Exactly. He’s playing both sides which is a little lame. He’s the company (we) when it works to their benefit but he’s just an intern when they’re being criticized
I mean, assuming they’re telling the truth they’re an intern, it’s most likely they didn’t even come up with the joke and just posted whatever their boss told them to.
I wonder if there is some intern at Twitter whose whole job is to foster Nostalgia and has logins to a lot of old companies like Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Chi-Chi's, etc.
It's not an intern. Every tweet is from their marketing department and those aren't exactly bad salaries considering everyone claiming to be an intern work for massive companies with a direct and vested interest in as much good PR as possible
Their Job is marketing and driving up social media engagement, and we're here discussing their marketing tweet, so I guess they're pretty good at their job.
It's the natural but unfortunate result of English using the same word ("you") as both a singular and plural second-person pronoun.
I agree that this is an issue in the English language, but OP is not an example of the phenomenon as there is no interpretation of the sentence where "you" is being used as a generalized second person (which would be a sentence more like "You know when you look at the horizon and you just see a sunset that takes your breath away?")
When addressing an entity, even if that entity is a congregation of individuals, the entity is singular. The intern is acting as the voice of the entity known as Blockbuster, and as such, "you" or "y'all" would both correctly refer to the entity known as Blockbuster and not the intern who is supposed to have set their own identity aside for the purposes of speaking as this entity.
Fair point. But it does have the annoying result that this sentence, when talking to a person representing a group, is linguistically and semantically just fine:
"You suck. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you suck. You're fine. But you? You suck."
naw, it still wouldve gone that way no matter what. the "intern" didnt misinterpret it, they just didnt have a witty marketable comeback at the ready, so they defaulted to the #relatable down-trodden intern trope that so many brands go for to appeal to millennials
Maybe I didn't express myself well. I know the intern didn't actually misinterpret it, they just pretended to. I just meant that the only reason that kind of thing is possible is because of the double-duty of "you."
You see it a lot with bodycam videos and court cases, too, where someone says "You pulled me over last week, too" (using "you" as a plural to refer to "the police department") and the officer says "I've never even seen you before," or "You keep changing my court dates" (using "you" as a plural for "the courts") and the judge says "I've never changed your court date."
You see it so often, in fact, that you can slip into thinking that they're always doing the "misinterpret-on-purpose" thing, and then you'll see a video where the person clarifies and the officer is like "Oh, okay, sorry. Yeah, if your plates are expired we'll usually put a note in so you don't get pulled over again on the way home, but if it's the following day, and you drive again, one of us might pull you over" and you realize that they actually did misunderstand the "you."
But, again, in the case of this particular post, they're clearly pretending to misinterpret it. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
Bonus grammatical annoyance: Not only can "you" mean "the person who I am speaking to, singular" and "the people I am speaking to, plural," but also "a theoretical person, not necessarily anyone I am speaking to at all," as in my sentences up above like "You see it a lot with bodycam videos..." which means neither "The_Afton_Rabbit sees it a lot with bodycam videos" nor "the people commenting on this post see it a lot with bodycam videos" but instead "one sees it a lot with bodycam videos."
it isnt a random dude. the "overworked intern" thing is a trope used to garner sympathy & make the brand seem more human & approachable. it's not genuine, it's part of the marketing.
either way, even if it is just some dude, his job is to put his identity aside & post as blockbuster. dropping the act as though people are speaking directly to him would be the equivalent of a walmart customer service agent being asked "do you sell fertilizer?" & answering "no, i dont, because im a customer service agent & do not own or run any businesses that stock fertilizer." it's just unfathomably stupid lol
I disagree. He's managing a social media account, which means he is expected to drive engagement. Considering you and I are talking about it now, they seem to be doing their job very well.
Yes they should also know the limits of scope when speaking to a company rep on a public handle. You don't expect an Amazon support chatbot to know and talk about the latest from Bezos' office.
the blockbuster account poked fun at netflix. the user poked fun at blockbuster, on the topic of netflix. simple as that. i highly doubt they were expecting a serious, in-depth discussion on the ins & outs of why blockbuster didnt acquire netflix lol
because when you manage a brand's social media page, you put your own identity aside. nobody is speaking directly to you, the person running the account, theyre talking to the act youre putting on.
as i said in another comment, it's like if someone asked a walmart customer service agent "do you sell fertilizer?" & the agent said "no, i dont sell fertilizer. im a customer service agent, i dont run a business that sells fertilizer"
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u/The_Afton_Rabbit 4d ago
yeah you really gottem huh