Credit: Dangerous Minds / Apple

Maybe this is my millennial showing, but there was an innocence to the early form of the app that we will never truly get back. This is despite being so addicted to our phones that no matter which side of the divide we’re on, “Android” is still probably the best way of describing human beings at the moment.

The apps we stock our phones with today are so absurdly professional. Banking, emails, work, there’s little room for frivolity. Even our chosen app reserved for killing time on a long commute to work will still be a game with the GDP of a small nation flowing in and out of it every day, or a content streaming subdivision of a multinational corporation. Some 20 years ago, though, apps could still be thrown together in an afternoon by a student with too much time on their hands and become a phenomenon.

I’m not even talking about a game like Flappy Bird, I’m talking about the one that made your phone a light sabre hilt with movement-responsive sound effects. I’m talking about the pint you could drain and then fill on your phone screen. I’m talking about the one that sounded like an electric razor that you’d prank your mates with by running your phone through their hair. I know this is some serious unc shit, but I’d like to think that seeing the worth in a simple gimmick is more than mere nostalgia.

Especially when you look at the people who were able to go one step beyond. Who were able to use what small resources they had and… perhaps not make an artistic statement, but at least make a somewhat blunt satirical point. Or at the very least, have a bit of a laugh at some rich folks’ metaphorical and quite literal expense.

This was very much what German software developer Armin Heinrich had in mind when he created an app called, quite simply, I Am Rich.

What was the joke behind this app?

The idea for I Am Rich came to Heinrich when he saw a forum full of iPhone users complaining about apps that cost over $0.99 (oh, the mid-2000s). As a response to those people, Heinrich created an app that was barely more than an icon depicting a red gem, which, when pressed, would bring up a mantra in large text.

This mantra, in its Shakespeare-besting entirety, runs as follows:

And yes, that is how “deserve” was spelt in the app. Now, all this would be a hard enough sell at the $0.99 price level, but that wasn’t the joke. The joke was that Heinrich uploaded it to the app store and set an asking price of $999.99 for little more than a page of text and a piece of clipart. Are you beginning to see the joke inherent in the app’s title now, right?

You see, with that price tag, it became the ultimate status symbol. If you could drop a thousand dollars on 12 words on your iPhone screen, what more proof did anyone need that you have so much money that it means precisely dick-all to you anymore? Surely, nobody bought it, though? It didn’t need to actually be bought to stand as the piece of art that Heinrich intended it as… Right?

Wrong. In the 24 hours that I Am Rich lasted on the App Store before it was taken down by Apple, eight people bought it. Making Heinrich over five thousand dollars for what might have taken him 15 minutes to make if he dawdled. Apparently, two people purchased it by mistake and ordered a refund immediately.

Nice work if you can get it!