Yeah, the Tesla boycott totally didn’t work…
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ameancow@lemmy.world 1 week agoBoycotts are performative stunts that feel good but don’t have impact on companies and even gets more attention ON those companies.
No really, this is a phenomenon that’s known. When people were protesting Blizzard, I swear to fucking god, people I knew for years who hadn’t played WoW since they were kids suddenly decided to reactivate their accounts because all the talk about blizzard “made them nostalgic” and despite being sympathetic to the people hurt by the company, they simply didn’t have the mental value-system to draw lines between those two things. Their own desires to escape and recapture youth was far, far stronger than the social messaging they honestly just felt was finger-wagging and parental scolding, so they rejected the idea of protesting without conscious thought.
If we put that much energy into volunteering with groups raising funds for primaries, getting to know our neighbors and forming communities, we would abolish this fascist empire in a single election cycle. (Assuming we have elections again.)
Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf 1 week ago
Letsdothisok@lemmy.world 1 week ago
You’re right. They didn’t.
Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf 1 week ago
The delulu is strong with this one.
angrystego@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Boycotts are not enough, but in combination with girlcotts they are very efficient.
ameancow@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Best reply I got here tbh.
Ilandar@lemm.ee 1 week ago
They say when a boycott meets a girlcott, a baby cot is born…
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
No they aren’t? People just haven’t actually been pissed off enough to actually wield the weapon of “ok, fine, now I will not buy ANYTHING from you”.
Boycotts most definitely work, Tesla’s stock is plummeting, and one of the major reasons is an aggressive and enthusiastic boycott of buying Telsas (also they suck).
This isn’t to say in any given situation a boycott is the best strategy to use, or that your organizing energy isn’t better spent elsewhere, but don’t dismiss boycotts when we are seeing one of the most effective high profile ones in recent memeory be VERY successful.
ameancow@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Strikes do a lot more damage to companies. I think a lot of people mix the two ideas up.
The last most successful boycotts were mostly ones you never heard of, and at least one you rather not hear of. We managed to get tuna companies to pretend to harm fewer dolphins in 1988. Before that is was things like the 1965 Delano Grape Strike and the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. The most recent boycott that actually got a company to change its marketing and outreach was the Bud Lite/Dylan Mulvany boycott by the anti-trans right.
If you think you can get enough people as worked up about an issue as the chuds were about a single commercial featuring someone they were scared of, then by all means let’s fire up all the engines and get boycotting. Otherwise, I would encourage people who work at these tech companies to start talking about unions and making change from the inside. But none of that does as much damage to a company as getting politicians installed who are already taking bribes from other companies. Yes this is a dark perspective, you’re welcome to disagree but in my nearly five decades on Earth this is just what I’ve seen over and over.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
I don’t want to take away from the general thrust of your point, I just don’t think we have actually seen boycotts that people were actually fired up en masse to enforce.
I think up until right this very moment the general center of mass of society has been largely ok with most of what capitalism is, I think that is going to continue to drastically change, and we will see a lot more wildcat boycotts of companies that significantly hurt them, but I agree that overly focusing on that as a strategy isn’t necessarily wise, but boycotts are definitely a weapon that can absolutely blow up the bridges of corporate america.
Letsdothisok@lemmy.world 1 week ago
No, this boycott at least isn’t “working” to any serious degree. And teslas stock is negligibley effected by any the protest. It can all be so subjective, though, anyway.
Lol, no, i looked it up, this is not a “VERY” successful boycott. Not in the least.