[reincarnate0x14]

> I refuse to believe actual people will go out of their way to defend/promote/etc their $favorite_brand. Only on reddit/hn.

You might, but people have been getting in stupid arguments defending largely irrelevant preferences for as long as human history has been recorded. Now, various brand-PR agents certainly do fan these flames, but there are really people who think your cheap beer preferences says important things about you and will happily spend shockingly large amounts of time telling how that is wrong. A lot of people.

If their in-group likes brand A, and the out-group likes product B or C, staggeringly wasteful displays of such preference basically define fashion.