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Unfortunately, I really want to talk about all the Bud Light stuff, and I don't want to make a new throwaway for it. So you will have to deal with this short summary of my jury duty instead of the nice effort post I've been cooking up on dog walks: 1) The pool is almost sarcastically diverse, as though someone had intentionally excluded anyone else resembling my 'peers.' 2) If someone shows up it's because they want to serve on a jury, and they find it strange that someone would intentionally decrease their chances of being selected 3) The entire experience can be a colossal waste of time and energy, 50 otherwise productive people spent all day not working because one illegal immigrant made a sexual innuendo to another illegal's girlfriend/stepdaughter. Why not just deport them?
Onto the Bud Light thing, as discussed earlier here yesterday. The short summary would be that someone (also from San Diego, coincidentally) decided about a year ago that they were a woman, and Bud Light decided to make them a special commemorative can, which apparently they drank in a bathtub as part of a marketing campaign. This has made a lot of people (including me) very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. I'm writing this post now because the company just offered its' first official response and it's perfect gpt fuel-on-the-fire. It's short so I won't give highlights, instead, a summary that suggests it pisses off everyone rather than mollifying anyone. I eagerly invite someone to provide a mirror image of 'their tribes' response but I want to share a few thoughts about mine in a few buckets:
1). For most of my adult life, I drank an incredible amount of Bud Light. Occasionally flirting with the limits of 'functional' alcoholism at ~30 a day, occasionally dipping below my typical 10-12, occasionally taking a month off because I'd been getting fat. This amount of consumption is not unusual in my peer group. Just do some napkin math: (minimally) one beer per half hour of time awake and 'off the clock.' Essentially, Bud Light is not a 6 pack that sits in your fridge for weeks, it's bought in 18 packs by people like me on the way home for the night.
2). We drink Bud Light for exactly the reason you (the proverbial 'you', of course) poke fun at it. It's thin, watery, and doesn't have a lot of alcohol. I can drink 30 a day and never get shithouse drunk the way I will after 3 bourbons on an empty stomach. I can drink more than a tiny sip and enjoy the flavor, unlike a double tangerine ipa. I like to sit around and drink beer, and it's a perfect beer for that.
3). I have my friends that drink Bud Light, and my friends that poke fun at me for drinking Bud Light. I love both, but with the later, we usually don't tool around in the garage while drinking. These days with the later it's usually more like visiting the latest pop-up microbrewery which may or may not have food (or anything drinkable). There's a culture, or if that's a bit grandiose, a vibe around a hot sunny day and a big cold box of weak watery beer.
4). Unlike most potential boycotts, I (and my people) have some purchase with this one ('purchase' for the non-english natives among us here meaning 'agency, power, or leverage'). We get a little say. There is a little verve here. This is not nike, something I already didn't buy, or every insurance company known to man, something I can't really avoid buying, this is weak watery beer!
5). Unlike most Allied marketing, this feels like it was meant to hurt. I'm aware Bud Light has done rainbow pride cans before, and I've probably even bought some without thinking about it. But something feels wrong about buying this beer now that I know they intentionally had a AMAB in a bikini drinking their commemorative can celebrating '365 of womanhood.' Not only can I effectively boycott this, but I can't unfeel the desire to boycott this! This one might have legs.
After the non-apology from the brass, Bud Light may have terminally tarnished their brand. Planting a flag and vitally interested to hear your thoughts
I don't have much of a horse in this fight as I don't think I ever drunk a can of Bud Light and never intend to unless I'll be dying from thirst and Bud Light would be the only source of liquids on the whole planet. That was true before they set their brand on fire. So not much changed for me. Except that they make a very convenient target to make an example of them, and if it will successfully be made, it would be a good victory in the culture war - something that very rarely happens on the right.
One thing I find interesting to discuss though - how comes Don Jr. came into defense of Bud Light? https://www.foxnews.com/politics/donald-trump-jr-opposes-bud-light-boycott-citing-company-donations-republicans I mean yeah, they gave some sweet $$$ to Republicans, but come on, read the room, dude. Why the fuck would we need money given to Republican politicians if they refuse to help us not to be completely destroyed in the culture war? How much money they give to him to shoot himself in the foot like that?
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Im not really that interested in the culture war surrounding bud light, but I am interested in knowing your thoughts on the difference between coors lite and bud light drinkers.
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You're drinking the wrong king of beers my dude. Why not drink german style Weiss beers at ABV 7% - 10%, just like a "normal person" i.e., me. You could just do with like 4 or 5 of them.
TBH fuck Bud Light, and you shouldn't be giving them your hard earned pennies, but you shouldn't have been drinking Bud Light in the first place.
Worry not my guy, I drink plenty of other types of beers, ciders, seltzers, kombuchas, etc. Needless to say all varieties of wine. And though I usually save it for the weekends, have been known to enjoy a whiskey or bourbon, or a tequila/vodka with mixer. Brandy in the coffee on occasion, or baileys, or Kahlua. And after an especially good meal a schnaps, usually sambuca or limoncello.
I love drinking, and if I drink piss-water bud light I can never drink too much, that's why it's been kind of a touchstone. For the moment Coors Banquet has been scratching the same itch, but you're right, maybe it's a sign to just stop drinking quite so much (by volume).
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As someone who works in a bar, I'm somewhere between amused and annoyed by the Bud Light thing (much as I was annoyed as a pizza delivering college student to hear about John Schnatter from people blissfully unaware of Tom Monaghan's politics). The place I work at is one of the more liberal bars in town, or at least liberal enough that Bud Light is one of our worst sellers. We keep it in stock for the occasional large party of tradesman types who will come in and drink lots of Bud/Bud Light, but for whatever reason Bud is so "redneck" coded that our patrons (mostly Millennials; happy hour is mostly Boomers) mostly don't touch it. Why Miller Lite isn't coded this way, why our customers have no idea that Kid Rock name-dropped PBR in a song, and why Yuengling's owner actually having endorsed Trump seems to have been forgotten all escape me. Caveat here: the local Miller/Yuengling/PBR distributor sends us 16oz cans for the same price as Bud sends us 12oz bottles, a price differential that only Michelob Ultra (Greeks and middle-aged former Greeks are loyal to it.) seems able to overcome (darkly amusing, as IMO Mich Ultra is even worse than Bud Light; Hell, I'd rather drink Natty.).
