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Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#21

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands.

Hell, look around you. How many items do you see that were NOT made by a corporation?

The brands I choose are a reflection of my personality. I shop at Wegmans instead of having groceries delivered because I like their quality and I can always run into people I know. I buy Apple products because they appear more integrated and polished than other consumer tech, and that is an important aspect of my personality. I'm not a shill (ok, I did work for Apple a few years ago), but rather I am so content with the brands I choose that I enjoy telling others about them.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#22

Post by bad_user »

microtonal wrote: post #8

I always wonder to what extend this happens on Hacker News. I am sure that a lot of up/downvoting is done based on product loyalty. But many people here are employed by one of the companies involved in the 'ecosystem wars'. After all, if all the parties in a war are pushing you to ‘join their side’ then they are trying very hard to make you forget that there is another side: your side, non-participation in the war, t…

When it comes to Android vs iOS I think technical or budget reasons are less important than philosophies. Apple got very paternalistic towards their users and this has always manifested in what they allow you to do with their devices. iOS has always had limitations, being defective by design. And so Apple's customers ultimately end up choosing something else, or end up believing that Apple's actions are for their own good. And Android is in many ways iOS's opposite.

What really bothers me is that people feel the need to defend their choice, their investment and so they end up believing things and adopting an apologetic attitude just for the sake of thinking about their favorite company as being the good guys. And this is much more than the effects of marketing.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#23

Post by jacquesm »

bad_user wrote: post #22
microtonal wrote: post #8

I always wonder to what extend this happens on Hacker News. I am sure that a lot of up/downvoting is done based on product loyalty. But many people here are employed by one of the companies involved in the 'ecosystem wars'. After all, if all the parties in a war are pushing you to ‘join their side’ then they are trying very hard to make you forget that there is another side: your side, non-participation in the war, t…

When it comes to Android vs iOS I think technical or budget reasons are less important than philosophies. Apple got very paternalistic towards their users and this has always manifested in what they allow you to do with their devices. iOS has always had limitations, being defective by design. And so Apple's customers ultimately end up choosing something else, or end up believing that Apple's actions are for their own…

> What really bothers me is that people feel the need to defend their choice, their investment and so they end up believing things and adopting an apologetic attitude just for the sake of thinking about their favorite company as being the good guys.

That's because branding contains all kinds of self-identification hooks.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#24

Post by jacquesm »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #21

Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands. Hell, look around you. How many items do you see that were NOT made by a corporation? The brands I choose are a reflection of my personality. I shop at Wegmans instead of having groceries delivered because I like their quality and I can always run into people I know. I buy Apple p…

> Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands.

I strongly disagree with that. Brands should not 'own people', brands should be at best an indicator of what you can expect from a product quality or service wise.

And what's being American (Ultra-American??) got to do with it?

> Hell, look around you. How many items do you see that were NOT made by a corporation?

That does not have anything to do with it. Having corporations produce goods is fine, having them try to hack our brains is not.

> The brands I choose are a reflection of my personality.

Please read 'The Space Merchants', one of my favorite books which is a frontal assault on that one sentence.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#25

Post by saulrh »

It's not a war. It's evolution. Nature, red in tooth and claw. Ideas live in you, and they die in you, and they evolve. Reproduction: ideas spread, through words, deeds, and creations. Variation: communication inherently introduces errors, and thoughts change over time. Selection: ideas that are forgotten die without spreading. With reproduction, variation, and selection, you have evolution.

Religion is a coherent, tenacious, communal meme with unbelievably virulent reproductive mechanisms. A school is a selective breeding program. And advertisements are memetic WMDs, colossal infectious vectors with powerful memetic payloads. Your goal is to infect minds with your idea and to keep them infected long enough for them to take the actions dictated by your meme. Your meme has to be able to reproduce. Your meme has to be transmitted without variation. Your meme has to be selected.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#26

Post by tinco »

josephmx wrote: post #19
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. At least I went through the trouble of making sure that twitter won't be tracking your reading of the page (hit 'shift-control-q and then ctrl-F5 on firefox if you don't believe me, the whole page is one hit to my server and nothing else) and my 'corporation' isn't trying to sell you anything. That follower count is static and it's updated once per week or so. But reading this page you weren't reading an…

How did you get your whole site running in just 3 requests?

