How NOT to Advertise the Mac
One of the tenets of a good ad is that you should look at the people in the ad — the actors, models, whatever — and think, “I want to be like them.” That’s one reason they’re almost all good looking. (Another tack is to show people “just like you.”)
That said, after the spate of e-mail I received from Mac users about my column on the Virginia Tech supercomputer, I would never want to be associated with the Macintosh community.
Please understand that there were certainly a number of polite, well-written notes. But they were by far the minority. What I thought was particularly funny were the large number of messages saying exactly the same thing, sending me the same pro-Mac quote, and then calling me a “lemming” for being a PC user.
As the saying goes, “Pot. Kettle. Black.”
Here’s a sample of the kind of mail I got for not playing up the Mac’s role enough:
From “Nick” from Albany, NY, (macattack15@spymac.com):
douche.
From “gabeharville” with a subject of “you suck, you fuckin little bitchfag”:
FUCK YOU, FUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK…
And so on, for several more lines.
From “rp” (finalcutpro78@yahoo.com):
Wake up an [sic] smell the roses asshole. PC’s [sic] are far behind Macs. Get you [sic] fucking shit straight you fucking geek.
And so on.
What’s sad is that I don’t hate Macs. I hate OS9, which I’m stuck on at work. But even if I did, guess what? I’m allowed. I’m allowed to hate what I want to, and so are you. I’m allowed to think that orange is a nicer color than green (or vice versa), and no amount of telling me how wrong I am or how pretty green is will change my mind.
That said, I think OSX is a beautiful thing (although possibly coming too late to save the Mac, considering that there are, I hear, now more Linux users than Mac users). I think it’s a great OS on a great piece of hardware, and I’m heartened to see so much software coming out for it.
In fact, my column wasn’t about Macs, it was about the VT supercomputer. I wasn’t writing a piece on how it’s Mac based, either — just on the overall picture of how cool it is. I’m sure there will be plenty of stories covering the Macintosh end of things; mine wasn’t one.
I’ve finally set up a filter to separate mail from screaming Mac lovers so I can go through it at my leisure. I’ll continue to post the more interesting ones.