I've heard lots of jokes about Bud Light that get old fast, one regular who repeatedly announced his boycott in annoying fashion, but otherwise I sell no Bud Light and tons of Miller/PBR/Yuengling as per usual. I've heard more dramatic things from the sort of bars that do sell Bud Light (and wouldn't be surprised; this is an SEC college town), but people say lots of things. Concerning Gen Z, they either choke down $2 PBRs like the rest of our budget-conscious customers or drink fancy crafts (Sours seem to be in style now and IPAs out of fashion/relegated to alcoholic Millennials.)/mixed drinks. Hard kombucha is a surprisingly big seller along with the expected ciders for people (usually young women) who don't like beer. We sell surprisingly little Whiteclaw (mostly to one regular, and then the bar manager drinks it on the job because it looks like water in a cup); maybe it's class-coded in a negative way toward dilettantes in the same way Bud Light is.
For fun, my preferred domestic/InBev product (aside from Elysian Space Dust IPA) is Natty Light, because it's cheap, IMO no worse than other light beers, and does its job, i.e. one or two to finish off a night upon returning home from the bar won't get me too fucked up to work the next day. I'm not tough enough to drink Natty Ice any more, and as a rule I don't keep liquor at my house (My drunken idea of a good gin and tonic is not conducive to being on-time/sober enough to work the next morning, and I frown upon getting drunk and morose by myself these days.)
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My assumption as with every one of these controversies is that it will peter out within weeks. I mean, is there anyone still not buying Gillette razors or Nike trainers on the grounds of their respective controversial advertising campaigns? Corporate top brass are not morons, nor I suspect do they care much about any social causes, except for perhaps keeping their own taxes low and regulations light.
Around the time of the Gillette thing, I'd bought a bunch of Mach 3 heads. They'd changed something about them. They are blue now, instead of green. But the issue I had was that my hair gets caught between the blades. This is actually why I used Mach 3, since my hair would clog up other brands. I don't know if the space between the blades is too large or too small.
So I haven't used Mach 3 since, and just picked up a cheap electric razor.
But not boycott related. Unless Gillette intentionally stirred up controversy at a time they made the change.
I don't do Gillette, not anymore. TBH they HAVE changed the geometry of the blades, dunno what they are doing but these days I'm actually using woman's leg rasors, they have much wider spacing between the blades.
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Yes I still avoid both.
I think that both you and @Rambler are almost certainly outliers; which isn't so surprising as this forum is probably not the one to try to find the median conservative consumer.
So that list of 'almost certainly outliers' has grown to at least @Unsaying, @Rambler, @ActuallyATleilaxuGhola, @freemcflurry, and me. If you're trying to find the median conservative consumer, you found him, he's me (eg why I originally wrote this post)
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FWIW I also still avoid both and I'm much closer to conservative normiehood that most here.
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I cannot speak for anyone else but I used Gillette from high school until the boycott and haven't used it (or any of the other brands it owns) since.
Deep down I wondered if I would really stick with it. But it was easier than I thought it would be; after choosing alternatives they became habitual and then my personal boycott, like much else in life, ran on autopilot.
Same here. I bought an electric razor when that happened and never went back. If I want a close shave for special occasions I buy a store brand razor
Gillette owns Braun though.
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I don't particularly love most trans activism, and I'm deeply troubled by a lot of the medical interventionism on the youth.
However, there is a sense that certain factions or cultures of conservative men (of varying races and ethnicities) have created defensive silos of culture against the encroachment of gender non-conforming men. These places could be certain gyms, certain sales teams, certain blue collar unions, or certain bars. The shared sentiment is that there's enough spaces for gay or trans people (these men can't tell the difference) and so they need to batten down the hatches and keep their exclusionary spaces free from the taint of homo (no pun intended).
I think that there's a good proportion of younger straight men who are very into this, a la the andrew tate fans, and there's another group of younger straight men who are completely over it, and don't want to engage in long or endless discussions of masculinity and how important it is to pick a side.
If i were to entertain the idea of corporate advertisement as culture war, I'd say the point of this ad might be to demonstrate how hateful conservatives actually are against gay and trans people, no matter how much they pretend its about protecting children and women's sports. The liberals could be seen as responding to this "it's just about protecting children and women" rhetoric by saying "okay, here's a drag queen in her proper place, advertising beer in a funny commercial, joking about not knowing what March madness is"
Then the conservative men start literally shooting cases of beer, and it becomes apparent that it's not really about protecting women and children, it's about establishing cultural silos of hatred towards gay and trans people.
It's a good tactic for uniting the gay and trans factions that have started to schism lately. At the risk of being snide, I think the QT BIPOCS realize the white gay tops aren't coming to the club if they keep calling them "the nazis of the LGBT community" for going to the gym. Also that white wealthy gay men are the ones with the social capital and mental fortitude to penetrate these conservative cultural silos.
There is a reason that younger straight and politically incorrect men want to establish gay free spaces- gay cultural norms are a bit different about sexual harassment of other men, and most of these men suspect that allowing homosexual entry will force them to tolerate gay cultural norms. There is, IMO, no evidence against this suspicion.
Honestly I don’t quite know why it’s so important for gay men to be welcomed in these spaces, because it’s not as if the plumbers and auto salesmen and gym bros you’re complaining about are trying to show up at gay bars. Can’t different sorts resolve their incompatible preferences by not forcing each other to interact?
I'm a gay man and I work a physical job. Every person other than me in the company is a straight man (it's unofficial policy to not hire women). It's literally not a problem.
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A gay bar is not equivalent exchange for being unwelcome at your nearest health centers, entire professions, or the most well paying department at your corporation.
Are you saying that straight men have more to fear in regards to harassment from gay men than gay men have to fear from straight men? Because I think that's demonstrably false based on the history of gay men being beaten, sometimes to death, by groups of straight men, and the opposite never occurring at all.
Your examples are ‘gyms, blue collar unions, sales teams, and bars’. None of those are existential, although it does make certain career opportunities more uncomfortable. You have every ability to either pick a different career- of which there are many-, deal with discomfort, or simply not tell your coworkers.
Society fundamentally does not exist to make deviant lifestyle decisions seem normal and accommodated. If you or one of your gay friends actually want to be a plumber, then deal with the low level hostility until you learn to follow social norms among plumbers.
And yes, straight men have more to fear in terms of sexual harassment from gay men than gay men do from straight men. The evidence for that is ‘duh’. Whether anti-gay hate crimes are as common as they’re made out to be by the LGBT persecution narrative is neither here nor there; you are free to be wary of blue collar men if you’d like, it’s no skin off of our backs because we don’t insist on being welcomed into your spaces and affirmed in them for things that have nothing to do with the places we came to.
