Over the past 72 hours, I had to mediate some social media review disputes, leaning on what Malaysians call "cables" to spike/pull-down the posts. Following up on this, I got a third-party to review the overall scenario, and to get their view on the cause of such disputes. The subsequent learnings were documented and shall be used as a case study for my friends and colleagues in the future.
I think a lot of butthurt between producers and consumers stems from the question of which customs are appropriate under what circumstances. For example, some consumers view the chain of "purchase, consume, reflect, publish" as the complete lifecycle of their experience of a product - whereas producers may prefer a different lifecycle, perhaps along the lines of "purchase, consume, negotiate, publish", so the difference is that the producer demands control over what the consumer publishes. Yet the consumer may hold the view that impartial public peer reviews are the first line of defense against dodgy producers.
This sets the stage for a fertile discourse over what is and what is not civil behaviour. The summary considerations are as follows. It's a bit of a Mexican standoff (to borrow a phrase).
Consumers must be made aware that producers feel threatened by consumers, even prior to their first engagements with each other. So consumers have a degree of power over producers, which they may wield magnanimously or otherwise. Not all consumers are aware of this. And the feeling goes both ways, such that you can switch the roles in this paragraph and read it again.
That being said, some consumers are unempathetic assholes and don't really care how producers react to consumer reviews. And some producers are unempathetic assholes and don't really care how consumers experience products. This is a given in the environment, so it is best to acknowledge it as something out of one's control, and therefore not worth much personal concern.
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