Tesla fandom is such a bizarre phenomenon. It's weird that a corporation can become such a big part of their customers' identity that they rabidly go after anything negative.
I agree. And I say this as someone who lives in a house with two iPad Pros, air pods (three pairs)/pro (two pairs) /max (two pairs), home pod, home pod mini, iMac, and two MacBook pros..I’m a big fan of Apple products. But I’m more than happy to talk about all the stuff they do that I don’t like and the lock in which seems to get worse each year…it’s so crazy to me when people make their favorite products/brands/politicians part of their identity when truthfully most of these entities see you as nothing except something from which to extract value.
This is a little trite, but they say that the move away from religion has moved our sense of “who’s god” to the state. In general, at least in USA, trust in the state is really low, so the next step is the corporation, and so people treat their favorite corp almost like a religion and have faith even in the face of actual falsehoods.
Perhaps, I’ve thought about that possibility without knowingly hearing it from “them”. We also struggle with heroes, I’m wondering if there’s a secular void that’s being filled too.
Wonder if the strongly religious get caught up in fanboihood as well.
> two iPad Pros, air pods (three pairs)/pro (two pairs) /max (two pairs), home pod, home pod mini, iMac, and two MacBook pros..I’m a big fan of Apple products.
Normally person like you would be the best person to criticise apple, they are using their products first and foremost :) so they know all little/big things they would want changed
Not really. When they sit at home spending a lot of time online in an echo chamber it's no wonder they end up with a warped perspective that's disconnected from reality.
The same thing happens with QAnon and anti-vax "truthers". Even the strangest ideas get reinforced and believed. Being part of the group becomes more important than seeing what's true.
At this point I don't know if they're fans, or if they're paid shills. There is no way to know that anything on the Internet is posted by a real person. I've started assuming otherwise, and only trusting those I know personally. HN is one of the few places I think real people converse with each other, but even then I wouldn't be surprised of there are bots and paid shills here sometimes.
Reading the comments on HN and comparing to them to the typical wumao comments on YouTube, I don't believe that they're paid shills.
Many of the arguments that pro-China people post are well thought out and consistent across their post history. If they were paid shills, they'd be very well-paid specialists.
Looking purely at the ROI, it would make so much more sense for them to target influential overseas Chinese with such targeted attacks, rather than an online forum full of mostly white, libertarian-leaning contrarians.
Not most, but Tesla and some other companies have very passionate fans that seem to care far too much about a company they have no affiliation with or people they’ll never meet.