It's actually not as easy to be selectively closeted as you seem to think. People ask you questions about your life, and you are then given the options to either refuse to answer, in which case you are unfriendly, lie, in which case you are untrustworthy, or tell the truth, in which case you are provocative.
You have no claim to blue collar professions nor the right to establish them as safe spaces for gay hatred.
I have a fourth option, which is to advocate against your arbitrary definition of deviancy, which conveniently includes being gay, but not premarital sex, drinking, swearing, and hostility towards gay and trans people.
The idea that gay hatred in blue collar professions is justified because of a fear of sexual harassment is silly. I am sure straight men sexually harass each other, and gay men, far more than gay men might sexually harass straight men. Your ability to dismiss the fear of harassment that gay men experience while at the same time demanding gay men deal with constant "low level" hostility is evidence I am correct and you are not.
I would guess you simply just sympathize more with a straight man who experiences the presence of a gay man as intrinsically sexual harassment, whereas you see low level hostility towards gay men as justified because you think gay men are deviants.
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Consider that there are semiotics to LGBT representation on a Bud Light can that go beyond the semantic meaning. Gay rites are civil rites. The red tribe can recognize a blue tribe religious ablution when they see one. Why do you think the red tribe failed to raise a stink about Milo Yiannopoulos, when he was a gay invading their "silo"?
Democrats used to get quite surly about Americana imagery and music in sports, brands, and media back during the War On Terror. This isn't because they "hated America" or "hated freedom". They correctly perceived extreme displays of the Stars and Stripes as a gang marker for the red tribe.
I'm willing to entertain the notion Alissa Heinerscheid didn't know what she was doing, but it looks a hell of a lot from the outside like a triumphalist blue tribe elite planting their flag on the reddest of red tribe territory. Imagine conservatives buying the largest mosque in Portland and erecting a big George W Bush statue on top of it. Are they doing anything wrong? What do you think will happen to the statue?
Bud light is a beer, not a religion or political party. I think that's my point, that people who are aligned along political, religious, or politico-religious lines try to establish non-political and non-religious entities like a beer brand as off limits to their political or religious opponents.
The comparison between making one commercial for bud light with a trans woman celebrity and putting a statue of George Bush on the largest mosque in Portland is kind of silly to me. They're not similar.
Corporate brands aren't anyone's territory other than their boards' or shareholders'.
I think it looks like a triumphalist blue flag to you because you experience trans and gay inclusion as a loss. This situation reminds gay and trans people that their existence, without accounting political speech, is experienced as political speech, whereas the opposite is not true. A conservative man can go to a pride parade, just like in the blog post you linked, and not be threatened. To experience hostility and attention, he needs to do something political, like wear a police uniform, or hold a TERFy sign.
You can say both sides are doing the same thing, retiring conformance in certain spaces, but the degree to which the conformance required invades someone's identity is different. That's what's being demonstrated. We have all seen conservative speakers accosted on college campuses or shoved at pride events, but these people were trying to be as deliberately offensive as possible. This is the other side, where conservatives are literally shooting cases of beer in effigy because a trans woman took a bubble bath with a bud light.
To you it looks like a sly tactic in a culture war. To me it's a reminder that people like you might see my existence as a tactic first and a personality second. There's a degree to which you think a republican drinking bud light in a garage is more authentic than a trans woman drinking one in a bubble bath.
Would you define identity please? Is identity not your personal conceptualisation of who you are, what kind of person you are?
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I think that the distinction between beliefs and identity is a lot more arbitrary than you are trying to say. Is there any objective way of saying any particular thing is one or the other, aside from motivated reasoning?
If you "identify as trans", then that means you were born as a normal biological man or woman, and at some point, you decided you would feel better if you were the opposite sex. So maybe you decide to dress and adopt the style and mannerisms of the sex you believe you should be. Maybe you decide to do some more drastic things such as take hormone treatments or get surgical alterations. Maybe you decide to change your name and get people to call you the new name and pronouns. Maybe you decide to try to live life as your desired gender, including such otherwise ordinary things as using bathrooms and playing sports. Exactly what makes any of those choices/decisions an "identity", and anything a red tribe / conservative decides to do to express themselves a "belief"?
It also sounds disingenuous to me to blame all violence against conservative speakers and activists on college campuses on them "trying to be as deliberately offensive as possible". College is ostensibly a place for exploring many different possible belief types, yet on many occasions it seems the mere existence of any conservative who doesn't care to spend 3/4 of their time apologizing for supposed wrongs that they haven't actually done is considered "offensive".
And since when is wearing a police uniform a political act? The police are ostensibly there to preserve law and order. Blue Team desires to see them as the bad guys due to cherry-picking a relatively modest number of bad acts that they think were not punished decisively enough. In what other contexts is it legitimate to tar a large group of people and an entire profession due to accused bad acts of a small percentage of them?
Let's discuss the difference between a personal identity and a political belief then. A personal identity is about how you try to relate to other people. A political belief is about how you think the state should use it's claim to legitimate violence in order to enforce its law. So if you're just being trans, you're existing a personal identity. If you're saying trans people shouldn't be allowed to use women's bathrooms according to the law, you're engaging in a political belief.
All trans people have a similar identity, but they can have a very wide range of political beliefs.
Conservatives do not share any particular identity, but possibly they might share some political beliefs. Honestly, they don't really seem to share any political beliefs, but that's a different discussion. Regardless, conservatives are conservative because of one or more political beliefs they hold, not their identities.
I don't feel the need to respond to your other questions because they address claims I didn't make and opinions I did not state.
I think the conservative position on the bathroom thing is more accurately stated as "I (as a biological woman, or husband of one, or father of a young daughter) do not feel comfortable having biological males in womens' bathrooms with (me, my wife, my daughter)". There definitely are some people claiming trans identities that abuse bathroom rules to harass and assault women and children, though the extent to which this happens and is a significant concern versus being an overblown fear are of course debatable. Which makes it kind of strange that this has become a primarily conservative position, while feminists who align with Blue Team are typically the first argue about the risk of sexual assault from having men in female spaces, but this gets us into the whole TERF debate.
So shouldn't not wanting yourself or your daughters to be subject to sexual assault be a personal issue? That's the core motivation here IMO.
