From the New Yorker's Facebook (a community website, like Myspace, but for people at Harvard) profile, May 15 2006....

'Facebook allows advertisers to sponsor user groups, such as the Nike group, the Abercrombie & Fitch group, and the Apple group, where members can discuss a company's products. Some of these groups are surprisingly popular with students, who evidently are less suspicious of American corporations than previous generations of college kids. "At Harvard, there's a group called Not A Corporate Whore," Chris Hughes says, "but a lot of those people are also in the Apple group".

As global brands go, they don't come any bigger than Apple, but it's not surprising that kids with anti corporate feelings still find themselves drawn to the company. Back in the late 80's, when it was struggling as a small company against giants like IBM, Apple cleverly took advantage of their 'outsider' status with the 'Think Different' campaign. They used brilliant but wayward icons like Einstien to say 'you're different, we're different too'. This very much appeals to the individually minded consumer who feels disconnected from 'the system' but has no real desire to completely break free from it. Thus Apple is the corporate brand of choice for the armchair anti-corporate.

Of all people though, the brains at Harvard should be a little more self aware, or aware of the irony at least. I'm one to talk though... I was bristling with pride the other day watching Al Gore's film 'An Inconvenient Truth' as he was running a powerpoint show off of the exact same Mac as mine. And he has the same Treo phone.



On another note, I started therapy yesterday, and already it has thrown up some interesting points.

'Do you have a history of setting fire to things?' she asked me.

'No' I said 'just love letters from broken relationships and the odd picture of Posh Spice on the cover of Sleazenation'.

'I'm trying to understand why fire is so important to you Neil. Lets talk about your father... what does he do for a living?'

'Oh, he makes fire alarms.'