Please Don’t Britney Spears Our AV Manufacturers

Our appetite for negative information must be growing. That can be the only explanation for what shows up in my newsfeed every day. It’s nearly comical. Even my sports news is biased toward the awful. “Tom Brady Hates Babies!” I must like this stuff. I must be reading it because I keep seeing more.   

During the pandemic, we became addicted to bad news. Most of the advertising revenue comes from negative. Every political ad is negative. Everything is negative. Everyone is getting laid off. Recession is imminent. Eggs cost $100 per dozen. All the airlines are failing. It’s exhausting.

Then it happened. This intense desire to consume misery leaked into AV. It was only a matter of time. This last year was the first year I really felt it.  

There have been AV manufacturers that have made mistakes before. Panja for one. Some folks got upset about The Music Tribe and the way they spoke about their channel. There have always been some agitated AV users griping about something. The last twelve months have produced more negative AV content than the prior history of our industry. And it’s getting worse. The blood is in the water and it’s not just some Reddit thread.

If you think that the hoards are not out to get you, look again. The same thing that happens to our favorite celebrities is happening to our favorite AV manufacturers. If you make AV stuff, at some point the little red dot of a laser sight will end up on you. Get ready.   

This never really happened before. It didn’t. We never had the platforms to anonymously spew vitriol about our partners before… or at least nobody was really listening when we did.   

Our fine Internet keeps getting better and digging up dirt we might find interesting and slamming our noses right in it. AV is bleeding edge tech, and we are now on the bleeding edge of negative ads. It’s a lazy shortcut that makes me angry. It’s a lazy shortcut that works, and that makes me angrier.   

The worst part is that I’ve been part of the problem, bitching about Teams, “screen equity” and “crappy latency” in Zoom. I can do better.  

Our newsletter is about fun. AV is supposed to be fun and cool and inspiring. If an AV manufacturer is getting gut-punched by the supply chain crisis, that is NOT fun and inspiring – so I am not that interested. 

The brands we partner with make awesome stuff and are dreaming up even crazier amazing AV stuff for the future, so the fact that they bet on the wrong chip or rare-earth element doesn’t mean you need to hate them.    

Some of these companies have not experienced adversity as they have in the last couple of years. They never felt the pain. They’ve never had to dig around in the couch looking for change so they could eat. In my musician days, I was doing just such a search in my couch when I discovered a hamburger. I ate it. True story.

These manufacturers didn’t know how to react and behave when faced with the disaster of the past few years.

Fortunately, after eating hamburgers from between couch cushions and making top ramen in motel rooms, The Farm knows a little hardship. Not everyone gets a dump truck full of life lessons dumped upon them as we have, so they don’t know how to act when enrolled in Misery-101.

Forgive them. They are just people. Don’t Britney Spears them.   

I am not suggesting that you buy their stuff. It’s made out of puppies! They take puppies, throw them in a hopper, and this machine makes AV out of them. That is how they get around the TAA issues. They use American puppies.

I’m just kidding. They are not all American puppies. And these puppy-killers are just people like you and me. Don’t go all negative.

To that end, we have just launched our new podcast from our Farm Assist Team – Flip the Scrip. Take a break from the negative. Hang out with us. We still love AV and love our jobs. Let us help you love yours.