As kind of an aside, does the law even really regulate who's allowed to use which restroom prior to trans issues entering mainstream politics? As an ordinary straight cis biological male, if I was to enter a womens' restroom somewhere in public, I expect I would be asked to leave, perhaps rudely, by any women there who saw me or possibly management of the place I happened to be in. The police wouldn't really get involved unless I made a big scene about it and stayed around long enough for them to come, assuming there didn't happen to be any police there already. I might be trespassed or arrested for something to the effect of disturbing the peace or resisting arrest if I continued to hang around and make a scene about it long enough for police to get there. I don't think there even was a way to be charged with using the incorrect bathroom.
You don't have to discuss the other points if you don't care to, but you did write in the very post I responded to "but these people were trying to be as deliberately offensive as possible" and "do something political, like wear a police uniform".
You answered your own question regarding the bathroom. Good job. It's a personal identity if you just leave the restroom until the trans person is gone. It's a political one of you try to pass a law or meet the trans person subject to the law via the series of escalations you described.
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hi. i guess i have a niche here of pointing out obvious things everyone else ignores. i'm over this whole debate, nothing's going to change, hopefully a lot of people will be a lot happier, a lot of people are going to kill themselves, or their parents and then themselves, or others and then get killed by cops. nobody's going to learn anything and in 40 years when people can hop in a chrysalis and pop out looking however they want we'll collectively pretend this period of superficial dynamism never happened. but man, i will never tolerate rhetorical duplicity.
i don't think you're lying to me, so i'll say you seem to misunderstand/not understand politicization, or how it is used in modern discourse.
"identity" (as diluted a term there has ever been) is what certain groups of people use to refer to certain aspects of themselves they argue inherently merit political considerations (rights). identity can thus very easily be and often is highly or maximally political.
"[nouns] exist, their existence isn't political" could hypothetically be a nonpolitical statement, but 99.9% of use cases in contemporary discussions are referring to the trans-identifying, and in that regard there is literally nothing you can say more political than "trans people exist, their existence isn't political."
i'm annoyed nobody pointed this out because i think you probably have a decent response, but everybody's accepted your framing so they're conceding 75% of the debate just like that. how fucking boring. i won't, that's my thing here apparently. their "existence" is not settled. in 40 years it won't be settled either, sorta, but it won't matter, it's just right now it matters. so right now, no. their identity is not given, it is political. their presence anywhere beyond private confines is political. the demand for "representation" is political, workplace and otherwise public accommodations tailored for them are political. a trans-identifying person being used to promote a beer is generally political, one being used to promote a beer of the deep red dominion is the most politicized speech it is possible to make. if there were any room to doubt intent we would have seen AB limit their selection for promoters from the many trans-identifying in this country who pass, who even strong ideologically opposed men would admit are congruent with traditional female beauty standards (or would if fairly tricked by blind samples). they did not. the selection of a person the majority of people would consider on their best day unattractive is an expression of an integral part of the structure of this political thought and settles this as deliberate political action.
you can argue this is a good thing. that yes, they are political, but this is all a vital part of the cause and is justified. just don't lie about it, or for you, don't unknowingly perpetuate rhetoric that was designed to be duplicitous.
Sure, everything is political, because everything can be framed in terms of power. But some things are more political, because they exert more power, and some things are less. Dylan Mulvaney making a beer ad is less political than the reaction to it, which is more political. It's not "the most politicized speech it is possibly to make". It's a man, or a woman, in a dress, or a bubble bath, drinking a Bud Light. There are many many things far more political. The essence of politics is the control of the state and its exclusive claim to legitimate violence in the enforcement of the law and its sovereignty. Miss Mulvaney's bubble bath is not near to any of those things.
I'm kind of surprised at people who think Bud Light is some sort of exclusively Republican domain. It's Bud Light, not the NRA.
I think you're failing to recognize Bud Light as a class marker, which is part of the discussion here. You may want to re-read Scott's writings about the Red Tribe and the Blue Tribe.
Bud Light is a beer, not a class marker. I certainly don't want to read, let alone re-read, anything that discusses the "Red Tribe" and the "Blue Tribe".
As a practical matter, if you are going to participate in discussion in what is still essentially the free-floating descendant of the comments section of Scott Alexander's blog, it is probably worth being familiar with the classics just to be up to speed with what people are talking about. But in this particular context, (a) I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup is a fun read, and (b) it talks about exactly the sort of way in which what beer you drink can be a class or "tribe" marker.
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Uh... I strongly disagree with this analysis. Go to your next pride parade in a MAGA hat and see what happens.
You're continuing to demonstrate my point. A conservative has to display specific political speech in liberal spaces to have his presence politicized. However, gay and trans people just need to display their personal identities to have their presence politicized.
They're not equivalent. Conservatives engage in hatred based on identity, and liberals engage in hatred based on beliefs.
This ad campaign is just a reminder that conservatives still view being trans or gay as a political choice first, and a personal characteristic second.
I would say that's a pretty bold statement to make about two very broad groups of people. I've personally observed both groups hate people for both reasons.
Putting aside the excessive generality, I would say that I object to this rather glib slogan on the grounds that beliefs are quite often an integral part of a persons identity and that in fact the lines between identity and belief are often so blurred as to make the distinction meaningless.
If I, a member of the Hawkmanii tribe, attack and murder a member of the Boarmanii tribe from the next valley over based solely on him being a filthy Boarmanii (who had it coming because you can't trust these "people"), would I have killed him based on his identity or his beliefs? By modern standards we would be considered to be members of the same ethnic group, distinguished only by our styles of dress or perhaps how we choose to wear our beards. Yet both of us would become murderously violent towards anyone implying that there is anything even remotely similar about us, I was born a Hawkmanii, I will die a Hawkmanii.
So these hypothetical conservatives consider gays/transgender types to be repugnant because they perceive them as making an incorrect political choice, not because they perceive it to be an immutable characteristic? This seems to undermine the argument you made in the very line above.
The difference is not meaningless. If you would murder someone from another tribe regardless of their personal beliefs, then you're murdering based on identity. If you would murder someone from your own tribe based on their beliefs, you're murdering based on belief. The existence of green doesnt mean blue and yellow aren't different.
The trend is obvious. Liberals will frequently eat their own based on failures of belief regardless of identity, like with Al Franken. Conservatives will frequently support their own based on identity and regardless of belief, like Donald Trump and his history of cheating on his wife with a porn star.
Liberals will support someone like the current Pope, intrinsically conservative in identity, for expressing more liberal beliefs on gay people than previous Popes. Conservatives will shoot a case of their favorite beer, or applaud such a shooting, because they made one commercial with a trans woman. The trans woman doesn't express political views in the commercial, in fact, she actually says "whatever team you love, I love too" but conservatives hate her based on her identity.
