“The brazen hypocrisy staggers the mind. Disney, which commands a market cap larger than the GDP of many nations, can’t find the courage to even wait for court challenges? Meta, which regularly boasts its power to connect billions, suddenly can’t muster the strength to defend its own policies and users? These aren’t businesses making tough choices – they’re paper empires run by moral cowards—simpering, whimpering, and weak.”
In spirit I totally agree with you, but that kind of strategy just doesn’t work anymore. Boycotting Apple is relatively easy. Boycotting Disney is a little harder, unless you’re already a pirate, but not impossible. Then there’s companies like Nestle, arguably worse than any of them. Companies like Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi are so diversified, with so many subsidiaries and shell companies spread the world over. It is damn near impossible for the average person to boycott Nestle in any meaningful way.
Go ahead and try to boycott just one or two of the corporations in this image. Boycotts may still impact specific brands at a local level, but they have become pretty ineffective against corporations.
All of the boycotts in the world can’t beat the apathy rotting away the foundation of democracy. Boycott one company or brand and another will step in to fill the political void. Apathy keeps young voters out of the voting booths in local elections. These companies have a vested interest in convincing you that your vote doesn’t matter and that government regulation is ineffective. It’s a lie to keep you apathetic and disinterested in politics because your vote is the only part of the system they can’t directly influence.
Not to be a dick, but it looks like it’s easy to boycott 90% of that picture by just not being an unhealthy person
This made me double check. Ahem
Tide? Dawn? Cheer? Gain? Cascade? Gillette? Charmin? Tampax? Crest? Oral B? Vicks? Duracell? This list is hardly exhaustive, especially because a lot of times the discount brands that you buy are made in the same factory, same supply chain, different box, so in some cases, you’re still paying P&G even when you buy the off brand. AND THIS IS JUST PROCTOR AND GAMBLE, AND IT’S PROBABLY NOT EVEN A FULL REPRESENTATION OF THEIR PORTFOLIO AT THAT.
Can’t even remember the last time I bought any of those brands you mentioned. Maybe Gain. I might have a box of dryer sheets I barely use because it makes my clothes feel weird.
Also I’m Canadian, so lately I’ve had my phone out while shopping to make sure the umbrella company of anything I buy is at least a Canadian investment giant, or preferably not and I pay more for less if it means supporting local
EDIT: gum! I definitely buy gum without thinking about my purchase impact
Don’t worry, some of them are a different brand in Canada.
Just like how half those brands on the lists are different brands in the EU.
You may have bought from the same company, rebranded more than you know.
That doesn’t even get into the fact that generic brands and sometimes smaller brands often use the same factories as big brands but pay them for production time (butter is notorious for churning out 5 different brand labels on the same production line)
Okay, fair enough
I personally have been boycotting Nestle for almost 2 decades
And yeah there’s times i slip or didn’t realize that something is a nestle product but it’s certainly possible to do it, without getting amishly extreme about it. But it’s possible to do even if it’s only as much as you can.
But i think your counter argument is a little flawed, not entirely. In spirit i do follow what you mean but i think you also changed the argument as well.
Boycotting everyone won’t work, but i think it’s important to pick you battles like any form of activism.
And while there are evil entities that should be burned down root and all and salted for good measure, they are a different breed of problem that should also be fought.
Boycotting is a tool, and some tools need to be used carefully to make anything useful with then, and that’s where we seem to differ.
Taking a brand that is so iconic and ending it the way to go. Making them fill the void is a goal worth pursuing, it says watch the fuck out, this can happen to you.
Ending apple, or Disney, would scare the every living shit out of anyone who chose to fill that void, and it will pay dividends to all of us.
I don’t expect it to happen, but it would be incredibly effective to do no matter how inevitable that void was filled.
Im sure this is full of holes and im not explaining well, wish we could grab a drink and discuss this, think we would enjoy exploring where we align and where we diverge
Boycotts, from the perspective of the organizations you’d want to hurt the most, look like a few ants throwing fists at an elephant. It probably doesn’t even know it’s happening, let alone suffering some kind of consequence.
Refusing to buy something from an evil corp is in its own way cowardly. It won’t accomplish anything meaningful but it feels good enough that it stops any actual useful action.
I don’t think us “normies” can be blamed either way though. Even for those who can afford alternatives, they may not be able to afford the loss in quality or convenience or whatever value they’re giving up. I’d love to not buy or use Apple, but I’d also like to keep my job.
Also consider who you’d even be hurting if everyone somehow did participate in a boycott. Apple’s sales plummet but they’ll never disappear, and so long as there’s any money coming in at all, the last to go would be at the top. So we’ve all just put hundreds of thousands of people out of jobs, and the rich, evil pieces of shit at the top haven’t really felt anything.
It is cowardice to convince yourself that a flawed idea would work and then to just dig in and try to convert as many as you can. These people won’t change until they’re forced to empathize.
What’re they missing that keeps them so disconnected from us? The one thing we can give the people who truly otherwise have it all? The thing that really separates us: fear. Fear of repercussions. They keep dancing away from lawsuits and convictions, mocking us with their unlimited freedom. All while imprisoning us for crimes dwarfed by their own.
All that’s left is violence. They dodge everything else ¯_(ツ)_/¯
And yet stores have pulled CDs and other products as soon as Christians have objected to them. And companies plaster slogans like “Eco Friendly” all over their products and take great pains to try to send the right messages so they don’t get demonized, because they know public opinion DOES affect profits.
Blame the mob not the individual. Shift enough individual and the “normies” acting united, consistently sometime for years and decades will be a force of good. And maybe that first little frozen crystal that is the catalyst for snowflake in hell with enough other little snowflakes together tight enough to form a snowball can help one of them land on the magnesium that will start the reaction that will have a significant reaction much larger than the little crystal, or the snowflake or the snowball would ever expect to cause on its own.
FIGHT for the world you want, even in small ways you may not live long enough to see. Do it because it could help, dont be apathetic and so self centered that you think what effects you, real or imagined, is the only thing worth putting some effort towards.
Bernie marched in 60s hes still fighting today, but he was there, and he helped make a difference. Because he may be here, but it took everyone else he marched with who didnt achieve what he was able to for him to succeed.
It happens again and again, but the examples of taking a stance, having principles and intwgrity, even if we fail, especially when we fail, to not give in to, “they are all the same so it doesnt matter” mentallity that kept people from voting and letting faschists win. Becsause they want you to give up. They want you to lay down and stop making their lives easier.
Be a nuisance, even if its one moment, in one day in one lifetime.
Someday you and i will be dust. But our actions now even in infinitesimly small ways can help bring about change. But giving up, laying down will always make it worse than it other wise could be.
Thats it. The small wins add up. Not BUYING something you dont need, even just as often as you can, still helps.