Nike

I am brand loyal. This is not due to some misguided peer pressure, or mind washing by advertising (although, how would I know?) It has the same root foundation of almost everything in my life: laziness. I have no desire to trouble my mind with the pros and cons of Nike vs Reebok vs Dunlop Volleys, of Coke vs Pepsi vs raw coffee beans, of Sony vs Samsung vs Microsoft vs the Nambibian rugby team. It's too hard for a lazy person like myself. When I walk into a store, I like to go straight to the item I am there to buy and buy it. My gathering instinct (as in hunter-gatherer) is non-existent. There are those that would say this makes me a male of the species. And they'd be right.

But anyway, a coworker has just infruriated a large section of the office by suggesting that he will go out and buy Nike running shoes. Now, you might assume the uproar centred around child labour in third world countries. However, this being the north shore of Sydney (where I work, not live, REPEAT not live), the concern was that Nike runners are not a "runner's runner", that to wear Nike when out for a jog and a wheeze would immediately place scorn upon you from all directions, make you un-cool, give away the fact that you are not a "real" runner and generally cause unpleasantness.

Now, someone of better social stock piped in with the child labour argument, shocked as I was with the shallowness and facadery. I piped in, simply to stir the pot, that at least Nike is supplying homeless and incomeless children with SOME money, the alternative being they die hungry in the street. I agreed, politely, while dodging a stapler aimed at my temple, that it was exploitation and that I was all for finding a way of paying more to homeless oprhans in Malaysia, but in the mean time we should all buy Nike as exploitation is better than starving to death.

I was ready for the onslaught of arguments based on Nike relying on exploitation, that without the ability to exploit, Nike would cynically move elsewhere and that the multinationals should get off their right-wing arse and help the third world instead of exploiting it. My plan was to agree.

Unfortunately, I was hit with the "runner's runner" argument again. With the kind of finality which suggests that it is the only argument a sane person would pursue. To which there is no retort.