Woke Corporate Slacktivism

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Woke Corporate Slacktivism: the only thing worse than a corporation seeking profits, is one seeking to tell us how to live our lives.

Woke Corporate Slacktivism is the idea that corporations should stop trying to maximize shareholder value by meeting their customers needs, but start becoming political/religious organizations that preach their agendas to others. It seems to fail more than it works, because most people are wise enough to recognize that they're insincere. And even those gullible enough to believe otherwise just find some other hypocrisy by the company to feed their need for moral outrage. So their short term allies will always turn on them, and they alienate everyone else.

More

What's with companies losing their minds in order to virtue signaling? They don't seem to get that while they might do some short-term virtue signaling, to the never-satisfied crowd, it won't last long. They'll be hungry for more, or write them off as insincere/committed enough. So they either get more and more extreme, or they come to the realization that they are the rich, that the slacktivists want to eat.

Examples

Slacktivism : 25 items


The Dixie Chicks - While on foreign soil (during a London concert), the Texas Country Band's lead singer (Natalie Maines), decided to insult the President (George Bush), "We don't want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas", 9 days before the beginning of the Iraq War. Wrong place, wrong message, wrong timing: a boycott of their brand (magnified by repeated comments) caused them to lose much of their country audience, and many sponsors to avoid them as too hot. They were able to genre jump and still be successful, but their career was seriously damaged by their repeated unwillingness to think before speaking.

Amazon, Confederacy and Antifa - Bezos doesn't seem to mind selling hate on Amazon. Well, left wing hate. They blocked history and the confederate flag as "too controversial" (a historical event that happened) -- but antifa stuff was sold well after they proved themselves to be a domestic terrorist organization.

United & Delta Airlines - In the wake of Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, United and Delta airlines virtue signaled their opposition to the Constitution by removing the NRA's group travel program. Since the programs had only been used a dozen times in the prior year, this was more symbolic than impactful -- and NRA quipped as much back. By chickenshitting and hating together (along with rental car companies Hertz, Enterprise and Avis Budget), they were able to avoid too much backlash against any one company.

Enterprise, Hertz, and Avis - After the Parkland, Florida school shooting, Enterprise, Hertz, and Avis rental cars all decided to drop the NRA as a discounted provider. No one I knew with an NRA membership had ever used the service, or knew it existed - so I don't think it'll matter or lead to backlash, because no one cares.

Dick's Sporting Goods - How to shoot yourself in the dick? Be a Sporting Goods store named Dick's, then alienate a large swath of your customer base and suppliers who are hunters and gun owners, by replacing the Constitution with your hypocritical corporate ethics. This move left a mark, in the short and long term. (To the tune of about $150M or 1.7% of annual revenue, in the first year alone... more to come).

YETI Coolers - In the wake of Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, YETI Coolers cut off ties to the NRA Foundation (the shooting sports division), but wouldn't say why (coincidentally timed with Delta and REI dropping the NRA). This somewhat dickish move, and the NRA's open letter, lead to backlash amongst shooting enthusiasts, many shooting their coolers for YouTube, and YETI's competitors stepping up their 2A support. Of course WaPo and Snopes "FakeChecked" by taking YETI's damage-control effort claim that they were just ending an old promotional program (that didn't apply to anyone else, they wouldn't fulfill outstanding orders, and doesn't explain the timing or lack of communication or remedy). The "Press" didn't wait for NRA's reply to that, which sounded a lot like: {cough:bullshit!}.

Willie Nelson - Willie Nelson unwisely tied his brand with a snowflake drunk-driving hacker named Beto O’Rourke. This enraged a bunch of Nelson's fans.

Academy Awards - Satire Site Babylon-Bee summed up the Academy Awards as, "4-Hour-Long Political Lecture To Be Disguised As Awards Show". Yeah, it's worse than that. The lack of intellectual diversity, the demands of political correctness/conformity have sucked the drama and interest out of what was already a boring idea: industry wonks patting other industry wonks on the ass, over their ability to play make-believe and pretend to be people more important than they are. The results are the smallest audiences in the shows history.

Buffalo Wild Wings - Buffalo Wild Wings has a sort of gun-ban since like 2004 on Corporate owned stores, but individual franchisees get to set their own rules. This issue re-lights up when there's a shooting, robbery, etc., and one of their stores.

