collapse of the old society

our big companies are infinitely more powerful than our government

The big companies ARE your government. Wtf do you think "lobbying" is? Who the fuck do you think funds both your parties? (Hint: It's bribery and billionaires, respectively)

and it seems like SOME of them should be putting up a fight, standing up for their queer employees, Hispanic customers or at least the Palestinian family members of the board.

Why the fuck would they?

Because they used pink/green/crip/whatever wash for a few days each year to fool you in to believing they care? They don't. Never have.

Companies exist to make profit, as long as appropriating marginalised peoples' struggles and pretending to care made them money, they kept the mask on, now it no longer does, nor do they have rules like (what they would consider) that "silly" DEI keeping them from openly discriminating and maintaining the white supremacist cis-heteronormative ableist patriarchy they still openly favoured even when the rules were in place. Bending the knee to fascism (which capitalism will always decay in to precisely for this reason) will ultimately be much more profitable for them - the billionaires who own the companies (the companies are just a shell, that they will drop for a bigger one. Prison labour? Deportation camp labour? Slave labour? They're already here, and are about to have a growth spurt) in a fucking flash.

Literally no one with real power is opposing this fascist takeover, and it fucking disgusts me.

Literally anyone with real power under capitalism is fascist, or at least dedicated to maintain the the capitalist system that leads to it, what the fuck did you expect?

Companies are jumping at the chance to appease orange Hitler, and all struck down their gay pride policies before even being ordered or threatened.

Welcome to pinkwashing, queers have been telling you for decades that rainbow capitalism is a mask and a trick you shouldn't fall for.

Also maybe consider doing some research in to war and other oppression, see how motherfuckingly eye-wateringly profitable it is.

I guess somehow I was naive enough to hope that Starbucks or Patagonia or Target would pretend to resist the erasure of queer people, or even just push the oppressors into a courtroom before kneeling down to lick their spray tanned boots.

I'm sorry, but that is beyond naive, that is wilfully out of touch. These companies, the government, and capitalism itself have been telling you all along who they are, and those who they oppress have been scream it forever, it was all there for you to see and hear, but you chose not to, probably because it was more comforting to believe the lie, and marginalised people couldn't possibly be right with our "cynicism".

This is America. Land of the ~~cowards~~ corporation.

FTFY.

These people are not cowards, and the longer you continue to frame them as such, instead of as the intentionally oppressive individuals, and their machine, that they are, that machine will continue to chug along uninterrupted.

The idea that corporations and the people who run them should be “brave” and stand up against the very system that enables them to exist, or somehow give a single fuck about society at large, otherwise they’re “cowards” (and not simply self serving oppressors) is so far beyond absurd, it’s actually enraging at this point.

Sorry what's the joke about 'corporations are people'?

You're right, there are people who think corporations have morals, or that Donald Trump was sent by God to save us, or that the Earth is flat. That doesn't create a standard that praising such articles is the Right Thing and criticizing them is the Wrong Thing.

Because this thread is about this article by this author, and because people have been calling bullshit forever. Which makes them feel like they've actually done something when they haven't. "B-but it's raising awareness!" No it's not, it's just blowing off personal steam.

You know what's incredibly thankless? Caring enough about the common good to personally send out thousands of postcards urging Dems to vote, and seeing 10 million of them who voted for Biden in 2020 decide not to show the fuck up to vote for Harris in 2024. Because Genocide! Funny how nobody's talking about the ceasefire that took effect a couple days before Fuckface took office, which the Biden admin had been helping to negotiate during the election while pouty little shits were folding their arms and standing on their righteous moral pedestals and calling them nazis. Don't even try to lecture me about thankless.

People view boycotting as if enough homework will find them the fabled Free Market Unicorn©️, with sparkling udders they can ethically consume from to their hearts content.

Guess what: your coffee and chocolate are slave labor all the way down. Nestle owns all your water and 6 media conglomerates get your entertainment money no matter where you swipe your credit card.

But do you actually need to make those purchases in the first place? There's nothing other than habit, comfort, and convenience keeping you from cutting most of it out of your life. It makes the ethical calculus so much easier.

Of course, how much austerity you can stomach in your modern life is a personal threshold. But every dollar you don't spend is a dollar less to our corporate overlords. You could even donate it to a worthy cause for double the satisfaction (if you care to do that homework...)

Exactly that's exactly what I'm saying

My point is being missed it seems.

It's not that im saying we can just stop. Being part of society, but, that if we can pick the right target, a target that will say send the right message, then boycotting something as a united front, and sticking to it, ending that one thing, if its the right thing, will do a lot of the heavy lifting, so you dont have to cancel everything that you are willing to use as long as its worth it

There isnt anything wrong with liking things and wanting those things, but they also arent needed.

I used 2 examples. Apple and Disney, because i think those 2 are good targets for the message ending them would send.

Apple is the first company to cross the Trillion Dollar worth. (IIRC)

they had products built in factories that literally had to put nets around them to stop people suiciding themselves due to the conditions they work in. Its modern slavery if not worse.

Ending that company BECAUSE they are worth so much sends a strong message that that level of success will not be tolerated any longer. But the sacrifice is that we cant let them come back to us. And if we simply repeat for everyone else that crosses the same threshold, while still showing that it isnt that we dont like the industries they belong to, we will need to be diligent in saying, NO you have too much you are cancelled.

Disney is different but they are so iconic. They are a culture that has grown like a cancer.

And many of us have strong emotional memories of their IP

Saying we reject you because of what you have become, inspite of our attatchment to them, will send the message that we dont need you if this is what you have become.

Not sure if this helps, but its not about trying to ignore the world, its about making a united effort and sending the right message.

Ah, the ol' strawman approach - argue with a ridiculous version of what somebody said instead of what they actually said, which in this case was don't buy from companies you object to. Seems pretty straightforward and not at all stupid like move to a different country or stop using electricity. No need to be a dick.

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

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

I saw some other critiques in this thread but admit I recognize the site and did enjoy previous articles. I should have given this one more of a chance perhaps. But I do using the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would have been a better choice if going to use them as an example. And yet they are indeed publicly funded and a non-profit. It's kind of the antithesis of the point she was trying to make. They were also established and still funded by the federal government so in their survival interest to not go against Trusk/Mump

But I perhaps am not thinking about this correctly and have facts wrong.

The majority of IT applicants are straight white men, so even completely unbiased hiring practices would result in mostly straight white men being hired for IT positions. You can argue about why that's the case (societal norms, socioeconomic factors, etc), but it has nothing to do with corporations that hire based on merit.