So I just finished reading Martin Lindstrom's Buyology, a pop-business book about the ways our unconscious/subconscious mind affects our behavior and buying decisions (review to come in a couple weeks). It's a mostly interesting read, with some moments of surprising insight amid a fair amount of "well, yeah. Duh."
I really enjoyed the first few chapters, but then about halfway through, the author totally lost me. In a chapter about superstition and ritual, he made two statements that irritated me. First he said that, after two airlines experienced crashes on flights numbered 191, the airlines discontinued that flight number out of superstition.
Well, duh. Don't all airlines do that after a crash, out of respect? Can you even find a flight 11 or 93 or 800 on any airline today?
Then, in talking about sports superstitions, he said that Michael Jordan always wore his Carolina jersey underneath his "yellow Chicago Bulls jersey." Ahem. The Bulls do not wear and never have worn yellow. I get that you're Danish and may not know all the nuances of the NBA, but come on -- it's JORDAN. If anybody's a sports brand, he is.
Anyway, the author lost tons of credibility for me with those two little statements, and I finished the rest of the book more out of obligation than pleasure. Has this ever happened to you?
1 comment:
YES. I am an absolute wiener about this sort of thing, especially if it's one of my 'pet' topics. It's appalling how quickly I can develop a snit over one mis-identified/mis-dated photograph of a grand duchess, for example.
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