a thing i never stop thinking about, probably one of the most interesting socio-commercial developments of Late Capitalism, is the prevalence and increasing outright-misuse of the word 'pro.' products that would have been labeled "deluxe" 50 years ago, or "premium" 20 years ago, are now being labeled "pro."
many such products are not even conceivably being sold for "professional" use. you can perhaps make the argument that "PS4 pro" would be for esports gamers, but it doesn't feel like it holds water. tons of smartphones are now sold in "pro" versions but... what would that even mean? besides, every phone that's ever been bought or issued for use on a job has been "the iphone from two years ago" or "a flip phone, yeah, did you know they still made those."
the word simply means "better and more expensive" now, and is no longer directly connected to Actual Work. at a glance, there are a few obvious guesses as to motive.
the first option is one that's been around the longest: after decades of diminishing build and design quality in consumer goods, buyers are increasingly aware that products sold to businesses have less latitude for simply being shit - because they need to fundamentally work, or the business will have to get something else. meanwhile, many consumer products simply do not work in any meaningful sense, and people are vaguely aware that it's easier to get away with this. therefore, "pro" means "okay, we actually made an effort on this one instead of just defrauding you"
and, well, there's something to that. when writing the end of this post i tried to come up with absurd examples of things that could "go pro." Ford Explorer Pro. Space heater Pro. Toilet Pro. Insulin Pro. those were pretty good, i thought, but then i pretty much ran out. i asked my friend peek for ideas but the well was so dry that he started saying things like "rock pro" and i told him to take the day off. i then realized that Toilet Pro actually exists already, and we all wish we had one.
we've already been calling things Pro in not so many words for decades. Hammer Pro is a thing ("contractor" hammers.) Water Pro is a thing (gatorade, etc.) Tape Pro, Lightbulb Pro, Headphones Pro - lots of stuff does have an industrial variant, and it's usually better.
the newer motive, however, is probably connected to the fact that basic existence in the united states has become increasingly nightmarish, to the point where it is becoming impossible to support yourself in many places without having a white collar job. those who can't secure those jobs, or who want to escape "the rat race," frequently adopt "grindset mentality." this has resulted in an enormous number of people attempting to create jobs from thin air as it were, prominent examples being esports and twitch-as-a-business. these have genuinely created an argument for an office chair being, in some way, "pro."
obviously this latter example got absurd much more quickly than the former, but even so, i think marketers have begun to lose the thread. Subway is legitimately, in the real world, as we speak, selling a sandwich option called the Footlong Pro. i think it's implied that it's short for "protein," but there's no possible way they were not leveraging the current popularity of the word as it's now commonly recognized.
i think there's a sort of cycle that repeats within the marketing world, wherein marketers invent a new way to hornswaggle people, then after that method of lying is entrenched, they turn around, step in line with the people they just finished lying to, and say "wow, yeah, these marketers, what a pack of liars eh?" and perhaps that's what's going on here.
Subway has to be aware that many people will roll their eyes at a sandwich called Pro. that is possibly why they chose it: to cause people to spread awareness of the product by making fun of it, and possibly to buy it ironically. but to be frank, I don't really think marketers do that very often.
it's very juicily cynical to imagine this degree of moustache twirling, but I generally believe that the people ruining our society are not usually on that twelve dimensional chess shit. if you've ever had coworkers or family - e.g. you've seen outside of the intrinsically-curious-online-computer-person bubble - you know that people are unfathomably credulous and incurious. they just plain don't think about shit, and even if you show them very simple and clear evidence that they're being manipulated, they stare at you like you're speaking Martian.
i don't think there's a need for sbubby to get on that level, and I think that "pro" has become so deeply ingrained in marketing lingo that they may well have just forgotten that it used to mean anything else - or, they're desperate.
there is another cycle in marketing, where words get worn out after they stop being differentiators. "deluxe" and "premium" are not nearly as prominent as they used to be - because at one point, they were used to describe the high end of a product line, but in short order they began being used to describe the only product in a lineup. Ashton-Tate released the first version of dBase as dBase ][, because they felt that nobody wanted to buy the first version of something. it probably worked.
if you're selling a cheap, shitty set of bedsheets, and you don't want to source a better version to sell at a higher price, both because you think nobody actually wants to pay that higher price, and because you don't want to compete with yourself, then you call the shitty sheets "premium." a year later, everyone's numb to the word 'premium' and you need a new one. currently, "pro" is that word. if there aren't "bedsheets Pro" yet, there will be. it's gonna get worse before it gets better and i am incredibly curious what things will garner this appellation before the numbness sets in
What's funny is that I know at least one case where it's the opposite. Clip Studio has two versions. (Technically 3, but that one's just debut, aka legacy)
Their highest tier version is EX, and their lowest tier is...PRO. It makes no sense, and I can't help but wonder if it's similar to how businesses will refuse to label a drink small for some reason. But like...it feels surreal to have the lowest tier purchasable be the professional tier. Or perhaps, given how bleh a lot of business software tends to be, pro would indeed be the worst version imaginable.
Also what the fuck is an EX?
