going off my vague and admittedly rusty memory, there were at least three major examples of this that I personally encountered:
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- The Marvel Civil War story arc in the comics
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- The Twilight Saga Edward Vs Jacob marketing for the movies (which admittedly was handled somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I seem to recall a fast food commercial taking it to what I hope was an intentionally absurd degree)
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- The MCU retread of Civil War from the comics, adapted to the silver screen
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*** 4) Edit: Injustice: gods among us (thanks to u/Kinglion for pointing that one out)***
Whether this was intentional or not is beyond the scope of this screed, but it is interesting to note how many real-world examples of this phenomenon occurred during and after these campaigns, gamergate, the ghostbusters fiasco, the trump/anti trump movements, etc.
maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's something. I honestly have no idea, but the timing is certainly interesting at the very least.
Left Twix vs. Right Twix.
damn, good catch.
That's actually the first one that popped into my head when I read your title. I'd forgotten about the whole Twilight thing though.
lol, I remember rolling my eyes at the twilight thing...only to catch myself with a team cap button on my walmart vest years later. 🤣😅
I think that one is much more tongue in cheek, though.
I agree, though it's certainly playing into the "pick a side" culture.
True enough.
You're forgetting the biggest example.
The console wars. The hilarious attempt to divide people into two camps that are both disgracefully inferior to the alternative they seek to ignore.
lmao. the thing is with the console wars is there were competing brands vying for your dollars. this was one brand pushing people into camps based on character that were both owned/licensed to one brand.
You forgot the big one: PC or Mac.
I think what he means is building up division within a brand or piece of media. That way you capitalize on both sides of the internal rivalry.
Both side of the PC/mac crap did benefit. It's not like they weren't laughing at the rubes who were taking sides.
That's still not what OP meant though.
It doesn't matter. It's all on big club and you ain't in it.
Are you at least tangentially aware of what the topic of this thread even is?
Are you? It doesn't matter that it is ostensibly two different companies. The CEO's went to the same schools, they have the same marketing firms and brokerages, they attend the same parties and conferences, and they sit on the same boards. It is the same shit in a different pile. It is a false dichotomy.
The fact that *you *don't understand that is telling.
Fucking lol.
You're trying to make this into some serious diatribe about the nature of the uniparty and corporate manipulation and all that.
Mate, it's a post about the goofy marketing gimmick from a while back where a single company would present two similar products, or characters in a story, and gin up buzz by turning into a sportsball like competition. "Are you Team Lick the Filling Out First or Team Eat the Oreo Whole?"
Read the room dude.
The topic is social control. While you are discussing collusion and businesses practices. They are not the same thing.
yeah, but both sides still wanted a majority market share. they also had different strategies for getting their computers in front of users. Apple targeted schools while IBM targeted businesses. Both were hoping to familiarize users with their products so they'd be more inclined to want to buy what they already knew how to use. (Besides, IBM made most of their money selling to those businesses anyway. corporation needs a looootta workstations, not to mention possibly mainframes and/or AS/400s...)
meanwhile, one company benefits no matter which side you choose with the cap/ironman, edward/jacob, or batman/superman thing.
It may have had a cultural impact, but I doubt it was deliberate. Brand rivalry as a marketing tactic goes much further back than the 2000s. Pepsi vs Coke, the sneaker wars in the 90s with Nike vs Reebok vs Adidas. Ferrari vs Lamborgini. You can go back further. They do it because it sells.
yeah, but in this case, it was one brand pushing both sides of a fictional conflict.
Hell, for all I know, it's a case of "art" imitates life, lol.
still interesting to think about, though.
Again, I think the main reason is that it works as a marketing strategy, even within brands.
no doubt, lol.
I really don't know if there's anything to it, I just thought it was an interesting pattern is all.
Ferrari vs Lamborghini was an actual conflict between the founders. Ferruccio Lamborghini saved enough money to buy a Ferrari and had some criticism with the car he bought, only for Enzo Ferrari to dismiss Lamborghini and call him a tractor salesman.
I worked at a grocery store for a while, and two memories stick out that might fall in line with your idea. Mike & Ike candies making you pick between either 'Mike' or 'Ike,' and the Left vs. Right Twix candy campaign.
...it's weird how many examples you find when you start looking for them... people having been posting so many I hadn't even thought of...
It increases engagement by making the audience actively participate.
...and this is why i'll never be internet famous, lmfao. I wouldn't have even thought about that.
