Double digits! WOOO! In episode 10 of the Lounge Ruminator podcast, Brand Nationalism, I reflect on how brand fandom and nationalistic tendencies can share quite a bit in common. 🎙
@martinfeld Interesting episode. I was struck by your comment on outlandish statements. I can think of a counter example: Lex Fridman who predicted an Apple TV set every year (so it became a sort of insulting meme). Although, it took a while and it didn't discredit him, merely the TV prediction. I can actually remember Mike Hurrly saying the exact same thing and even boasting that there was no harm in making outlandish statements because when you are right, people think you are some genius and they forget when you are wrong.
@ChrisJWilson Thank you for listening! I also love receiving feedback, so I appreciate the comment.
Unless I’ve misunderstood you or miscommunicated in the episode, I think that we agree with each other. Fans forgetting the things that were wrong, rumoured or misreported is what I was trying to get at with the section connected to political commentators. Anyhow, I think that you’re right! 😀
I’ve certainly been too much of a defensive tech fan in the past (better now though) and did a number of the very things that I described.
Do you ever catch yourself doing interesting things as a fan? What do you enjoy or fixate on the most?
@martinfeld I do think we agree with each other. I think I was "searching for the exceptions or the limits" of an idea. I find myself doing it a lot and while it can be helpful, it can be needless in some cases. Maybe I mentioned it as an example of the point you made. I would like to think that I'm not a defensive tech fan but I almost certainly am more than I'd care to admit (mostly for Apple and the iPad). At the same time, I've deliberately tried to activities to break my thinking out of that defensive thinking. I suspect that these efforts may have helped but don't deal with everything.
One example is that I'm still very defensive over Apple and Privacy. I found myself defending Apple with the Siri recording scandle when I probably shouldn't. My defensive would be that people hold Apple to a higher standard here than other companies but that probably doesn't excuse it.
I'll keep considering the "doing interesting things as a fan" I'm sure there are some other example with tech and probably other areas of life.
@ChrisJWilson I can relate to what you said about defending Apple and it’s stance on privacy.
People certainly hold the company to a higher standard, so when it does stuff up it tends to be a bigger issue in the media. I do believe that it occupies a higher moral ground but when the Siri thing occurred, I made the decision to deactivate the always-listening feature on my HomePods. The Orwellian risk had always been in the back of my mind anyway but I was willing to believe that Apple was doing the right thing. When it came out that the company had been doing the wrong thing and then even corrected it, yeh whole issue made me decide not to grant that level of trust and access again. Apple may have a lot of my personal information and location data but I draw the line at listening to my home now. I tap and hold to use Siri these days.
If you think of anything else about a personal fandom, I’d love to know! As an example, I grew up watching series like Seinfeld, The Simpsons and Kath & Kim (AU), as well as Monty Python, so I find myself constantly bringing up scenes with people that relate to moments in real life.