Don't get me wrong, I completely understand his passion, and the others on the team I know personally. Don't forget, we both were on Elmoto.net "back in the day". Brammo started early on pushing the social media and forums as a way to get "free" exposure (a term I loathe and despise, knowing how much time and effort it takes to do it...), but as the criticism mounted and the passion increased, it became a textbook case of how it can go wrong.
They have marketing and PR people for a reason - and they are really good at understanding how what you say is perceived. Not so much the guys you describe behind the walls, precisely because of what they know and their personal involvement. (As an aside, I once had a sit-down with a guy about his marketing plan. When I asked him if he had one, he said "Of course we do." When I asked him what it was, he said "Simply to be the best". That's passion talking, not marketing, and it's meaningless when you're talking to customers.)
A marketing guy would have probably responded in much the same way - asserting that Brammo is not dead, but done it in a far less personal way, and without the insult. What's there to gain in that?
What's interesting to me is that Zero (in the context of this story and thread) has never, with the exception of Luke (liveforphysics) had much of a presence in the social and forum circles. As far as I understand, Luke was asked to scale back his activity once his role with Zero became more formal, in fact.
Whatever... what do you call the opposite of "preaching to the choir"?
