05 February, 2007

Sea of Madness

From "I Hate Macs", a commentary on the latest Apple advertising campaign:

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality.

I agree with this sentiment and it is somehow related to how I felt after reading the following from an article in the Crap Times today:

The most telling postgame commentary came from ESPN's tag-team of Tom Jackson and Steve Young. (What a surprise, CBS offered nothing even remotely resembling analysis beyond some blathering testimonials to Indianapolis.)

How is it that fans demand and ESPN can deliver the most detailed Clausewitzian post mortems to sporting events yet the news sucks so badly and no one really seems to mind all too much?

I'm not sure how my feelings on these things are related but they are somehow. Must be from watching too much David Lynch lately.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with the personality bit - to a degree - I'm trying to find a different term to replace "mental illness".

I don't think being a mindless consumer drone is a mental illness (caused my something physical) as much as it is a pathological lack of imagination.

In a thoughtful mood and it struck me as worth mentioning. I use the same kind of language on occasion, I think it's really lazy.

Ah, hypocrisy.

Obviously, I'm not a mac hata, just a consumer culta hata.

The D