Thank ya. If you're interested in this sort of coverage of drinking in America, by all means subscribe to Fingers! I know everybody gets too many newsletters these days, but mine is actually good, unlike THIS rag. (jkjk long live discourse blog!)
I really really want one of these stupid boycotts to actually get carried through, just to see what the actual effect is. Like, does InBev actually end up caring that the bigots won't drink their products anymore? Or is it a drop in the bucket compared to their total annual sales?
Mostly I want that to happen so that InBev could tweet back at the Ultra Right Beer dude something like "We're sorry you're ditching our product, but during your boycott, our sales increased 10% year-over-year, so we'll be okay," or some such.
Here's how I put it to Vox in an interview Tuesday:
“They’re just far more diversified and globalized than this market and this one brand, and bringing a substantial, sustained boycott against them to pressure them into walking back their support for trans people or however you interpret this campaign, it would require just an enormous amount of coordination and discipline that, frankly, the right wing in this country just doesn’t really display for stuff like this... There will be some wobbles here and there [with ABI's stock price, sales, etc.] but in terms of the company’s overall orientation and what it’s driving at, if they walk this back, it’s because they lost nerve, not because they lost sales.”
I stand by it! ABI is in the catbird seat here, if they biff it from here, it's an unforced error, imho
My favorite is the performative I’m going to buy a ton of your products to demonstrate how I’m boycotting it by blowing it up/burning it/whatever. Like they gaf what you do with it once you have it! Newsflash, they already got your money! Also all beer is controlled by like two or three conglomerates so none of this matters!
I really do wonder if social media has made America irreversibly dumber. This is just not that big a deal. Companies go where the dollars are. This is not new.
I think it's just given everybody the opportunity to see and comment on everything all at once, which... yeah, "irreversibly dumber" is one way of describing it, but more charitably you could say that it's just insanely overwhelming even when people are trying to act in good faith. (Which to be clear I don't think they are in this case.)
Going through life this way sounds utterly exhausting.
I suspect a lot of them actually find it invigorating, like a hobby. Sort of like #resistance liberals.
I think you may be right, which adds a whole new layer of depressing to all this. Great article btw!
Thank ya. If you're interested in this sort of coverage of drinking in America, by all means subscribe to Fingers! I know everybody gets too many newsletters these days, but mine is actually good, unlike THIS rag. (jkjk long live discourse blog!)
I really really want one of these stupid boycotts to actually get carried through, just to see what the actual effect is. Like, does InBev actually end up caring that the bigots won't drink their products anymore? Or is it a drop in the bucket compared to their total annual sales?
Mostly I want that to happen so that InBev could tweet back at the Ultra Right Beer dude something like "We're sorry you're ditching our product, but during your boycott, our sales increased 10% year-over-year, so we'll be okay," or some such.
Here's how I put it to Vox in an interview Tuesday:
“They’re just far more diversified and globalized than this market and this one brand, and bringing a substantial, sustained boycott against them to pressure them into walking back their support for trans people or however you interpret this campaign, it would require just an enormous amount of coordination and discipline that, frankly, the right wing in this country just doesn’t really display for stuff like this... There will be some wobbles here and there [with ABI's stock price, sales, etc.] but in terms of the company’s overall orientation and what it’s driving at, if they walk this back, it’s because they lost nerve, not because they lost sales.”
I stand by it! ABI is in the catbird seat here, if they biff it from here, it's an unforced error, imho
My favorite is the performative I’m going to buy a ton of your products to demonstrate how I’m boycotting it by blowing it up/burning it/whatever. Like they gaf what you do with it once you have it! Newsflash, they already got your money! Also all beer is controlled by like two or three conglomerates so none of this matters!
I really do wonder if social media has made America irreversibly dumber. This is just not that big a deal. Companies go where the dollars are. This is not new.
I think it's just given everybody the opportunity to see and comment on everything all at once, which... yeah, "irreversibly dumber" is one way of describing it, but more charitably you could say that it's just insanely overwhelming even when people are trying to act in good faith. (Which to be clear I don't think they are in this case.)
Ah. Nicely said.