Talking about crises at work from a company's perspective was weirder than I thought.
I didn't think that they would be putting their interests first but how could I have been so naive?
I don't mean to make this post about everything wrong with aristocracy, big companies, etc, etc. But when James gave us the example of the big vaccine companies coming up wth that disclaimer about the Covid-19, it was really shocking.
Of course, they know that some people out there died or had really bad side effects.
But just by adding a little warning, they were released from any faults almost completely. By making it a person's "voluntary" choice to get a vaccine, they hold no responsibility for what can happen to them. That's just scary dude.
In no way shape or form am I saying that I'm an anti-vaxxer (of course we all know that in order to be enrolled we had to get vaccinated). But the sole fact that this action illustrates is really insane. And of course, this dynamic shows up again and again, and not only in medical companies.
I remember when last year everyone that was using the WhatsApp app got a privacy notification update that indicated that WhatsApp was going to share data from users and transfer it to Facebook (its parent company). Users had two choices: they could either accept it or delete their account.
I saw so many of my contacts switch over to Telegram (a better app that I have been using for years) because of this and my first reaction was, of course, confusion. Like, did anyone truly believe that other messaging apps would not be stealing your data? And even if they weren't, what about all of the other social media platforms that they had accounts in? Did they think that their data wouldn't be taken from there?
Later, of course, WhatsApp clarified that they don't share private data from messages, only from personal information and what people send to businesses. People calmed down and I'm sure most are still using the app to this day.
However, from where I see it, how can we really trust these tech giants?
Do you think it's good to trust what they say now? Yes, they have a responsibility to their users (and the law) not to mess with these privacy statements.
But then why do we constantly get targeted ads?
I've had conversations with friends in which I've mentioned Chipotle and then got an ad about it the next day. I'm sure that after writing this I'm gonna be seeing more of Chipotle on my Instagram feed for the next few days.
My point is that privacy is so so important, and yet, day by day we're losing more of it. Unfortunately, because it is "by choice", there's really nothing we can do about it. If we'd like to be included in society as high functioning, productive members then of course we'll get vaccinated. Of course, we'll buy the latest phone. Of course, we'll create a social media account in the newest app that comes out.
As much as I value having learned about how to handle a crisis from a business perspective, I believe that it was very insightful to see these different perspectives as a consumer.
Whether we are a business or a customer, we need to be looking out for ourselves, and that means taking responsibility for our actions when we've made mistakes and being aware of the practices that we are willingly choosing to take part in.
- The image shows a woman looking very distressed and angrily but also sadly pointing at a cat. This cat has a very comic facial expression, showing no real fault but being symbolic of a person who is oblivious to the harm they are causing.
When it comes to the visual rhetoric analysis:
1. The modality is a photo with added text.
2. The verisimilitude is high because the pictures feature real people and a real cat.
3. The claim it makes about the world is how customers everywhere are only looking for the most basic of needs: good service and privacy and yet, as simple as it is, businesses don't really care much about providing this or as I point out in this meme, they've really never heard of those terms before.