to rate songs between one and five, we didn't actually expect you to rate anything other than five and have therefore decided it is no longer in our best interests to allow you to anonymously use your iPod's rating system.

With this in mind, we are implementing some new software which we will automatically download onto your iPod. This new software will detect when you rate a song with one star and will send an email to the relevant artist informing them of this. It is up to you whether or not you justify your rating with a reason but this is immaterial to us. What we expect to happen is that the artist will misinterpret your rating as unwarranted and hostile, become upset and complain publicly about their abuse by your hand. You may then be victimized by angry fans who will treat your opinions as invalid.

In the long run we hope that these reactions will dissuade you from rating anything other than five stars in the future. This will of course make filtering through masses of songs to find the truly good ones somewhat more difficult but this inconvenience is a small price to pay to protect the egos of our most beloved celebrities as well as those who are struggling to make it on the music scene.

This new software will also notice if you try and delete Ne-Yo's songs from your hard drive in an attempt to avoid listening to him which is also likely to cause an element of distress. We suggest that you just try to ignore him, and move on to the next song how ever difficult this may prove for you.

Thanks for your understanding.