Poking Badgers With Spoons

Since the Playstation Network went down due to hacking, I've been lurking in the forums and comments to posts concerning the incident. At first I was there for the lulz. I wanted to wallow and laugh at all the gamer-rage about not being able to play online (o noze). But as I read I started really looking at what people were saying and how they were acting towards each other, and this made me start thinking. Yeah, I know. That's dangerous and I could really hurt myself, and I think I came away with more questions than answers. And I really started to look at and question myself too.

Are we tied up into consumerism so terribly that we value who we are as an individual on how loyal we are to a brand / company to the point where we feel personally attacked if someone says something bad about "our" corporation within our earshot or (heaven forbid) calls into question our company loyalty? Is our sense of self worth REALLY tied that closely to which companies we show our loyalty to? It seems we are no longer a society of smart consumers anymore (as a whole). There only seems to be brand loyalty and if you don't show the proper loyalty you are worthless in the eyes of the corporate loyalists. Our loyalty to "the company" means that we're willing to take any amount of crap "the company" from abuses of our privacy to crappy products. Sure, there may be some uproar around a particular event, but if "the company" offers an almost worthless trinket to the masses, suddenly the loyalists are placated and singing the praises of the company once more while denigrating those who point out the foibles and question the tactics or the company.

It's really sad that people are teaching their children not to be intelligent about their purchases, but rather to listen to the company with the biggest and best hype, and make purchasing decisions on that rather than whether the product in question will fit the individual's needs. I think it really is the lack of teaching rational thinking skills that bothers me the most about this.

Here's a product. It's cool! I'm not sure if it does all the things I need this type of product to do, but it's made by Brand X™ so it must be completely awesome! I'm going to buy one and if you say anything remotely negative, no matter how factual, you're a hater, just out there hating. And I'm cool because I (will) own the product from Brand X™.

This seems to be a theme I'm seeing more and more of in comment threads across the Internet. There doesn't seem to be any actual rational thinking involved and if you try to inject that rational thinking you are instantly dismissed with name calling. There seems to be a blind defense of Brand X™. This is also a phenomena I've seen recently in politics as well. I wonder where the politicians learned it from...

I know there are smart people out there who don't fall into this pattern. There are always exceptions to the rules. And I wonder if there's much we exceptions can do to fight against this. It really is difficult to combat the willfully ignorant. Now, please don't misunderstand me. There's nothing wrong with loving Product Z™. I have many products that I use and can rhapsodize about. I think we just need to be careful about feeling personally attacked if someone criticizes a product we like. No matter what Brand X™ tells you, most products are not 'one size fits all' and will not be right for everyone. That doesn't mean anyone is any better than anyone else based on the products we choose to (or not to) purchase.

Okay. I think I'm done rambling for now. Did I make you think?

Crossposted from Dreamwidth (here) where there are comments. | Comment (OpenID)