If you're interested in this sort of behaviour, you might try Robert Cialdini's book, Influence, the Phychology of Persuasion (http://www.amazon.com/dp/006124189X/).
[Edit] I'm an idiot. I forgot that I wrote a post about this a while ago - here's a summary of Cialdini's (and related) stuff: https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=439dc4d5-33db-45a.... It's about influence, and to that end discusses some of our behavioural traits.
People rush to attack companies and find unlikely conspiratorial and malicious motivations for companies' actions too. I think the reality is that we're not all that logical. We're logical too, but logic is only part of how we form opinions. A lot of it is some sort of habit. If you see bourgeoisie conspiracy and class conflict as a driving force in the world, your version of events is likely to be whatever supports that. If you see corporate conspiracy everywhere… If you see governments accumulating power everywhere.. If you see a Google conspiracy everywhere..
But I tend to side with you. There's something offensive about the loyalty consumers have to big brands. The relationship just isn't mutual, which gives it an unsavory slavish flavor.
Political parties and loyalty to them tend to devolve into something fairly absurd. But, at least this is using the instinct for what it's meant to be used for. Making factions and tribes and getting your tribe into power. If the tribe Chiefdom is up for grabs, get your clan's main man the hat.
That's what this instinct is designed to do.
Loyalty to a brand of shoes or phone or whatever and developing a tribalism over that is a weird absurdity. With a prospective chief (or president) there is at least the theoretical possibility that your candidate represents your interests and gets your support that way. With brand loyalty, we can't even pretend that's possible. You're loyal to the brand because of an instinct being hijacked, for sure. It's like being loyal to a fictional character, being sad because a couple break up in a soap opera, or getting a mouse all excited with a pheromone soaked cue tip.
;)
It's just that we were talking about biases inherent in brand loyalty, beliefs, religion, political affiliations and world views.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm struggling with this damned primate brain.
An easy way to convince yourself of something that is not rationally true is by evangelism: telling others that yes, this is the best way or greatest thing. The more you repeat it, the more you will believe it yourself.
This phenomenon is especially strong with something that people derive identity from, like religion or (especially for juveniles who have not yet developed a complete identity) psychological feelings of affiliation with subcultures revolving around a certain music genre or goods that project a certain lifestyle to others (designers goods like expensive hand bags, shoes or iPhones).
I was reminded of this recently when I started seeing a lot of tweets along the lines of "Now that I've been using the iPhone 6 for a while, the iPhone 5 looks like a postage stamp. I can't go back to such a small screen"
Only a little while back these same people would ridicule large phones.
I think most companies would kill (figuratively) for that sort of audience.
yup. Here's one of the best explanations I've read to date about why those discussions usually are useless and result in yay/nay but nothing more: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html In short: when beliefs take over, reasoning steps aside.
What I've come to realize though is that to a certain extent, it seems futile to try and overcome tying things to our identity. I've often been accused of being overly analytical in everything I do (including things like relationships, which apparently you're not supposed to evaluate using statistics).
The problem is that my attempt to catch my own biases kind of drives me crazy in a way. I already have OCD, and all of my layers of meta-analysis toward my own arguments and viewpoints just ends up exhausting me. Add that to the fact that when I get in an "unwinnable" debate (you know the people; the ones who never give an inch) I just end up getting cranky and unhappy.
So while I do think this primitive, illogical, emotionally biased soup of a thinking machine we call a "brain" is far from optimal, I'm not sure if it's much better healthwise to attempt to force it into the other extreme.
No. Extremes are always bad - except in one case: me making this claim is also sort of an extreme. But the only good one, lol :]
For the rest: I think I know what you mean. I used to be self-analytical like that as well. Getting older though I found in the end it just made me unhappy because all this analysis (for me) led to mainly focussing on the bad points and ignoring all the good points. So now I'm easier on myself and instead of constantly trying to fix my whole self in one go I'm trying to do it rather gradually: firstly always try to do good and good only and secondly when I figure I'm not doing good (well, just admitting that and trying to fix it is already a good start and steps beyond what some ever achieve), or being way too biased, or wanting to kick people becasue they are being complete asholes, etc, etc, a short reflection going for example like 'ok, I'm too biased here, that's not so good, but it's also nothing to be ashamed of, just try better next time' or 'ok, the guys opinion clearly differs from yours and is possibly also completely wrong, but that does not mean he's a complete asshole. Better try to educate him instead of trying to kick his ass'. No idea if that makes sense to anyone but after some years of doing this I think I've actually become a better person. And definitely less unhappy. Nonetheless, sometimes I'll still be a complete ass myself mainly in online discussions. Working on it though :]
How it is being used in pg's Identity, I believe, is referring more to a Self-Concept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-concept), or 'How one views one's self.' On the other, statements like "I've often been accused of being overly analytical" and "I already have OCD" refer more to Self-Knowledge, which the Self-Concept Wikipedia article suggests is distinct. The difference is in how we think about how things relate to ourselves, and is critical to what pg is saying.
