Peeve Farm

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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
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Monday, June 17, 2002

23:24 - Orlowski, you're a sad, strange little man.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/35/25750.html

(top)

Andrew Orlowski of The Register has an article, referred to me by Steven den Beste, in which he responds to the new Apple ads with shock and horror. He says that the "Real People" campaign paints Mac users as pathetic losers, sexual deviants, and general lowlife idiots. This from a usually quite content iBook user, too.

Well, I disagree, but at this stage I'm not sure if it's because of any one particular point he makes, or if it's just that I've only now finished reading it and am still sort of at a loss for words, as though I'd been walking down the street and had someone leap out of an alley, whap me about the face with a pair of wrapping-paper rolls, and then run away.

I think he's really reaching with his "Losers" observation. Sarah Whistler gives him dominatrix vibes, and he freeze-frames Damon Wright in a pose where it looks like he's groping for boobs-- I think that tells us more about Orlowski's particular psychological quirks than anything else, to say nothing of the pettiness and the flimsiness of premise that you'd have to have in order to make these kinds of cheap-shots the basis for your article.

"It is my friend," says one 'Dianne Dyruff'.

"I think we'll have another little iBook in the family soon!" she concludes, revealing a fetish every bit as bizarre as Furries.

Surely 'Real People' don't pretend that computers are their friends, or their children? How sad is that?

I dunno, Andrew. How sad is it to have to cast aspersions on the nature of someone's nice haircut in order to prove your case? How sad is it to take what to everybody else is a happy, silly, human ad campaign that manages to take an aggressive stance through the casting of vulnerable Everymen-- and try to prove that it's a hellacious "theatre of cruelty" that exploits Apple's own users as helpless pathetic pawns?

Orlowski has spent the past year griping about the horizontal pin-striping in OS X-- I don't think he's missed mentioning it in a single Mac article, even though they've been present (and even more prominent) in the classic OS, dating back to 1984. And that's just for starters. I've always considered him to have some very peculiar, inscrutable axes to grind, and this latest bit doesn't do much to dissolve that opinion.

Sure, he may be "terrified" by the new ads. I think he's succumbing to the kind of guilt you feel if you've been caught in something naughty-- someone peels the roof off the alley where you're shooting up, and you flail about until you see someone else you can point at and yell "He did it first!" He's feeling weird about being an underground rebellious Mac user who suddenly has the eyes of the world on the platform he's just become aware that he's been writing about for so long from the haven of obscurity.

But if I were Apple, and I were trying to cast a cross-section of society (leaning tangibly on the creative and technological), I don't know if I'd have been able to do it better:

Aaron Adams - Windows LAN administrator, looks like a nice boring kinda guy
Sarah Whistler - Writer, non-technical motherly type (dominatrix? C'mon...)
Mark Frauenfelder - geek who likes geek toys
Liza Richardson - DJ, very attractive gal with stringent demands for quality
Diane Druyff - that fun, sort of plump woman in every workplace who unapologetically loves life
Dave Haxton - Propeller-beanied developer
Patrick Gant - Everyday guy who simply wants his computer to quit making his life miserable
Damon Wright - IT manager with a movie-star coif-- beaming the smile of the recently converted

What does Orlowski think is missing? Gamer kids? College dudes? Bleached blondes? Is he weirded-out that there aren't any token non-whites in the lineup (granted, that is kinda strange, this day and age)? This is a strong "professional" cross-section, and one that ought to hit its target demographics square-on.

What else is bizarre about this article? Let's see. For one thing, I think the "slow mocking balalaika score" is meant to personify the frustrated bleary floundering of life in a Windows world, which these people spend much of the time in the ads describing having escaped. It's not mocking *them*, it's mocking their tormentor and sympathizing with their plight. It humanizes them. I think that comes across pretty clearly in the ads, especially as the music ends before they introduce themselves (at the end of the ads, clearly re-shuffled), being confident and happy.

And as for wanting to see comparisons between iTunes and Windows Media Player, or between iMovie and Windows Movie Maker, they're all there on the site, for those willing to take a few moments to look.

From a Mac-user perspective, the ads feel like they're finally speaking our mind, not that of the company-- these are the things we've been saying all these years, not cooked-up marketing-ese. But from a PC user standpoint, they're meant to be silly and human and a plea for sanity without being confrontational, and I think they do that very well.

Orlowski's done a fine job of showing that he's happiest when he's bitching about something, even if he has to make up something to bitch about.