Writing for Fast Company, Rebecca Greenfield is shocked—SHOCKED!!!—to have caught Apple engaging in… marketing!
“The Apple Live Blog Reality Distortion Field” (tip o’ the antlers to Matt Riegler)
Wut?
Well, you may have noticed that during its September 9 product unveiling and kinda gross U2 love-fest, Apple turned its home page into a live blog of news and reactions to the event pulled from social media.
But the shocking thing, the thing that Apple doesn’t want you to know about? It hand-picked those reactions and chose only ones that were positive!
The Macalope will now pause to allow you time to collect yourself.
…
Ready to move on?
No?
…
Just take a deep breath. It’ll be OK. We’ll get through this together and one day…one day…we’ll learn to trust again.
All this pearl-clutching and couch-fainting is pretty rich coming from an article festooned with useless links to other Fast Company content that you are, almost assuredly, not at all interested in. Take this example:
But this year, the Apple PR team went a bit further, mimicking media coverage…
The link there is to Fact Company’s media coverage—anything from what Jon Stewart said on last night’s The Daily Show to “Startup Lessons from the Food Truck Revolution” which is totally media-related, shut up. That was what you wanted to read, right?
Turns out marketing is a “thing” that companies “do” in order to increase “profit.” It is shocking, yes. If you’re incredibly naïve or just pretending to be in order to bang out an Apple-related article.
However, what the live blog offers in pretty pictures, it lacks in jokes and what some might call reality.
The next thing you’ll tell us is that Apple’s ads are made by professionals and deliberate attempts to try to encourage people to buy their products! SAY IT ISN’T SO, SHOELESS PHIL SCHILLER!
Apple’s live blog is not only misleading, it’s sterile.
Seriously? You expect Apple to put a wide spectrum of comments about the Apple Watch on its home page, including “It’s hideous” from Fast Company’s Mark Wilson? Is there any other company in the world you would try to lay that ridiculous standard on?
Considering all the fanboyism…
BZZT.
…surrounding Apple and its product announcements, live blogs can read like sponsored content. That is, until you read Apple’s own live blog, and realize: It could be worse.
No, only the unvarnished mind of someone who dismisses the millions and millions of very satisfied Apple customers as “fanboys” can stay pure in the face of such…marketing.