The Customer is Not Always Right.

Continued from A1...

     A perpetual negative feed back loop designed to compound the citizen into polarization, single choice, single issue and single topic thought. Conditioned to choose between two things over and over, then told everything they choose is correct, every action they take is correct. Then you give that consumer social media and say “what’s on your mind” and reward that behavior with micro-actions of validation: likes/comments/reposts. What develops from that system is a mind so compounded into their views what emerges is 2021: a negative system that is rewarding outrage, outlandish behavior and the promotion of these Karen and Kanye type behaviors.

       Over the years, brands hungry for the consumer’s dollar have rolled out several AD campaigns intended to force the consumer into a choice: Coke or Pepsi? Ford or Chevy? Boxers or Briefs? Real World vs Road Rules? Kelly or Justin? Hip-hop or Rock? Bud light vs Coors? Less filling vs taste great? Whooper vs Big Mac? Samsung vs Apple? In N Out vs Shake Shack? Xbox vs Play Station? Cingular vs Verizon? Patriots vs Eagles? I'm a Mac, he’s a PC. REPUBLICAN VS DEMOCRAT?!?!?! Is the dress blue or white?

     These types of simple questions have compounded over time and what has emerged from that consumer system is an overly opinionated consumer who has been trained to tie their values to their choice of products. They don’t have to listen to anything anyone else has to say because “they know!” They saw the commercial and they know it’s the best. Why? Because they know. No facts, no debate, they know their choices and their selections are the correct, and the only correct choice.

     You take that mindset and hand it off to social media apps, when opened up provide the user with an empty box and a prompt: what’s on your mind today? What’s happening now? Did you eat at *restaurant name*? Please leave a review to let others know what you thought. Over and over and over, the market has conditioned people to make simple singular choices based on feelings alone, then told them to review, check in, let others know what they think. This is further driven home with the addition of “likes, comments, thumbs up” reactions to their post. If they post something positive and do not receive likes they will delete the post and repost something maybe more edgy that will get likes. This reinforces the negative feedback loop because they will no longer post positive things, which receives no attention and focus on posting the negative items which do.

     What has emerged from this System is the “Kanye and Karen” mindset. It doesn’t matter what facts you tell them, any rational or reasoning. They know, because they know and they’ve been told to let everyone around them know. Currently, this type of personalty appears through out our society. From the person 5 cars back who honks because they can’t see the person who is walking in the middle of the intersection. The person who *sighs* behind you because the person in front of them is taking too long to order, when they didn’t have enough time to stop for coffee in the first place. The customer who gets angry at the wait staff because they asked for water two minutes ago and who cares if the place is packed, they are paying customers! The overly demanding customer at the restaurant who can’t understand why “this happens to me everywhere I go”.

     An utter lack of self-awareness and overly entitled consumers driven into their polarized mind state that they and only they are correct about everything, even though they have never laid a second of thought or research towards a topic. This type of simple choice repeated over time and compounded into what we see today. Single issue thinkers focused only on basic surface level view points, ready at the whip to spout off their opinion on anything no matter what the topic is. Add this to the fact that people now tie their identity and personalty to brands, movements, ideals, religion or any number of other single thought items and you got a problem on your hands which is now rearing it’s ugly face within our society

     We have been conditioned into single issue thinkers pushed to make a selection and live with 6 other strangers in a house, to have our lives taped to see what happens when things start getting real. It’s anything but “REAL”.