Colin Kaepernick -
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He was a pretty good QB, until the opposing teams figured out his tricks and then learned to shut him down. As his career was failing, he got a SJW Girlfriend who convinced him to destroy his career with activist assholishness that lost him sponsors and politicized sports (Football). When other ignorant players followed, it hurt the viewership/attendance of the NFL. Nike felt that they had tied their brand to Kaep (his only sponsor left), so they stayed slacktivists, which might have helped them in the short term with America haters globally, but married themselves to an ideology that will be hard to extricate themselves from long term. (We'll see how this plays out). But by then Kaep went full SJW and would not back down from narcissistic self-righteousness. He was sure that he was right -- and wasn't going to let the facts, common sense, or career destruction get in the way.

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ESPN - ESPN was told by common sense not to politicize sports, that they were just entertaining escapism. They chose to go the other way. Now they're damn near going bankrupt as viewership is way down, advertising is way down, and the trends for the future look way down. So what did we learn?

Handsome Her - A man-hating lesbian-owned vegan cafe in Melbourne, Australia made headlines in 2017 by charging an extra 18% “man tax”.... and they went out of business after less than two years. And she used all the latest ignorance-base buzzwords like it was to "protest the (imaginary) gender pay gap", it was there to "dismantle the patriarchy", and they did it to "make a stir through our brazen public discussions of structural inequality and oppression"... yup. Turns out people just wanted good food more than a lecture, and they chose to get their food somewhere else.

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Intuit - Intuit makes the bad choice to punish companies for selling products they don't like. It backfires. I worked for Intuit and used their products before -- but if I have a choice, I never ever will again. It is certainly in a private companies purview to choose their customers -- but there's a responsible or douchey way to do it. And it's also within the customers purview to choose the companies they do business with. So the lash gets the backlash.

Kelloggs -
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Look, I sincerely don’t care who/how people enjoy their friction/partnership. Really. Nor on whether you market to woketivists or not. But my first thought is that I prefer my cereal without any sexual preferences or experience (otherwise it gets soggy)… but the lead-in for this article did make me chuckle heartily... "Have you ever eaten Froot Loops and thought, "This cereal isn’t gay enough?" Do you seek a safe space to eat your Rice Krispies? Are you concerned that your Corn Flakes aren’t sufficiently woke? Well, now Kellogg’s has the solution!"

LeBron James -
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The NBA was pandering to the Chinese by distancing themselves (and apologizing to the Communists) from a Daryl Morey tweet (General Manager of the Houston Rockets), in which Morey expressed support for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. James said Morey was “misinformed”, and demonstrated that he is as ignorant about China/Hong Kong as he is about everything except basketball. James point was that we shouldn't get all political when trying to do the playoffs (or endangering his rich China/Nike endorsement contract), but this is the same hypocrite that called Trump voters uneducated, and has used every opportunity to demonstrate his lack of knowledge on many political issues. So sure, Nike and him can align with brutal Chinese human rights violators, but I think this will cost his brand in the long run.

Levi Strauss - Because it was such a disaster for other companies that did slacktivism, Levi Strauss (and president Chip Bergh) has decided to stick their noses in Gun Control issue to alienate their employees, investors and customers.

Memes-Woke - Memes about being Woke, Slacktivism, and the abject hypocrisy and lack of introspection required by Wokeness.

NBA - The NBA decided since Politicizing Sports worked so poorly for the NFL and ESPN, that they wanted some of that. So first, Daryl Morey (General Manager of the Houston Rockets) tweeted about supporting the Hong Kong protestors. That's a goodonya. The Colin Kaepernick of the NBA (LeBron James) decided to add his ignorance to the mess by claiming that we shouldn't politicize Sports, after he already had a few times.

NFL - When Kaepernick started his #KneelToo movement (or Trump responded), the NFL could have chosen: (a) the wise path: ignore and say nothing (b) the patriotic path: agree with the President that if they can warn/fine employees for wearing purple shoes, or dancing in the end-zone, then they can certainly tell them to take their protests somewhere else (or else) (c) the diplomatic path: walked the line and say that while they don't endorse BLM and the protests, they won't fire or restrict their employees from making displays. Instead they chose, none of those and went with (d) To perpetuate ignorance of BLM's hypocrisy, to make big displays against the nation and President, then to punish/intimidate/threaten players like Pittsburgh Steelers Villanueva to go along, and they forced him to apologize publicly for it. So much for the NFL's false claim that this was about defense of its players' rights to free speech.

Nike -
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Nike decided to go all corporate slacktivism with a variety of efforts that don't seem to work out well for them. I certainly don't disagree with their right to hold a stupid opinion, but while we should all have free speech (and expression), we shouldn't have freedom from the consequences of those stupid opinions.

