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Apple, Google, Microsoft – are you a Brand Taliban or Brand Evangelist?

Commentards, why it is good for your wellbeing

Day in, day out commenters do battle on Reg forums behalf or against companies. It used to be Microsoft, and then Google, but lately our readers are most polarized when discussing Apple.

Why the passion, the animus? As some commentards note, we are talking about a phone here, a way of doing things there, and a software-based lifestyle choice or two.

Maybe, Andy Green of the Flexible Thinking Forum has the answer.

Responding to Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway’s article (reg req'd) about the growing tide of invective aimed at BP, Green tries to put the issue into a wider context.

In a letter published in the FT today, he writes:

We have all become more polarized in how we respond to news and institutions. We now cannot simply raise an eyebrow in response to a topical item, but respond in either the extreme positive – or negative.

We now live in an age where we are either Brand Talibans – whatever the organization does, good or bad, will actually reinforce our negativity – or at the other end of the spectrum – Brand evangelists – stoutly defending the organization, whatever is thrown at it.

This increasing black / white polarization, I would suggest, is down to our increasing alienation in a faster moving world, where we have to resort to fundamental good / bad safe / unsafe judgment calls to maintain our sense of well-being. Hating or loving BP reinforces our world, as we choose to see it.

Yes there are those who will hate BP more (if they are so inclined), but equally there are others who will become more resolutely pro-BP, whatever the headlines it continues to spill.

For BP, read Apple.

Readers, is Green right?

Bootnote

I think we can agree we are all Brand Talibans where the phone companies are concerned.

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