Genesis does what Ninten-dont

Everything today is a game of two sides. PC vs Mac, Android vs iPhone, Sony vs Microsoft, 99% vs 1%, Democrats vs Republicans, Religion vs Atheism, etc. Ask a person at random about their feelings on one of these subjects, and most of them will have a black/white opinion about one side or the other.

 From a commercial perspective, this is a dream scenario. The old market format of three (The Best, The First, and The Cheapest), has been expanded to give space for a new member: The Rival.

People having dichotomic opinions like this blows sales and word-of-mouth marketing through the roof. People identifying so closely with a product was something people first noticed with Apple, where Apple users were first the up and comer, attaching a feeling of supporting the underdog to their purchases, assaulting big business like Microsoft, big ideas and smart design winning in an almost monopolized market.  They were the Mighty Ducks of the market, people started to identify themselves as “Apple Users” proudly, creating a largely negative response from people who were not “Apple Users”.

This sports team style of market combat taps an incredible resource of fandom that leads to the sort of comments you’ll see all around the internet. Look at any market with two major sides, find youtube videos or threads about the subject, and you’ll see pages upon pages of debate from people who hold their chosen product close to their heart.

And it’s not bad for anyone, at least, in business.

The repercussions of this is that people began to identify themselves by the things they consume: Xbox, Playstation, Team Jacob, Team Edward, Ke$ha, Lady Gaga. People love belonging to groups of likeminded people, and connect with people based on these black and white choices which are the subset of the ultimate free choice. “What do I buy?”.

This need for belonging in people has become so strong that it’s now scarily possible to blanket label sets of people based on these things, as they not only share the same characteristics a lot of the time, but often strive to do so. 

It can be argued that culture is suffering because of this. Humour has become, for the large part, memetic and self referential, as for the most part, we love the idea of bonding with someone based on the fact that they got the same 90s cartoon reference as we did. Popular music, despite the infinite channels of accessibility provided by the internet, has become derivative and unvaried. Films are a caricature-like arms race of size and spectacle.

The current generation is one that was raised on playground wars around videogame consoles, and that has crossed into every single aspect of our lives, we all have two choices, in everything, but that’s all we get.

And that’s terrifying.

5 months ago  /  0 notes

had to unfollow all of the sexy tumblrs

they update too much and then tumblr is just black and white porn

6 months ago  /  0 notes