When Twitter user @RodneyBlu woke up this morning, his Apple Music playlists were nowhere to be found. Hoping to fix the issue, Blu, a 25-year-old Texas man who works for a media company, contacted the company through its online customer-service chat portal. And what happened next was something of an emotional journey, documented by Blu via an excellent Twitter thread.
Blu told Select All the real trouble began a few weeks earlier when he lost his debit card. When he canceled the card, the automatic payment stopped going through on his Apple Music account. When he finally got a new card and reactivated his account, the playlists had vanished.
Blu he sent a message to Apple Music’s customer-service hotline, detailing several problems ranging from big to smaller. “I’m a fan of engaging people,” Blu said. “Sometimes I like to poke the bear.” Blu explained he wanted Ashlie to know he was “okay” given “the resurgence of instances of police brutality and the circumstances black people in America are currently in.” “I kind lumped it [his technical problem with Apple Music] in with all the other things that were aggravating me at 7 in the morning,” he said.
Ashlie, while polite, didn’t really address the larger issues Blu mentioned.
Finally, Ashlie determined she wouldn’t be able to find Blu’s missing playlists after all.
Enter Lauren.
“I did not imagine I would get a reaction from anyone to begin with,” Blu said. So when Lauren addressed his grievances head on, Blu said it “blew his mind” and even brought tears to his eyes. “What stood out the most about her response was that she stepped outside her occupational protocol to sooth my problems … for whatever reason what I said spoke to her and how she feels. I was struck by that.”
Following his conversation, Blu shared screenshots of the chat on both Twitter and Facebook where they have since been retweeted and shared by hundreds of people. Through Facebook, Blu says he was even able to connect with Lauren from Apple. “To put a face, a physical being to this experience really meant a lot to me,” Blu explained.
“The biggest takeaway is not my role in this, or my platform, or even what Lauren did,” Blu explained of his now-viral thread. “The biggest takeaway is how universal this thread has become to so many people. To see that so many people find value in this interaction, that is what solidarity [on social media] looks like.”
Also, Apple Music execs, if you’re reading this, please give Lauren a raise.
Update: This post has been edited to include quotes from Rodney Blu.
