Marketing always fascinates me. Especially in how stories are used to get people to relate, and in the stories people tell themselves. This became again evident to me due to the recent activity of my roommate. Allow me to explain.
I bought a filter for the faucet in my kitchen sink. I did this for 2 reasons. 1) Tap water tastes like death and 2) I hate Brita filters because I always have to refill the damn things. I have really enjoyed my kitchen sink filter. It has worked out great. The Roommate, however, doesn’t like it. Apparently the water that it produces isn’t immediately cold enough for him. I always assumed that’s why we have Ice cubes, but to each their own, right? Anyway, The Roommate decided to take matters into his own hands. He bought a big Brita filter (one of the mammoth containers + filter that can hold about 18 cups worth). It sits happily in our small fridge. This means we now have 2 filter systems, and this is where it gets interesting.
You see, about the time The Roommate purchased his portable water reservoir is about the time my faucet filter needed to be changed (or otherwise, was no longer a valid filter). He didn’t realize this, though. At the same time, he also had a brilliant idea. By filling up his portable water reservoir with the ‘filtered’ water from the faucet, he could get twice as much filtering - or an even more awesome taste. This is where things got amusing (but not too fun as to now cause The Roommate to hate having a business geek for a roommate).
The Roommate took his first drink from the reservoir in our fridge. “Oh man! This tastes great! It’s like water from the rockies! It’s legendary.” I looked at him suspiciously before sampling the water for myself. “Wow. It does taste really good. Though I would bet this actually tastes better than water from the rockies,” I lied (About the tasting really good, not the rockies part). Yes, I was cruel and fed into the story he was building in his mind. A moment later, he grabbed my brother, Laff The Marine (He’s called Laff because he’s amusing… and it’s the first part of his last name. He’s a marine.), who was down. “Dude! I put this water through two filters! It tastes amazing! It’s like its from the rockies!” Laff is always up for odd or new things, so he drank up and concurred with The Roommate - it did indeed taste quite amazing having been put through two filters. I chuckled to myself in amusement, thinking about the story people tell themselves.
Yes, I do really think like that. All the time (well, almost all the time).
P.S. Those of you who were super sleuths and caught the fact that “Laff” and “Snell” are in fact different last names… Laff and I aren’t blood brothers. We might as well be, though.