Regarding this:
Conservatives would like to pretend they are hating people for their beliefs, rather than their immutable characteristics, so they recast immutable characteristics as political beliefs so they can justify their identity based hatred.
This is evident in one of the other replies to me that claims that blue collar hostility towards gay men is justified because gay men are intrinsically likely to sexually harass straight men. The poster linked an identity, being gay, with an inevitanle political action, sexual harassment, to justify the hatred of gay men.
They're smart enough to pretend that it's just harmful beliefs and actions from gay and trans people that they object to, like drag shows for children, surgery for children, and men in women's sports.
This commercial cleverly displays that this is just a facade designed to persuade moderate liberals such as myself that they are looking for any compelling reason to attack gay and trans people because their hatred is based on identity.
This whole website is based on the idea that it's better to object on ideological rather than tribal lines, even if tribalism is powerful. Conservatives are clearly the side of power through tribalism, and liberals are clearly the side of power through persuasive ideology.
The other two posters here are arguing with me. Because they think I'm gay and they think that is deviancy, or morally inferior. Maybe you are too. I'm arguing with them because I disagree with their comments. I don't hate them based on perceived identity.
Do you believe that identities can be disputed at all? Can someone wrongly identify as something?
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But when you say you are transgender, you at least believe in the theory that gender and sex are not the same thing, right? Certainly, if you claim you are a unicorn, you believe unicorns do exist? Do you think that the hatred toward a cisgender white man claiming he believes in this theory would be any different from the hatred toward a transgender man?
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But their beliefs are their identity, it's the only way in which they are different (from a modern first world perspective). Identity is a question of what individuals believe to be important, both in themselves and in others. You can take a Hutu baby and a Tutsi baby from their respective homelands, raise them in a black american ghetto without any information about where they came from and they would not identify or be identified as Hutu and Tutsi, they're just black. Yet raise these same babies in Rwanda and one may very well end up dismembering the other with farming implements in a wide ranging genocide based solely on their identity.
To give another example that you keep banging on about, being gay. There are plenty of examples of cultures throughout history that do not share the modern concept of "being gay". I'm massively over-generalising here, but for ancient greeks, having sex with men was something that you did, not something that defined you. If you showed up to ancient Athens and insisted that having sex with or being attracted to men was this incredibly important, immutable part of who you were, they'd probably consider you to be strange and childish.
In both the cases above, the cultural context informs the identity of the individuals involved far more than their genetics.
How exactly does Justin "Minstrel Show" Trudeau fit into this? And what intrinsic genetic traits does Donald Trump share with his fellow american conservatives that is shielding him from harm? As far as I can tell, there is no genetic link between conservatives (if there was then by your logic it would be haram for liberals to oppose them based on their conservative genetics anyway).
It is strange to me that you consider sexual harassment to be a political act. I would say it's pretty reasonable to assume that gay men are more likely to sexually harass straight men than a straight man is. Ergo, if you're afraid of being sexually harassed or assaulted by a man, you would be wise to focus your defenses towards gay men. From the perspective of our hypothetical blue collar worker, the problem is not the immutable characteristic (attraction to men), the problem is the increased risk of the bad things he doesn't want happening to him.
I wouldn't blame a woman for being more frightened of being sexually harassed or assaulted by a straight man, why would I fault this hypothetical blue collar worker for drawing the same conclusions?
Ideological lines are tribal lines. The very next sentence you accuse the enemy tribe of being the bad mean people who are ignorant (perhaps they are also smelly?), whereas your tribe are the good virtuous ones who seek to rise above such petty nonsense. You would have to be willfully ignorant to end up on a site like the motte and not have been presented with an abundance of examples of those from the liberal tribe acting solely out of opposition to the conservative tribe.
I honestly can't tell if you're trying to rile people up here or if you're just that arrogant and close minded. I would say that you started from a fundamentally flawed understanding of identity and have developed a self-serving explanation of why your team are the goodies and the other team are the baddies from there. How does your mental model account for the existence of gay conservatives for example? Trump is probably the most pro-gay president ever, he was publicly pro gay marriage while Biden and Obama were still saying that marriage was between a man and a woman.
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Putting aside that you consider "wearing a police uniform" a political statement, what do you propose as a clear way for a conservative to self-identify at a pride parade to see whether or not he'd be threatened?
Could we raise some money and get Ben Shapiro to attend a pride parade, just attend, with no political statement of any kind? I'd be willing to wager money people would get up in his grill, if not literally attack him.
This website is named for the motte and bailey fallacy, right? I believe that's relevant to this discussion, where you started by expressing anger that a beer company picked a trans woman for one commercial and expressing glee at the violent and angry responses from conservatives, and now are asking me to find a way for a political pundit to express gay and trans hatred at a pride parade to prove... something.
My original point stands. The bud light ad with Dylan Mulvaney and the response to it demonstrate to gay and trans people that conservatives require to be allowed to exclude them, with violence if possible. It's a smart way to demonstrate that conservatives don't care about women and children as much as they just hate gender nonconforming men and women. They have gone from seeking out gay and trans people to victimize, to creating silos in which they feel justified in victimizing any gay or trans people who dare to enter, but the urge to react to gay and trans people with violence is unchanged.
Conservatives were making headway with their concern for trans children and women's sports, but they took the bait and started shooting cases of beer because a trans woman drank a bud light.
....? They're not buying beer. One guy shot a case of Bud Light and posted it on social media. It was not a case with Mulvaney on it, just a blue box.
Your core argument is that your side is morally superior because conservatives are welcome in gay spaces if they're not "political", but gay people are not welcome in conservative spaces, regardless. This is not some pedantic nit I'm picking. Please demonstrate that a legible conservative can enter a gay pride space and not get a hostile reception. I've tried to demonstrate it's possible for legibly gay people to enter a conservative space in the same way.
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It also seems from an AB marketing exec that they specifically wanted to move on from you — their main customer base. So it wasn’t just trying to expand their base but actively insult their base.
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Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Talking about getting and spending, we lay waste the world.
Rarely is the chasm between my own thought and mainstream thought so apparent as when conversation turns to advertisers. I loathe these faceless entities working to wrest my thought into the shape of their own designs, prodding and pulling for whichever levers they can pull to make me consume ever more of their products. I block all ads I can block, recoil when one prods through my defenses and demands my attention.
Yes, this latest campaign is miserable, but not because of what’s in it. It’s because I must watch people broadcast their allegiance to consumption, because they pull ads into my consciousness and reveal their passion for the norm of advertising by crying out against deviations from that norm. Yes, Bud Light ads are grotesque, as are Nike and all culture war ads of the day—but when were they not grotesque, these machines spending untold millions to entangle people’s identities and values with the mass-market products they consume?