It's really just one request if I'm not mistaken. The two data requests are actually references to images embedded in the HTML.

A bit of an aggrevating question but if you look at the site, why should it be more than 1 request? It's just styled text without any obvious images.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#27

Post by jacquesm »

tinco wrote: post #26
josephmx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get your whole site running in just 3 requests?

It's really just one request if I'm not mistaken. The two data requests are actually references to images embedded in the HTML. A bit of an aggrevating question but if you look at the site, why should it be more than 1 request? It's just styled text without any obvious images.

> It's really just one request if I'm not mistaken.

You're correct.

> The two data requests are actually references to images embedded in the HTML.

Yep.

> A bit of an aggrevating question but if you look at the site, why should it be more than 1 request?

100% agree with that. The problem is that most pages that are just 'text without any obvious images' clock in tens of requests and easily a megabyte+.

Before I finally found the time to switch blogging platforms this one was no different and it aggravated me no end that something that simple should require 600K of data and 18 requests. The new one (which was quite a bit of work to put together, it took more work to send less data) is much better in that sense.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#28

Post by tinco »

jacquesm wrote: post #24
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #21

Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands. Hell, look around you. How many items do you see that were NOT made by a corporation? The brands I choose are a reflection of my personality. I shop at Wegmans instead of having groceries delivered because I like their quality and I can always run into people I know. I buy Apple p…

> Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands. I strongly disagree with that. Brands should not 'own people', brands should be at best an indicator of what you can expect from a product quality or service wise. And what's being American (Ultra-American??) got to do with it? > Hell, look around you. How many items do you see…

An Ultra-American is so capitalist that they prefer plutocracy over democracy. It's some sort of consequence of the cold war I'd guess.

I've not read 'The Space Merchants' but I wonder how it assaults that sentence as I believe it is generally true. That's not to say that your chosen brands are a full representation of your personality, but they certainly cover a lot of it.

I shop at Albert Heijn, even though there's an Aldi, Lidle and Jumbo at roughly the same distance from my house. I'm sure that will tell you all sorts of things about my personality. Not that all people who go there are the same, but it'll still tell you something about me. Same goes for that my workstation runs Linux, and my laptop is a Mac (with dual boot linux).

I don't think now you know exactly what kind of person I am, but they are partial reflections of my personality. What I tolerate, and what I don't. What I prefer and what I disdain.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#29

Post by lentil_soup »

elisee wrote: post #16

Related, though less about brands, I really liked "This Video Will Make You Angry" by CGP Grey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc - Thoughts/memes as germs trying to reproduce and spread, battling for attention and thriving when people endlessly argue as part of an us/them dynamic.

This reminds me a lot of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene). That book actually coined the word "meme".

Mindblowing book if you haven't read it.

Re: Your Head as a Battleground, Dueling Memes

#30

Post by jacquesm »

tinco wrote: post #28
jacquesm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps this is my inner Ultra-American speaking, but I think it's perfectly fine for people to feel aligned, even owned, by their brands. I strongly disagree with that. Brands should not 'own people', brands should be at best an indicator of what you can expect from a product quality or service wise. And what's being American (Ultra-American??) got to do with it? > Hell, look around you. How many items do you see…

An Ultra-American is so capitalist that they prefer plutocracy over democracy. It's some sort of consequence of the cold war I'd guess. I've not read 'The Space Merchants' but I wonder how it assaults that sentence as I believe it is generally true. That's not to say that your chosen brands are a full representation of your personality, but they certainly cover a lot of it. I shop at Albert Heijn, even though there's…

> I've not read 'The Space Merchants' but I wonder how it assaults that sentence as I believe it is generally true.

I'm definitely not saying that it is not true, I'm saying that it should not be true and that 'The Space Merchants' is an excellent book around the theme of why that should not be true and how the machinery behind the curtain works.

We're not exactly unable to influence how we think and act (within limits). Corporate brands are a fairly recent invention, there is no need to give them the amount of head-space that they are taking up.

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