For example, the article brings up an example in which a thread about programming degenerates into a religious-like war when programmers identify as a "X programmer". By incorporating X into their identity, or Self-Concept, they are saying 'X is part of who I am.' By incorporating X into their Self-Knowledge that would sound more like, 'X is something I know.'
The Self-Concept is dangerous because when someone else comes along and says something like "X sucks" the X-Programmer interprets it is "part of who I am sucks" as opposed to "something I know sucks." The latter is easy to dismiss (or discuss), but the former is personal and offensive.
pg warns that the more of these ideas we build into our Self-Concept the more exposed we become. By allowing more ideas into our Self-Concept we create new path ways for others to strike at our primitive, illogical, emotionally biased core. And its not that having that primitive core is bad, it's just that 'sophistication, logic, and rationalization' are slow and take a lot of energy. Presumable, that's why we have that primitive core, because people who try to rationalize threats to their well being are beaten, eaten, and humiliated; they can't react fast enough or keep it up long enough.
So don't try to hit the other extreme, you'll just wear yourself out. But be careful what you allow into your Self-Concept, because your Self-Concept isn't rational.
Apparently, the same parts of the brain are triggered.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/05/19/apple.reli...
"The neuroscientists ran a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test on an Apple fanatic and discovered that images of the technology company's gadgets lit up the same parts of the brain as images of a deity do for religious people, the report says."
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/51/21533.full
Perhaps we're really describing the same mental faculty - conflation with brands, and religions, and political parties, are all just manipulations of the brain's habituated desire circuits, and to the person experiencing the "loyalty" just feel like being "true to oneself."
This may be a tautology.
In a world of spurious law suits and sensationalist headlines, it's a savvy person who doubts stories like this.
And in reality, this really does sound like a bug right now. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I don't see any point in deleting a users music this way. Apple doesn't have a problem implementing unpopular policies that irk it's customers. So why be cloak and dagger about this?
You'll see this happen pretty much anywhere. Politics? Far right wing nutjobs come out of the woodwork, angering far left nutjobs who come out of the woodwork to counteract the former. Ditto with military forces. Rebels/terrorists come out of the woodwork, suddenly extreme force (e.g. aerial bombardment, rendition, etc) is A-OK to cancel them out. Religious fanatics come out of the woodwork, and then the atheist fanatics come out of the woodwork.
The middle pretty much ignores the fringes until the battle actually affects them. Then everyone's coming out of the woodwork.
And yet, every time you look online, you see people talking about how horrible they are. People laugh at you for using Apple (or Google) products. A number of non-controversies about the company's products come up every year, just to give angry people another link to click on. And when the real controversies come up, all they do is reinforce people's established opinions. "How just like Apple (or Google). Fuck that company."
You don't want this stuff to become part of your identity, but in the end, your hand is kind of forced.
Attacking the brand feels like attacking them and they get defensive about it.
also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelism_marketing#History
Likening it to religion is likely not as far off as it first seems.
Think about what I just wrote, and tell me what does that say about the current state of the corporate world?
- 4K/5K desktop (the new iMac) that just works out of the box, without apps displaying tiny fonts
- TouchID on the iPhone 5S/6, a fingerprint login that actually works
- MacBook Pro unibody, including the trackpad precision
- MacBook Air
Try to come up with a similar list for HP, Dell or IBM. Maybe they do great work in the server space.
Equally, it's hard to see how their laptops could be considered anything less than good, whether OX is for you or not.
The keyboard is very specific to OS X and it's annoying to use under any other operating system. They don't build proper trackpad drivers for Windows or Linux last time I checked. They steer you directly towards the most expensive model if you're a professional because everything is soldered onto the motherboard.
You don't get a copy of Windows with it and if you're in business, you're going to need that as nobody in business really runs OS X (and that BYOD propaganda you're hearing about is just that - no IT department wants to infect their actual network with outside devices, so you'll most likely be stuck in some kind of DMZ without any real access.)
They're also stuck in the past. The Surface Pro is the future for mobile workers (but until Apple "invents" their version, I think most of the Apple apologists here on HN would probably disagree.)
>You don't get a copy of Windows with it and if you're in business, you're going to need that as nobody in business really runs OS X (and that BYOD propaganda you're hearing about is just that - no IT department wants to infect their actual network with outside devices, so you'll most likely be stuck in some kind of DMZ without any real access.)
This is utter nonsense though. I go to (way too many) professional conferences and I see way more Macs than I do Windows boxes and that's not even counting the Linux systems. This partly reflects the fact that I go to a lot of developer-centric events but even at a show like VMworld, you see at least as many Macs as Windows.
As for the lack of modularity, like it or not, it's increasingly the norm these days across most manufacturers. People like slim and light and modularity tends to work against those things.
I was just reacting to the statement that you must have Windows to be useful in business.
Everytime someone mentions this I cant help but recall the iphone that couldn't make phone calls unless you held it correctly.
At least Apple learned from that one.
As a side note the 6 feels great.
Whatever psychological mechanism it is, I'm sure these companies are abusing it (or would if they could).
This is where marketing tries to be.