I do not care about Dylan Mulvaney, do not care about Bud Light. This lack of caring is not apathy, but a deep-felt antipathy towards the machine that pulls them into my sphere of awareness. Every time someone tells me with heated emotion about the latest symbol of consumption for this or that, the Enemy has won. Every time culture warriors line up for and against Product, the centrality of Product to Culture is sacralized.
Yes, you might say: you may not care about these things, but they care about you. That is, in short, the problem: they care about me when I do not wish to care about them, they spend millions hunting me while I work to evade them, and then they tap into the passions of vectors like you and in so doing find me once more, force themselves into my consciousness once more.
Ad culture is grotesque. It has been so long before Mulvaney and will be so long after they are replaced by the next in a flood of spokespeople sacrificing their lives to the Machine. Drink what beer you will, treat it as an expression of your deep-felt values if you must, but in my book this ad campaign should receive just as much attention as every other hostile, shrieking intrusion into our minds: none at all beyond a muted channel and averted eyes.
I hate ads as well but they do help match buyers and sellers. Should we outlaw them entirely? If not how far do we restrict?
Aren't there parts of Europe where billboards are banned so that old cities don't look like Times Square or Shibuya?
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I'm definitely on the side of slash and burn everything and anything that has to do with the AD business, offline and online. Even if not outright banned, just severely curtailed would be fine too. And not in those meaningless ways the GDPR does. I mean in real, painful, multi-billion-dollar industry destroying ways.
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I'm not TracingWoodgrains but I'm very very sympathetic to his point, and my personal limit would be text describing the product, and images of the product.
You're allowed a professional photoshoot of your product, even though I give this allowance very reluctantly (black and white text, no images would be preferred), because I grudgingly admit people prefer to see the thing they're deciding to buy. Absolutely no videos. I don't see a realistic way to get rid of endorsements, unfortunately, but they should be strictly regulated.
Culture building around a product should be banned — no dove beauty campaigns, no mulvaney beer bottles, none of that. "This skin product will do this for your skin, and you can buy it for this price, here". Information sharing between seller and buyer only. The mind of very basic ads you see in local newsletters.
As a side effect this means corporations will effectively be banned from expressing any political, cultural, or controversial opinions publicly (since that is also an advertising campaign, building tribe loyalty to a product) which is wonderful and should be pursued to the extreme— in my ideal universe corporations are essentially politically gagged. Talk about your product alone, or shut up.
Basically, rewinding back as much as possible to the kinds of ads they had back in the very, very early days of advertising before they realized people buy based on emotions not based on facts, with as many emotional factors removed as possible. There's no sticking the genie all the way back into the bottle but cutting off as much of its limbs as possible is still a worthy goal.
This sounds great, I love it. Separation of Corp. and State?
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I think you hit the nail on the head but not in so many words about the bud light controversy.
Bud light is, well, not a beer that any reasonable person would associate with the sort of people who get into woke stuff. The advertising campaign featuring a z-list celebrity weirdo in a dress(and lets be real, that’s what Dylan mulvaney is- even by MTF standards he’s pretty deeply odd and he’s pure culture war fodder because he’s so weird and annoying) wasn’t served to me(beer ads seem to think of me as a right wing Hispanic beer snob) but it did uniquely offend me because, well, who did they think it was going to appeal to? I mean gay pride cans in June are obviously for sale to gay bars but does any bud light drinker have much sympathy for trans? And I’m so enthusiastic about not drinking any Budweiser product(of which there are many, and of which some are drinkable) because this feels like my demographic(blue collar males) exercising cultural power. This is the one time we get to hit back, and it feels good. Honestly that last bit probably makes all the difference in the world.
Anyways I’ll be drinking shiner after yard work.
Damn it, after all my intentions to stay gone, this is what drags me back in?
Dylan Mulvaney is not MTF, and I'll tell you why: no tits. Look at any picture of him, and he's flat as a board. Real MTF transgender women can't wait to grow a pair of Real Girl Boobs (hence the jokes about "titty skittles"). (I'm also suspicious about the hair; in several photos it looks like a wig. Could be a wig, could be extensions, could be he grew his hair out. Also the crow's feet wrinkles. Those make him look older than 26 and are the kind of thing that could be fixed up by cosmetic surgery if he's really serious about being a girl). Allegedly he's had facial surgery, I don't know. His face is still very masculine and doesn't do him any favours in some pictures.
Mulvaney is a gay guy who did drag and has now managed to wangle a gimmick stunt of "my year as a girl" into being 'trans' and the face of some dumb campaign.
I believe the higher-ups at Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV when they say they had no idea about this. It does seem to be the brainchild of that marketing lady who wanted to lose the "fratty" image. Well congrats on that girl, I hope you have similar success in your next job because I have a feeling this campaign means you get handed your P45 (or whatever the American equivalent is).
Mulvaney isn't trans, he's a femme gay guy who will slip back to whatever acting/comedy/drag act he was doing once the trans craze dies down.
And that's it, this time I really am gone and staying gone.
I enjoyed having you back around! Hopefully you don't stay gone forever. :)
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Honestly he’s always struck me as a gay man in a dress more than a genuine MTF, but he’s clearly attempting to milk the MTF thing so that’s what I’m calling him.
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I don't think Mulvaney comes anywhere close to passing, but when I look at that picture in particular, the face doesn't stand out to me as particularly masculine. Perhaps it's because it's an exaggerated facial expression that distorts the shape quite a bit, but if I didn't know who I was looking at, I could be convinced it's an older cis woman (though my 1st guess would be trans woman).
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This is a really good funny video in my opinion. I advise everyone to watch
this video.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-fl-rep-calls-trans-hearing-witnesses-demons-and-imps
Kind of curious if Dems can even attack this since he’s black. I believe his arguments stand even if your not Christian. I basically agree with him but I’ve been calling tran a mental illness instead of demons.
This is low-effort and boo-outgroup. It barely even relates; this is like responding to a post about Donald Trump with a video about DeSantis and asking about Republicans. If it were just one link inside a broader, higher-effort post, like, okay, but you've been warned about this before.
Banned for a week.
