brandy-brand-brands

A Case Study in How the "Brand" Concept Makes Case Studies Stupid

Tom Scocca · 07/07/14 04:15PM

The New Yorker website, not to be confused with the New Yorker print magazine, is thinking about status today. In an item on its "Currency" vertical, the online New Yorker introduces us to researchers who have gained fascinating insights into how people police the abstract status identities they've constructed around their preferred "brands"—or else (maybe?) how people who have attained the factual condition of attending Harvard or of running long-distance obstacle courses disdain people who claim to have done those things without having done those things: