Quote:
Originally Posted by drew
The same could be said of many things in today's society. Clothes, houses, cars, alcohol, etc. etc.
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They sure can. That's why it's incredibly difficult to build a brand of any value anymore. I always come back to the same thing. Think about the ubiquitous brands you know these days; they all have the same characteristics. That is, they deliver something of a reasonable quality (not necessarily a great one), they do it with some value, and they appeal to a broad constituency. But what they also have in common is that they're nearly universally maligned in the public sphere. If you asked anybody about their opinion of Bud Light on the record, they would likely comment that they beer was week and tasteless. And yet 1 in 5 beers sold in America is a Bud Light. Wal-Mart? Everybody hates Wal-Mart. And yet it's easily the world's biggest retailer. Tim Horton's? Here's a good comparison - surely you don't know anybody who will admit to enjoying Tim Horton's coffee. And my favorite? Nickelback. Easily the most outwardly despised band of the 21st century and it's not even close. Coincidentally, they're also the preeminent commercial success in all of music dating back almost 15 years and continuing on. I would almost guarantee you that you could not find somebody who would admit to being a Nickelback fan if you asked every person in your entire social circle and everybody within 3 degrees of them. You wouldn't be able to! And yet?
People's identities are mostly a construct of various touchstones that allow them to project something of significance they'd like to see within themselves. The problem is that what most people want more than anything is to be seen as 'cool' and that's a moving target. That's why things like coffee and craft beer become outward representations of the people who drink them: they're 'genuine' and somewhat subversive to the pervasive culture, and they allow the user to extrinsically espouse a sense of fairness and equitability. But nobody actually cares about gourmet coffee and craft beer to die on those hills. When they become even remotely mainstream, they no longer allow the user to hold them out as evidence of their independent thinking as diversion from the hive mind. The products lose their currency. And people move on to the next thing which might mean urban chicken farming or something equally as ridiculous but equally effective in its ability to give people a sense of subversion from the society that they see as a trap.
That's why I don't care about somebody's overwrought description of their coffee-brewing technique because it's just a show. It has no long-term value. It's
only purpose is to exist as an indictment of everyday people.
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