Broken Windows, Rotten Apples: Totalitarian PR
Ideally, PR should be honest; it should define a company’s identity, culture and philosophy — communicating not only information about policies and products — but social purpose. But that concept of public relations relies on two somewhat dubious assumptions.
One, that the public is informed and intelligent — and (of course) actually cares about something but having the coolest thing.
Two, the a company can have any kind of social purpose in a capitalist society where purpose is just making someone rich.
Edward Bernays, the Father of PR saw the public as ignorant and poorly educated, if not as a dangerous mob, a hoi polloi that might at any moment rise up against its master. They needed convenient lies.
The Bernays tradition continues — and dominates. Manipulation. Control.
Apple and Microsoft are good examples.
A lot of the appeal of their products is dictated through peer pressure — a kind of subtle authoritarianism insofar as this pressure, while applied by your friends, is driven by advertising and media imagery. And if you are not “in”, you are “out”. You don’t want to be “out”. Better to do as Socrates did and drink hemlock.
Apple products were always “awesome”, “incredible”, “cool”, whatever superlatives are in fashion at the time.
In China there were once stories of parents selling their kids to get an IPad. Apocryphal of course, but people will believe anything about the Chinese.
Steve Jobs was the Apple avatar — lean, athletic-looking, casual, powerful. Until he died of cancer.
By contrast, Microsoft Windows was “geeky” in line with Bill Gates image. And businesses needed (they thought) PowerPoint to do what Steve Jobs was doing with his presentations, not using PowerPoint of course. “Death by PowerPoint” became a thing.
After Jobs died and Gates retired to rule the world as de facto neoliberal God, advocating birth control in Africa and Charter Schools in the US, Microsoft tried to catch up, which led to Office 365, Windows 10 and other software travesties. But Apple had the iPhone. And Google had entered the DumbPhone market with Android.
Poor Microsoft. Nobody was much interested in PCs anyway. That is soooooo 20th Century.What you really need is a thousand dollar iPhone to take photos of your lunch for 10,000 “friends” on FaceBook you never met.
Does this prove Bernay’s (and Hitler’s) point: that the masses are ignorant?That we are locked into meaningless over-consumption whose purpose is to funnel money and resources to a thousand rich people?
FYI, a cheap Chinese netbook with Linux and free open-source software works just as well — as any Mac’ laptop or Windows 10. It will also wrong MS Office. the Huawei Harmony OS for Dumbphones is better than either the iPhone interface or Android in simple usability.
Why do people buy a chunk of tech with that ubiquitous half eaten fruit on it. Did you ever ask yourself who took the first bite? Is it genetically modified to give you cancer? Does it attract cockroaches?
And Windows? I am sooo tired of that “window” image. Are you a peeper? Like watching people in their undies? “A more human way to do” says MS. “To do”. Do what? Maybe learn a little grammar.
These days Windows and Apple compete to imitate each other. And both hang and crash.
But they rule the world. See, this is consumer democracy. Like American democracy, you get choice that is not choice. Or maybe just choice of different colored shit.