Panera Bread Company - AKA the St. Louis Bread Company, was once a fine eating establishment. Then an SJW became CEO and FUBAR'ed the whole thing by deciding to (1) Create "Pay what you want" stores (2) Failing at it.

Ricky Gervais - At the 2020 Golden Globes, Ricky Gervais did a monologue that finally told the self-important Hollywood elites how the rest of the country (and world) see them and their sanctimonious speeches at masturbatory award shows. It was the best award monologue ever. He trashed Apple, Amazon, Disney (perhaps unfairly), and the Hollywood elites sanctimony (completely deserved). It took a while to get to the punchline, but the whole thing had its moments, especially watching the Hollywood elites being uncomfortable with finally seeing themselves in the mirror. It almost made me regret not watching the rest of the show.

SF Giants - Aubrey Huff, SF Giants first basemen and outfielder, and the most valuable player that brought them to 2010 World Series, publicly supported Donald Trump. For that, the Giants Management decided to NOT invite him to their reunion. (While Giants owner, Larry Baer was invited and has done things like yelling and pushing his wife over at an amusement park). Spousal abuse is a forgivable sin to the Giants, but being a Trump fan is not. This is just another case where slacktivism and California Intolerance overrode common sense and the idea that sports should be apolitical.

Salesforce - Salesforce’s CEO, Marc Benioff decided to put idiocy above business, and attack part of his base by enacting a policy that companies who sell semi-automatic weapons can't use its software. This can only alienate or lose them customers like Walmart, BassPro/Cabelas, Turners, and Academy -- not to mention any companies that value the Constitution or law of the land and decide to avoid Salesforce because of the signal this sends. Meanwhile their competitors like Netsuite, Oracle, SAP, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, are all glad for the business opportunities: thanks for shooting yourself in the dick Marc.

Shopify - Shopify says it will no longer allow them to sell some firearms and parts -- so their platform no longer welcomes any of the 600,000 businesses that use them to sell their goods, if those businesses also respect the Constitution and gun rights.


Conclusion

I don't see how picking fights you don't need to, will play to your advantage, or add to stockholder value. But SJW's have a chronic need to proselytize. In the mean time, they are never going to satisfy (for long) the other virtue signalers -- so it's a short term gain... while they are irritating a percentage of their long term customers, who have longer term memories (e.g. a long term loss). And this is complaining about the mote in your brothers eye, and ignoring the log in your own just begs for the hypocrisy police to rub your nose in it.

Woke
Diet woke.jpg
Terms on the left usually mean the opposite of what they sound like. So "Woke" really means asleep (or asheep). Woke implies being awake to the injustices around you like classism, racism, anti-LGBTQ. But since most of the woke are young, dumb and activists (extremists), there's no balance or introspection -- so they shit on those who value social norms, common sense, the English language, or might understand history or that other cultures/sub-cultures might not agree. None of the injustices done at the hands of SJW's matter to the Wokenuts. So woke is being blind to the consequences of your actions and putting leftist activism above everything else, including who you hurt or are unjust towards. It is Slacktivism, intersectional divisiveness, and putting feelings and actions above thinking. If they have to crush a few innocents under the jack-boot of virtue signaling, "Oh well", what matters to them is being part of the same clique, and virtue signaling, not the absurdity of what they're doing or who they hurt doing it. Antifa is the most Woke group around. The Dunning-Kruger effect with a side of sanctimony, and thinking they're better than everyone else, while behaving worse.

more...

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Issues
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Woke
Diet woke.jpg
Terms on the left usually mean the opposite of what they sound like. So "Woke" really means asleep (or asheep). Woke implies being awake to the injustices around you like classism, racism, anti-LGBTQ. But since most of the woke are young, dumb and activists (extremists), there's no balance or introspection -- so they shit on those who value social norms, common sense, the English language, or might understand history or that other cultures/sub-cultures might not agree. None of the injustices done at the hands of SJW's matter to the Wokenuts. So woke is being blind to the consequences of your actions and putting leftist activism above everything else, including who you hurt or are unjust towards. It is Slacktivism, intersectional divisiveness, and putting feelings and actions above thinking. If they have to crush a few innocents under the jack-boot of virtue signaling, "Oh well", what matters to them is being part of the same clique, and virtue signaling, not the absurdity of what they're doing or who they hurt doing it. Antifa is the most Woke group around. The Dunning-Kruger effect with a side of sanctimony, and thinking they're better than everyone else, while behaving worse.