iPod Fascists

Experts say there is a hijacker profile. It’s usually someone with a little music savvy. In Viswanathan’s experience, it’s more likely to be a woman. “Maybe because they’re more organized,” she says. “It involves downloading the music, and bringing it—you have to care enough.” Her brother Vijay, though, observes an alpha male component: “His No. 1 goal is control of the music, while others at the party have more pressing priorities” (all too easy to imagine). When two hijacker types meet, he says, “you essentially have two silverback gorillas battling for position. Pure entertainment as they pound their chests and trash talk each other’s musical tastes.”

IPod guerrillas, like gorillas, do follow the rules of the social order. Dinner parties are off-limits. “You can’t do it too early in the evening,” says Andrew Johnson, who works for a Calgary investment firm. “But after 11, it’s free game.” Indeed, past a certain hour at certain parties, there’s no one hijacker—everyone jumps in, sometimes veering from iTunes to Limewire or Acquisition and on to funny videos on YouTube. Johnson has awoken the morning after a party with Taylor Swift (blech) and the Arkells (“which I came to like”) downloaded on his computer. It’s all pretty amiable, though occasionally things get tense. His colleague, Kara Lilly, can recall an evening involving a fan of slow, drawn-out instrumentals—“music that sounded like it came from a spa”—that ended in an iPod getting dunked in a pint of beer.

At the other end of the spectrum, Umar Malik, a software consultant in his thirties, has turned the free-for-all into a social project. His stereo is a fully interactive modern jukebox, the focal point of the party, with the iPod hooked up to a large plasma-screen TV. The music, drawn from his library, is chosen entirely by his guests. Corbett and his serious music friends, similarly, have a “programmajam” on their weekends away at the cottage that’s wholly collaborative; they all take turns contributing songs from their iPods. “People talk about LPs, and the experience of interacting with the music,” says Corbett. “We’ve found a way to do that with iPods. It’s impromptu mixed-tape making on the go. You can’t do that with any other medium.”

Occasionally the self-appointed DJ actually takes up the mantle of the professional DJ—a most amusing musical encounter. A club in New York City played host to such a happening last year, when a club-goer and his friend, warm with a boozy flush, took over the DJ station. “People came up with requests and I would welcome them, and tell each of them the song they chose was a favourite song of mine,” brags the unrepentant hijacker. “Then I’d just play the Smiths or the Cure or Sisters of Mercy.” That’s a confidence that those DJs of yore might, in their way, have respected.