There's also a difference between lying and fiction. Fiction serves a higher purpose. Lying doesn't.
In this particular case, I agree that the company is probably overstating their concern. And you're probably correct that this is bordering on theatrics, but the theatrics serve a higher purpose: to show that they really do care for their customers. I suspect that someone put a lot of effort into creating these theatrics. Would someone who didn't care for their customers do that? No. They'd probably use a platitude like "The customer is always right" as their slogan, and ignore their customers.
My impression was that the photos accurately reflect how the team felt during the outage. We'd all feel pretty awful during that sort of event, and it was a quick and effective way to get across that these guys did too.
In this particular case, I agree that the company is probably overstating their concern. And you're probably correct that this is bordering on theatrics, but the theatrics serve a higher purpose: to show that they really do care for their customers. I suspect that someone put a lot of effort into creating these theatrics. Would someone who didn't care for their customers do that? No. They'd probably use a platitude like "The customer is always right" as their slogan, and ignore their customers.