and
it seems to me that there are a lot of people that have these knee-jerk reactions to things that they want to believe are good, yet fail to do more than a cursory look into what it is they're hyping/gushing over/displaying a fierce loyalty to.
i thought of this because of myspace. i'm on myspace, i took the time to create a profile at one point, and i have a total of 17 friends attached to my name there. but i never use it. i don't message people, i don't neurotically write testimonials to everyone i know there or maintain a blog or any of that stuff. i guess i just never got that into it. it's probably a useful tool for meeting people, but i've never taken the time to use it for that. anyway, i only just found out today that news corp, the giant media conglomerate owned by rupert murdoch, bought myspace this summer. maybe everyone currently using myspace is already aware of this, i don't know, but i thought i'd let you all in on it just in case.
i was also thinking of this because of gmail. again, i have a gmail account, but i don't use it. i got it because i got an invitation from someone when it was still in beta testing phase. i'm sure, as an email service, it's pretty good. but i'm not going to go hyping the shit out of something that i don't know a lot about, which is what people were doing when gmail began offering accounts to everyone. this is a good reason why i don't do such things.
finally, people do this with apple computers (or apple anything actually) which, to me, is no different than someone who got all excited about john kerry and wore john kerry tshirts and tried to get everyone else excited about him pre-04 election. if you want to really like something, don't do it because it's so much less worse than its alternative. apple is still a huge corporation and part of their marketing strategy is you people who proudly display your "difference" by falling all over yourselves about how great macs or ipods or whatever are (compared to the competition). apple uses their "outsider" image (that and their "fashionable" design) to sell their products. they've marketed themselves as young and hip, and so people attracted to that image tend to buy their products. it works very well unless you actually think about the fact that they are a huge corporation and this is just a strategy they employ to sell their products. i mean, beyond that, you're falling into this trap of deifying these consumer goods. i've seen these anti-corporate, no-logo reading, adbusters-subscribing, anarchy-professing people touting how great macs are, apparently without any irony. it's just funny.
anyway..
i thought of this because of myspace. i'm on myspace, i took the time to create a profile at one point, and i have a total of 17 friends attached to my name there. but i never use it. i don't message people, i don't neurotically write testimonials to everyone i know there or maintain a blog or any of that stuff. i guess i just never got that into it. it's probably a useful tool for meeting people, but i've never taken the time to use it for that. anyway, i only just found out today that news corp, the giant media conglomerate owned by rupert murdoch, bought myspace this summer. maybe everyone currently using myspace is already aware of this, i don't know, but i thought i'd let you all in on it just in case.
i was also thinking of this because of gmail. again, i have a gmail account, but i don't use it. i got it because i got an invitation from someone when it was still in beta testing phase. i'm sure, as an email service, it's pretty good. but i'm not going to go hyping the shit out of something that i don't know a lot about, which is what people were doing when gmail began offering accounts to everyone. this is a good reason why i don't do such things.
finally, people do this with apple computers (or apple anything actually) which, to me, is no different than someone who got all excited about john kerry and wore john kerry tshirts and tried to get everyone else excited about him pre-04 election. if you want to really like something, don't do it because it's so much less worse than its alternative. apple is still a huge corporation and part of their marketing strategy is you people who proudly display your "difference" by falling all over yourselves about how great macs or ipods or whatever are (compared to the competition). apple uses their "outsider" image (that and their "fashionable" design) to sell their products. they've marketed themselves as young and hip, and so people attracted to that image tend to buy their products. it works very well unless you actually think about the fact that they are a huge corporation and this is just a strategy they employ to sell their products. i mean, beyond that, you're falling into this trap of deifying these consumer goods. i've seen these anti-corporate, no-logo reading, adbusters-subscribing, anarchy-professing people touting how great macs are, apparently without any irony. it's just funny.
anyway..
