Why won’t you wear it? Because you’re afraid of how people will think of you? What’s it matter, especially if you’re an older person, what people think? You live exactly once, and I can tell you this, as someone who works in a continuing care facility, the biggest curse there is NOT sickness but boredom.

The people there who are happiest have long given up on worrying what people think about them, and they enjoy what life they can make for themselves. The happiest man in that facility sings loudly and off key to all the ladies… because it’s what he loves.

In twenty years, will it matter what people imagined you to be, or what you made you to be? You’re certainly right that we live in a world of people who judge because they just ‘don’t get it’, but they’re not the ones who ultimately matter, it’s the ones who ask questions that are remembered.

You forget, madam, that for every gentleman there was a lady of class! (sweeping hat bow)

I hope that even if you won’t bring yourself to add that splash of retrotech to your wardrobe, you’ll continue to indulge in its creation. Maybe, yes, I’m just a crazy young adult, but I think I’m just as outwardly judged as an equally crazy “old fart”.

JJL wrote: “It is clever and no doubt takes skill, but is it art? I don’t think so.”

But with what measure do we define art? How about Dictionary.com.

“the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. ”

As the expression and production of what is beautiful and appealing is absolutely subjective, ART is therefore subjective. To you it may not be art but to me, it is art, just as a painting is art and just as typography is art and just as fashion design is art. I have seen the argument that “if it makes you uncomfortable, it’s art”. But I would argue that a creation intended to attain a response from the viewer is art. Steampunk cell phones are intended to stir a response in the viewer, every bit as much as a magnificent painting.

Is it art? Absolutely. Do you like it? Not necessarily. I too can walk through a museum and roll my eyes at those metal beams crushed into the wall, the tarp full of candies and a canvas painted white, but nonetheless, they were made to stir a response, and, having done so–even though my response was “seriously, you’re getting paid for that?” it has done its job. It is art, it has brought feelings up in me that were not there before, and it will continue being art to people who find it awe-inspiring, bullshit, or just fascinating. Art is subjective.

I love the phones, particularly the GLOBAL one. Man, if they functioned, I would carry one of those around! My boring little black flip phone does not compare to art. I wonder if I could steampunk it.

Now THAT’S funny. I defend this work of art (and yes, it is art) and suddenly I’m a fanboi of steampunk. Does that mean that if I defend glazed carrots as a good side dish, I’m a militant vegan? Get real.

It is art. You choose not to believe that, and that’s the nature of art. Art is not offended. Art is indifferent. The fact remains, you don’t like it. That’s your prerogative. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s art.

@ Rachael: I can only say that, to me, an insistence on blind acceptance of anything anyone puts forward and calls “art”, without any objective (or to be honest, normative) judgement as to the merit of that alleged “art”, is the real “dumbing down of America.”