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Taking this guy's metaphor seriously, there's quite a bit of self-own aspect to it, given that X-Men's plot largely centers around the government actually wanting to genocide mutants in the sense of hunting them down and locking them up in camps/killing them. And mutants in X-Men also tend to be shown as superior to non-mutants in some meaningful concrete sense, which is what allows them to be the comic book superheroes they are (though there are plenty of downsides too). Also, he seems to be conflating "mutants" with "aliens" when he talks about mutants from outer space; mutants are definitionally humans with mutated genes.
I think if this clip gets any sort of traction in the progressive left, it will just be fairly standard fodder for "look at what this ignorant hateful bigot is saying about this oppressed minority. This is a truly mask-off moment that shows that our outgroup really is as evil as we say they are and all that talk about just protecting children and whatnot is just camouflage for their true desire to literally murder trans people." The fact that he's black wouldn't really play much into it, since black people (and other minorities) who don't toe the party line have generally not gotten any protection at all from the backlash; if anything, it tends to heighten it due to being perceived as a traitor to the cause. That latter part probably won't play a factor either, though, since blackness and transness, though grouped together under the wide umbrella of "oppressed minority," are still considered fairly distinct. And antipathy between black people and sexual minorities, particularly gay people, has been well known; and the sexual minorities win that oppression Olympics conflict at least 99 times out of 100.
While I agree with his argument. Am I correct that there’s some amusing about the video? Or do I have bad taste.
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I do not know who this person is and am certain in one month I will continue not knowing who this person is unless the keep tapping that culture ware flame. The genuine extent to my knowledge of them is a couple of pictures I've seen of them in which my main impression is "How is that' person's face greater than 50% mouth? One question I have to everyone is: Where did you even hear about this person or controversy? Was it an ad that was actually served to you? MSM coverage? Secondary outrage fodder? To my knowledge this "story" is that some very unusual person got their name printed on a can in some very small time advertising push.
We discuss many angles and facets of the culture war here, from big to small. But I think I'd like to highlight that this has multiple threads this week, and I know some disagree that this is the case, this is something that could be generated by some small PR department of one of several major beer conglomerates. Is this the battles we should be arguing about? Even if the gender critical war is the most important war to you there are several US states with policy battles over transgenderism and yet something like a fifth of this thread is over some MTF transwoman whom I can't summon the urge to care about.
The degree to which I cannot summon the necessary agency to respond to your seeming inertia with anything but disdain, is great.
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I 1st saw him in this clip of the guy on Price is Right a couple weeks ago, on Twitter by, I think Sarah Haider (president of Ex-Muslims of North America) who was commenting on the person clearly being someone with an unhealthy need for attention. Even despite the fact that Haider isn't the type to shitpost, I genuinely wasn't sure if this wasn't some SNL-style parody of someone. After seeing the clip, I just moved on but kept seeing his name come up here and there on Twitter, but it was only when this Bud Light thing happened that it just seemed to be everywhere. But never through running into actual primary sources; it was only through culture war discussions on Twitter or Reddit. From everything I've seen, it does seem like Mulvaney either has a great talent for grabbing attention or an unhealthy compulsion for it, and perhaps we're playing exactly into his hands here. There's definitely something about him that makes it hard to look away when I do encounter him, but I don't feel the desire to seek him out and do wish I ran into him less often.
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Wait a second, is this whole thing about a couple of videos on Dylan Mulvaney's personal Instagram account? I was assuming there was a tv commercial or Google ad or official Bud Light™ account post or something. I can't possibly imagine you follow Dylan on Instagram given your reaction. Did the Bud Light aisle at your local supermarket get stocked with Dylan Mulvaney commemorative cans? I could understand the anger if AB InBev decided to assault your senses while watching a basketball game, but you would have to go looking to find any of the objectionable content. Who gives a fuck?
I've seen those "if you don't agree with us, fuck you," ad campaigns. I don't really get that feeling from this one. I don't think it was ever meant to be seen outside of a targeted demographic. God, I can't believe I'm defending Bud Light here.
I do want to note this particular line from the article:
I can't believe we're in the kind of bizzaro timeline where alcohol executives defend themselves by saying, "We were just trying to sell alcohol to
minorsyoung people. Why is everyone so mad?"This is an argument that no one would ever use if Bud Light gave a commemorative can to Adolf Hitler or Russia’s invasion force of 2022. It’s disingenuous. A commemorative can is commemorative — it is in the name — it is clearly spelling out for all to see the values of Bud Light and (one could presume) their executives. Why would you support a company that commemorates, honors, celebrates, and supports something that you perceive as harmful to you and your interests?
If I had a nickel for every time someone said trans activism was comparable to Hitler, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
How are those at all similar? In the surreal, alternate universe where Bud Light is using Instagram to attract young Neo-Nazis, people wouldn't make that argument because Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions!
My point was that a commemorative partnership is a form of support. This is clearly evident in the maximal case: a commemorative partnership with the Russian army. The criticism would be, “how dare you commemorate an evil invasion force”, and no one would say “they are just trying to broaden their market” or “who cares?”. But I can flesh this out better. If Bud Light were to commemorate the relatively obscure Jared Taylor there would still be lots of condemnation, despite his obscurity. Even something just mildly bad, like commemorating a prominent flat earther, would get condemnation.
So the argument that it’s fine that Bud Light is commemorating a transgender is really an argument that transgenderism is acceptable and it’s fine that it’s promoted. As soon you start to see it as even slightly bad, then it becomes permissible if not obligatory to criticize a commemorative partnership
Yeah, that's a better example.
I don't think you're strictly wrong about the meaning of "commemorative," though I'm inclined to make the distinction between what the company values and what it tolerates. Commemoration is cheap. I'm not sure if that's more or less cynical.
The maximal case is categorically different, though.
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Also, I wonder how often a large company has irreparably sunk its brand with a bad advertising campaign
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I will die on the hill that a very thin man in a bikini drinking bud light in his bathtub is not a woman in a bikini drinking bud light in her bathtub. Just because some people have absentmindedly skipped to 'okay now man=woman' does not mean I will subscribe to the changing ways of the world.
idk if more transwomen could convincingly pass , that would be worse in some ways
I'm actually curious, in what ways would it be worse if more transwomen could convincingly pass?
There'd be a lot more violence against "traps".
TBH I'd be fine with more passing "traps" and less "blue tribe hons". While we're at it give the passing traps a star spangled banner and a large black gun with the thing that goes up and we can start negotiating a cease fire on the trans front of the culture war.
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Sure but why does that impact you? Its just an ad for a demographic that is presumably not you.
I don't drink beer but if my favorite cider company did some ads with a NASCAR driver or Donald Trump or Kyle Rittenhouse or Ben Shapiro or whoever you think the opposite variant of Mulvaney might be then I just don't care. If they think aiming at a particular demo with a particular celebrity who is on the opposite culture war side to me helps their sales so what?
