I don't know if it was always like this, like pre internet, but I remember when I first started hearing people concerning themselves with the profitability of corporations online.

It was somewhere around the start of the eternal September (I was one of the unwashed tech illiterate masses), and I witnessed people having the most furious debates about video game company / console profitability, and it just never ended.

I wonder if it was just my first encounter to seeing so many Americans in one (virtual) place, or if it was the latent tribalism of the internet, or just nerds having fun crunching their nerd numbers. But I still see way too much of it.

It has got better in some of the chiller places on the internet, though. Which are about the only places I frequent.

Curious to hear other people's perspectives on this kind of parasocial relationship with corps / brands.