At the ripe age of 20*, I embarked on a thesis that aimed to explain why people communicate about products and services. I soon discovered that the task at hand was more than over-sized – it was impossible. With so many different perspectives, from psychology to complexity, I either had to create an all encompassing system of drivers or choose to ignore what I couldn’t fit into 20,000 words. My inclination was to do the former but, as reality prevails, the latter won.

I was happy with the compromise. In fact, I learnt if I attempted to do everything i’d likely achieve nothing. I didn’t want nothing. I stuck to psychological models that made sense and argued against the others. I developed a perspective on the literature and ultimately, a point of view that I passionately defended.

The key lesson: never underestimate the amount of information you ignore every time you explain something. When you think about it, a blog post does more ignoring than it does explaining. Marketing has the greatest tradition of ignorance. When our industry can so often be summed up in one-slide-decks and 140 character tweets, there has to be something wrong, right?

And we don’t even pretend to caveat our claims about human behavior. Or, for that matter link it to evidence. We come up with caricatured depictions of consumer behavior that are expressed like fact. A luxury that should be afforded only to the arts.

The upcoming switch from “become a fan” to “like” on Facebook stirred a lot of conversation here at Undercurrent. It made us take a few steps back about how involved people are in brands and whether “fans” are a delusion of marketers. It’s very easy to understand people in their extreme form. We’d like to assume that fans eagerly await status updates, and froth with delight every-time we create a new microsite. But is the reality something a lot more tame?

Does the evidence suggest that fandom is a lot more tame? Do people travel between indifference and mild-approval instead of hate and passion? Regardless of the reality, marketers will continue to communicate the story that sounds best to them. Ignoring evidence, making caricatures and stamping mediocracy on investigation.

*I’d like to think that the phrase “at the ripe age” will apply across multiple ages.