Came across this on Bluesky.

The trust thermocline is pretty interesting.

It’s the idea that for some products, irreversible consumer trust damage can happen far in advance of its impact.

Examples in the article include Disney Parks (people look forward to recreating childhood memories with their kids, but lately, lots of people don’t seem to be having positive experiences at Disney) and Evernote (which used to be the note-taking app, but lost trust through a variety of poor decisions. And of course there’s Twitter.

I appreciated this piece for putting a clear name and description (a well-chosen metaphor!) onto a phenomenon that I had observed but hadn’t been able to fully parse.

It’s good to know about the trust thermocline, but also great to have this example of someone observing a phenomenon over time and finding the right analogy and explanation to make it visible and intelligible.