PLC’s meet SJW’s (part 2)

In a recent post I wrote about how business’s were seeking to change our perception of them, so that they became not the rapacious capitalist entities they are, but instead present themselves as somehow at the vanguard of positive social change. I cited Google, but honestly, there are so many at it, all trying to disguise the fact that their primary goal is to sell us things, that it could’ve been one of any number of them. Its as if King Herod announced that he was opening a maternity unit for mothers on low incomes, in order to help people forget his much publicised less than warm-heated attitude to babies.

When exactly did business’s become so obsessed with not only how they were perceived by their customers, but also if that perception was a negative one, one that potential customers found off-putting, to change it to a more favourable one? Or have they always been and I just didn’t notice? But certainly, its got out of hand now, so much so that one could be forgiven for thinking that the actual business of some business’s was nothing more than an embarrassing hobby, a distraction from fulfilling their true purpose, that of being social justice warriors (SJW’s).

I first became aware of this, or to be more accurate, cognisant to the fact that there was a concerted attempt by business’s to do this, after the global financial crisis of 2008 when Lloyds Bank began running a seemingly never ending campaign of disinformation. They weren’t a financial gang of reckless shysters who had only been saved from ruin by a government bailout, no we were meant to forget all that, and imagine that they were always ‘going to be by our side’. No, they weren’t part of a shadowy cabal of charlatans and con-men who had caused untold misery and despair to millions, no they care about mental health now. Obviously not when their feckless lending caused houses to repossessed, business’s to collapse and dreams to be shattered, not then they didn’t, but now, well, now is different.

Now they want us to forget all of that and to of focus on the now, the now being the now of now they care – care that we forget what their basic core instinct is, to make as much money for themselves – and to instead think that commercials featuring a load of CGI horses running amok is somehow going to do that. To forget that the first thing they did after the government – the taxpayer – had bailed them out, was to award themselves huge bonuses for doing something they should’ve been in prison for.

Mind you, the further away we get from 2008, the greater the likelihood that it will all be like Bobby Ewings shower, a bad dream that flees our consciousness, although probably going into a branch of Lloyds and asking for any help with trying to remember it, will soon show how on you side they actually are.