Consumer As Employee

Since no one has sent me any new French bulldog photos, I've decided this Friday is Deep Thoughts Friday. Here goes.

On the one hand I am extremely thankful for all the user forums I find online that help me with Google Apps, Wordpress, my new Droid phone, my new magic mouse -- basically, all the technology I use in my life; but on the other hand, I'm starting to get a little resentful that we consumers need to be doing everything for these brands. We blog for their advertising/marketing/branding, we answer people's questions for their customer service...doesn't it stand to reason that we should be getting their products for free for all this work we're doing on their behalf?

Of course that question leads us to what many people consider the "negative" side of blogging. Indeed many bloggers DO receive a lot of products for free in exchange for writing about them online. Considering this blog has always been for me and my ten friends (or as JK would say for comic emphasis, me and my eleven friends), I have the free and clear luxury of always saying what I actually truly think about a product or brand. And there are plenty of blogs or websites that do, in fact, rate products based on their prescribed system no matter how they came to receive the product. Still there are plenty of online properties that aren't really telling you the most unbiased POV on a product or service simply due to the kick-backs they're receiving from the source.

So what's a reader to do? I guess the answer is to be discerning in the online content you read and absorb -- as discerning as you are when you choose to actually buy something. In today's world where we obtain so much information online, it ends up being a tricky balance of real/fluff and good/evil, not only for the brands working so hard to keep the new highly-verbal consumer satisfied, but it's also very hard for us as consumers ourselves to weed through fellow-consumer content. Good luck, my dears!