It feels just like yesterday.

Back in 2006, I was some random punk kid harassing people walking through the mall, trying to get them to buy a mobile phone from an MVNO that doesn’t exist anymore, Helio. After a day’s worth of smooth talking and product pitching, I’d come home, boot up my computer, and write a few hundred words about an an industry where I was but a mere foot solider.

Then this “New Media” thing happened, and companies started showering me, and people like me, with gifts. Free phones, review samples, and the all important junket. Junket is a word that’s rarely used outside of email threads between press people discussing ethics, but it’s an easy enough concept to understand. It’s when companies spend millions of dollars to rent out an auditorium, fill it with free alcohol and gourmet snacks, and then make sure anyone and everyone with a website gets a complimentary flight to said event.

Oh and the hotel is included, of course.

When Nokia was in their prime, back in 2007 and 2008, and before the European economy ground to a halt in 2009, I found myself sitting in an airplane at least once a month. Destination? Barcelona, Madrid, Las Vegas, Amsterdam, New York, Berlin, London, Copenhagen, Boston, Miami, the list just goes on and on. At the end of each of these junkets, with the mental clarity that comes after a night out on the town with marketing people who had limitless corporate credit cards, I wondered how much longer this free ride would go on?

Like all good parties, Nokia’s eventually came to an end, though I’m pretty my invitation to all these wild parties stopped reaching my inbox because of a snarky email I sent to someone who wanted me to review the train wreck known as the N97. I said it would be a complete waste of my time, and that was effectively the sentence that put on some sort of permanent blacklist.

All this background information brings me to Samsung’s event on Thursday. I’m not going to bother recounting what was announced there, because it doesn’t matter. What matters is how Samsung carried themselves. The air was thick with apathy and smugness, with the only excitement seemingly coming from the few people who actually got the event’s WiFi to work.

Whereas Nokia’s people actually tried to be your friend, you could tell Samsung’s people were there just for the paycheck. Money flowed out of Korea and into their pockets; life then ceased to exist once the transaction was complete.

Halfway through the company’s 75 minute keynote, I looked to my left and saw my fellow journalists checking their Facebook accounts. Then I looked to my right and saw yet more members of the press core checking their email. Then I looked back up to see what was actually happening, and Samsung was talking about some new laptop with a sharp screen or something like that.

At that moment my pulse shot up and I wondered why I was sitting in a chair in London with a beer in my hand, listening to someone talk about a Windows 8 laptop that I know I’ll never buy nor recommend to anyone I know. Once the well groomed man on stage stopped talked, and the demo area opened up, I did a lap around the various gadget littered tables, trying to start a conversation with the hired guns standing next to these newly announced widgets.

No one was smiling. No one looked like they wanted to be there. We all knew it was a charade.

I know that nothing I say, either today or tomorrow, will impact Samsung’s business, but I just can’t help feeling that what I witnessed on Thursday night was incredibly depressing on multiple levels. And again, I’m not talking about the products, I’m talking about Samsung themselves. They’re a machine, able to manufacture advanced components and stick them inside devices that I simply couldn’t imagine existing back when I started writing about the mobile industry.

Unfortunately, emotions don’t roll off an assembly line.