Remember the scene in Jerry Maguire where Renee Zellweger says, "I love him for the man he wants to be. And I love him for the man he almost is."? That's kind of the way I feel about Microsoft, an extremely interesting company that won't let itself be interesting. Instead of trusting in itself and what it is, it does nothing for years, then makes ill-considered lunges. Their recent campaign(s), Seinfeld and "I'm a PC", are two spazzy lunges, which is what unconfident nerds do when attacked. First they act as if they're in on the joke and end up just looking weird. Then they get painfully sincere. Watching the "I'm a PC" campaign is like watching an encircled 7th-grader deliver a playground speech on human rights and hoping the gathering bullies will say, "You know something? He's right!" like they do in old movies.
Microsoft should have been geeks with a sense of humor right from the start. Self-deprecating, unreconstructed nerdiness is an attractive and credible combination (as Al Gore should have known). Microsoft should have been making jokes about the Borg. And they should have made these t-shirts ten years ago (but they should never have called them "softwear".)
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