I'm shocked how many people ostensibly read OPs post and yet are utterly baffled and completely off the mark regarding what he's asking. I figured this crowd was at least slightly more literate than the average Baltimore public school.
to be fair, I suspect a lot of people probably skimmed that bit of tl;dr on my part, lol.
Personally I consider it intellectually lazy to respond to a thread you haven't read.
yeah, but I get it.
I try to give people the benefit of the doubt so my inner cynic stays "inner," lol.
Pretty sure these dynamics are baked into our society, to keep things stable and the population distracted, while the real impactful decisions about the direction of society are made by business men who pretend to be above such conflicts. Gamergate exposed the highly political nature of big business, while they pretend to simply be following the will of the people.
there does seem to be an attitude that it's their role to shape the will of the people rather than follow it...
This intra-brand competition marketing has been in comic books for decades. Doing a quick lookup, 1987 had X-Men vs Avengers and X-Men vs Fantastic Four, 1986 had Justice League vs Suicide Squad, and you had JLA vs JSA in 1963.
As for it showing up in other media, not only did comics showed this worked, but this seems like a natural evolution of the Company A Product vs Company B Product marketing strategy that peaked in the 90s. The problem with that model is you're still thinking about Company B. Company A wants you thinking exclusively about its products.
fair point, thanks. something for me to chew on.
Injustice Gods Among Us also started around this time period.
Edit: 2013 I think.
thanks, I forgot about that one, added to the OP.
Was Injustice really a “pick a side” thing? I thought it was pretty much “another evil Superman story.”
Originally it was, and then Superman became more and more of a caricature of evil as time went on. Batman's fuck ups got reconned away and Superman got the shit kicked out him to remind everyone which side they were supposed to be choosing. The reason of course, is that Superman's brand of law abiding, criminal killing and imprisoning, "fascist" way of doing things... Well, it was shown to have worked and a lot of people made the "incorrect" decision of choosing Trump... I mean Superman.
It could be a sign to further integrate the culture of division within Western society knowing how ideologically possessed all of them were/are in media.
You only need to look at some films adapted from books to see that. Like I recently saw playing on the background at a friend's place Runaway Jury and on a whim looked it up to see that though the film focuses on the gun industry, the original focuses on the tobacco industry so they've been doing this for at least a century.
God that movie still pisses me off. Grisham is a hack, and Hollywood still cut the legs off of the only point he made in the book just to turn it into a political jab. Guns don't work at all as a replacement.
could be. I'm not discounting the possibility of intent, I just don't know one way or another.
Would something like Batman vs Superman fit?
I can't remember, did they do the "team superman"/"team batman" thing with that?
either way, maybe. <shrug> I honestly don't know.
It's not accidental, polarization is a primary goal of authoritarian regimes. This is because it radicalizes loyalists an oppositions.
You what a good example of this was?
GamerGate.
Yes, most of us said: "Fuck you Kotaku"
But a strong number of people literally rejected the idea that Kotaku could do wrong, and declared themselves absolutely devoted to the media. You called them GamerGhazi.
Either way, the polarization from the media attacking it's user-base created loyalists that protected their sales.
Abortion, believe it or not, has the same issue. The rest of the world doesn't see abortion as a major political issue, including Europe. Not because abortion is 100% legal in all cases. Actually, many European countries are as restrictive as Mississippi. The reason people bombed abortion clinics, and have 100,000 person "March For Life" and "Pussy Hat" dueling protests, or people threatening to kill SCOTUS, is all because Roe v. Wade ripped the issue out of political moderation via debate. Declaring a single-size solution turned it into a political football that caused division.
The dichotomy is always designed to support the person offering the dichotomy, whichever choice you make.
Interesting theory.
I wouldn't even call it a theory, it's only about half baked, lol.
More of an observation, honestly
I totally agree with you on that being the period where they're really pushing the which side are you on. There have been other periods where there were rivalries but they weren't politicized like they are now. Yes there was the Coke and Pepsi wars but nobody was going to burn your house down if you chose Coke or Pepsi. The Obama era really assured in one side is righteous and the other side is awful and you better pick the right side.
...that does seem to be the tipping point. I remember my mother calling him a Manchurian Candidate (learned a new word that day, lol), and I remember the campaigning for him being off-putting, though I always chalked it up to him being a Dem, and me coming from a pretty conservative family...
...and I remember the gaslighting at the time about him being elected having "nothing" to do with him being black, and thinking it was bullshit even then...
wow, thanks, you've given me a lot to think about... =)