In an effort to improve its image using social media, megabank JP Morgan Chase invited people on social media to tweet questions to them in advance using the hashtag #AskJPM and that Vice Chairman Jimmy Lee would take an hour to answer them.
They got a good response all right, an avalanche of questions which were predominantly snarky and angry. See more here and here. The hashtag is still active and the hits keep coming.
Clearly they were not expecting this and they later tweeted “Tomorrow’s Q&A is cancelled. Bad Idea. Back to the drawing board.”
They should have seen this coming.
Jamie Dimon’s #AskJPM Twitter-tastrophe highlights how far his firm’s once-storied post-crisis reputation has plummeted.
JPMorgan Chase, already dealing with at least eight Justice Department probes, found itself Thursday enduring a second day of public ridicule over its decision to invite the public to tweet questions to a top executive.
“This isn’t just tone deaf, this is stupid,” said Paul Argenti, a Communications professor at Dartmouth College. “To do this when everyone is thinking of them in the worst possible light is just as dumb as can be,” Argenti offered.
I think that these big banksters don’t quite realize how much anger there is out there for what they have been doing. They seem to think that the problem is that they are misunderstood when the real problem is that people understand only too well what they have been up to.
It’s sad when you compare how most people feel about them and Jamie Dimon, and then look at Congress and the Obama administration. The difference speaks for itself.
What the hell did they expect? Did they think the public would toss them the same pathetic softball questions that Congress does? They seem to be forgetting a major difference between the two. Congress is the group they give money to. The public is the group they take money from.
Talk about living in a bubble! Yes, they probably did not realize the “unwashed masses” don’t love them the way people in power and their journalistic mouthpieces do. I mean, the only 99%’ers they see work for them as servants.
What the hell did they expect? Did they think the public would toss them the same pathetic softball questions that Congress does?
I think that they do. Remember, they live, work, and travel in very small social circles. Even the peons who do the heavy work around them know that to keep their jobs they need to tell these guys whatever it is they want to hear. And the national media has long ago ceased to take part in any national discussion of the issues, instead simply reading almost verbatim the press releases written by their own PR people (or the PR people of the political campaigns they have bought).
I can very easily believe that the “nattering nabobs of negativism” are some insignificant, ignorant minority that can be ignored. It doesn’t surprise me when they are surprised when the discover the extent and depth of the contempt that the hoi polloi feel for them.
This is ultimately where revolutions come from. People in power insulate themselves from their societies problems more and more. While it has the intended effect of letting them ignore things that might bother them, make them feel bad, or allow them a sense of superiority, the lack of empathy it creates become more and more obvious the more stressed out a society gets.
Acting like an elite makes you socially tone-def which people in power do at great risk when a society gets more stressed.
It takes a special kind of arrogance and greed to do to the US what the banksters did (and continue to do) post-911.
I’m regretting my use of the work “elite”. Intellectual elites who know what they are talking about and can disseminate knowledge to regular folks could still be acting like an elite and avoid this issue. I think there is a better choice. Maybe there is no one word.
Brony: Traditional elite? Social elite? Any form a of elite-ness not really based on positive merit* is a kind of elite-ness that usually includes remoteness from the rest of human society and illusions about how the world really is and delusions of grandeur.
*Corporate merits are largely inhuman and don’t count as merit in my book, just like being really good at killing people doesn’t count as much of a merit for me either. A lot of what passes, and has passed historically, as merit and particular virtues, leaves much to be desired.
@ F 7
Maybe? Traditional and Social don’t really get at that “unearned quality” because any person sensitive to such would quickly pull out examples of past elites that did earn it.
I agree about the corporate merits to an extent. I’m sure there are examples of excellent elites in the corporate world, people who can deal and wrangle and earn a profit while avoiding becoming emphatically distanced individuals. But there are some example of things like people who earn fortunes off of interest which I consider work-less economics that creates value with no social substance that would fit the bill. That sort of thing should be taxed higher because of how inconsistent it is with how economics is supposed to be a social good theoretically speaking.
The problem is that we no longer live in a capitalist system, we’re in the next stage of evil: a rentierist system. Where the majority of very rich people are getting richer from the simple virtue of having more money, rather than because they’re doing anything to add to the economy. The people who add to the economy, pretty much everyone but them, add productivity year on year, and gain nothing in wages.
Time for the revolution. Past time.
I totally agree with what you say about us becoming a rentier society. It is not a healthy state.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49593103@N06/9730459954/in/photostream/
The power of the internet brings us such amazing things.
You think they’d have seen that coming really -- but then given the amount of other stuff they’ve gotten wrong maybe not such a surprise.