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Internet Service Withdrawn to Induce Mass Stockholm Syndrome
Telecommunication giant Andulat is the darling of this year’s prestigious Monopolizing Corporations Summit. Held annually, the summit gathers the ...
Oct 4, 2015
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Telecommunication giant Andulat is the darling of this year’s prestigious Monopolizing Corporations Summit. Held annually, the summit gathers the world’s top corporations, selected by a twofold criterion of profitability and ruthlessness.
This year’s summit is held in the giant golf ball perched on top of Andulat Towers.
Andulat honored its bid to host the 2015 summit in its home city, Abu Dhabi, by opening with a daring operational strategy inspired by abductors. Called Smile with Stockholm, the strategy will create the same customer subservience to Andulat that many victims of kidnapping have shown for their abductors.
A psychological disorder discovered in 1973, Stockholm Syndrome explains that hostage victims can develop loyalty and even love for their abductors because, in captivity, abductors become victims’ only source of nourishment and human contact.
Andulat argued that the abductor-abductee relationship closely resembles that of a monopolizing corporation and its customers. Further likening the relationship could ensure customer loyalty.
“Smile with Stockholm is unique because it’s a strategy that can withstand very poor service — or even abuse,” said Andulat representative Mitchum Lai in his pitch at the Summit. “Instead of aiming for customer satisfaction, it's about breaking customers down psychologically until we have total control of their capability for satisfaction.”
The first step to inducing the Stockholm effect is depriving customers, to make them realize that they are dependent on Andulat, which is what abductors commonly do with food and water. As with abduction cases, that means isolating the target and cutting them off from any other sources of nourishment.
Andulat cut Internet service citywide for hours at a time this week, with more cut-off periods upcoming. Modern residents’ dependence on Internet services for most day-to-day-tasks will help to replicate the experience of being isolated and powerless.
“Of course, customers will be angry at first, until they realize that there is absolutely nothing they can do about it,” said Lai.
Once customer subservience is achieved, Andulat will resume a more even provision of service.
Rumor around the Andulat Golf Ballroom, which is only reachable by private helicopter, is that Andulat’s pitch will be an even greater hit than that of FIFA’s, last year’s Summit host.
Other Summit attendees suggest that FIFA might benefit from the Stockholm strategy, but FIFA representatives disagreed.
“FIFA could hold customers hostage by their sheer love for football, which might be equal to love for Internet service, but cutting football cannot create an experience of isolation quite like cutting off Internet,” said FIFA spokeswoman Gwen Levinsky.
Coca-Cola is expected to make its pitch tomorrow.
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