Two stories about consumers
I’m broadly sympathetic with Rockets And Rayguns in this argument, but it’s fascinating to me how the meaning of “mainstream” and the “ordinary consumer” is changing in what you might call Apple fan discourse (and, if R & R is right, causing schisms within that discourse).
There are two stories to be told about ordinary consumers:
In the first, the ordinary consumer is a fool to be pitied: a lazy consumer dupe who regularly and frustratingly goes out and buys crap, like Windows 95 and PCs. This is the kind of story you tell if you’re a niche product or an indie. Apple have generally told this story.
In the second, the ordinary consumer is a hero: an everyman who sees elitist tech bullshit for what it is and who goes out and buys the best. In this particular version of the story he’s eager to own devices that make computing simple. This is the kind of story you tell if you’re a market leader or a superstar. Microsoft and Google tell variants on it.
Apple is an interesting company to me because so much of its marketing and branding happens via its fans - it has an amazing ability to turn its purchasers into disciples and believers. Since the release of the iPhone (possibly before) it’s become a company that is in the position of needing to move from spreading the first story to spreading the second. How it does this, and whether it does it successfully, is the bit of the iPad/Apple/whatever saga that really interests me.