Its no skin off my nose. As long as they don't change how the cider tastes or how much it costs or whatever then they can market it however they please. They don't need to market to me, I already know I like it.
When Bud Lite gives somebody a commemorative can to celebrate their personal milestone of fake womahood, I would say they've sailed past bland ol' marketing and are deliberately pandering. And while I have a degree of tolerance for pandering, I have grown incredibly tired of the relentless affirmation of falshehoods and poor understandings woven throughout the trans phenomenon.
You want to put a rainbow flag over a six-pack? I think that's cringe, but I'm fine with it because I understand that symbol to be vague and open enough for people to read what they want from it. You want to personally celebrate a weirdo with their farcical, unconvincing transition into womanhood? Well... why? Could you imagine Bud giving commemorative cans to Dolezal for her inspiring journey into 'blackness'? And what would the reaction from the hoi polloi be? Sure, it wouldn't affect me personally. But it would be such an opportunity loss to not criticize it as abjectly stupid, or to question what the hell Bud was even thinking when they greenlit this stunt, and to also point out this pattern in marketing is increasingly ubiquitous from all major brands.
No, this doesn't affect the taste or quality of the product. But the cultural assumptions and messaging being baked into media and ads - now coming from your 'classic degenerate US beer company' - are absolutely obnoxious and demanding a pushback. What specificially is Bud celebrating here? What values are they displaying when they treat Dylan's transition as some legitimate thing that isn't to be questioned? Does the average employee even believe it? Or are they just going to continue ramrodding this shit, and once cornered default to "Hey guys! We just want to be nice and inclusive, no big deal! Choo choo", as if there isn't
a festering sociopolitical rat's nest of unexamined assumptions and contradictions roiling underneath?
"I just consume what I like and pay no attention to the marketing" is very much where I'd like to be, and probably where I still would be if this was the era of non-political Budweiser Frogs. Unfortunately, I have learned that I 'live in a society', and wokeness is intent on appropriating and weaponizing everything it can get its hands on; 'forcing' consensus through pop culture while skipping over every serious deliberation that could undercut it.
The Mulvaney cans are one of the biggest flexes I've seen, in many ways because of Bud Lite's preexisting image of a low-class red tribe beer. As if to say "even this territory can be conquered and made fabulous and gay, and boy aren't you the dysfunctional non-nice weirdo if disagree with any of this". One wonders why this whole performance - separate from the beer itself - might piss people off.
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You might not, but the left certainly cares based on all the cancelings: Netflix protests around Dave Chapelle, Spotify around Joe Rogan, the insane backlash to J.K. Rowling, and those are people that barely stepped out of line and were/are basically leftist in most other ways. Pretty much any right wing personality online has a hate mob that seems to be more obsessed with them than their own following is. Look at Andrew Tate recently or the other one whose name I can't remember and didn't manage to find online because a search for 'right wing twitch streamers' just brought up nytimes and cbs hit pieces complaining about them in general.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/technology/twitch-livestream-extremists.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/right-wing-influencers-turn-to-live-streaming-platform-twitch-to-reach-their-supporters/
Controlling the culture is power, it's clear the left understands this, not surprising that the right is starting to. Giving an inch was their biggest mistake in the first place.
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A society accepting what you see as a bad set of memes affects everyone. No man is an island.
The activists know this - that's why they went from "we just want to be left alone!" to "we need X, Y and Z to feel comfortable, fulfilled and validated".
"'You do you and I do mine" is at best an ideal that the temptations of actual power erodes or just an outright tactical lie to wear down opposing norms before instituting your own.
But does an ad targeted to a diffetent demographic do that, if said demo is already different?.
The people who would buy Bud light after seeing promoted by Mulvaney are presumably onboard with transness already no?
Society is not based on reason in the first place so I don't care what beliefs Bud light are exploiting or if they are true or not. Like i don't care if America truly is the greatest nation on earth in every third beer commercial or whatever. The truth doesn't matter. Its aimed at people who already believe it.
I don’t think any reasonable person thinks this demographic actually exists outside of like, 10 people.
The real story is probably that bud light is in decline, there isn’t really a way to fix that decline, and the head of marketing knows that and is trying to make it look good on her resume by attributing declining sales to transphobia. I don’t particularly care about that, but I do care that this is the one time my demographic can hit corporates with a boycott that hurts.
Why isn't the more parsimonious answer more likely? Bud light is in decline. They decide to market to a younger demo and pick a person to sponsor accordingly. The campaign was small it wouldn't cost much to test.
It boggles the mind that anyone would be so ignorant as to think that there are potential bud light buyers in support of trans.
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It’s simple. Trans is bad. It’s not a demo. It’s a mental illness. Like would you drink a beer that promotes Hitler?
I observe that Hitler is neither a demographic nor a mental illness.
Conversely, to the best of my knowledge, Mulvaney has not ordered millions to their deaths, nor even seized political power.
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Even if it is a mental illness that doesn't stop it being a demo. But the demo in question is people who don't think it is a mental illness and are supportive of it.
But this is basically my question, why is celebrating one trans person considered in the same level as celebrating a genocidal dictator? They aren't really the same no?
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Look, you are allowed to criticize transgenderism and say you think it's a mental illness, but this is just waging war against your outgroup. However strongly you feel, accept the fact that there are trans people who might be participating in the discussion and while you're allowed to tell them you think their self-identification is not reality, you are not allowed to tell them they're just like Hitler.
Respectfully you’ve drank the trans koolaid if you think this post was bad
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But I do care buddy and the truth is I'm not going to buy bud light anymore. life is real beyond mental calculations of possibilities and hypotheticals
Would any trans spokesperson elicit this response even a conservative one? No gotchas, just trying to explore this.
Skipping past the joke I can't quite form about the paradoxical 'trans conservative spokesperson' - my gut says no, there was something uniquely perturbing about this specific AMAB being selected as a brand ambassador. Although the bathtub aspect would be an aggravating factor regardless of who it was
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Bud Light buyers would probably buy a Bruce Jenner-themed can campaign, but not a Kaitlin Jenner can. But I’m neither a beer drinker nor a sports guy, so I’m just listing my priors.
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Why would who the ad is targeted at change that it is a normalization of something some people clearly see as bad memes/unreason? They [the ad critics] know it is aimed at a different demographic; that is precisely the problem.
The "'You do you' is a lie" comment was more of a general response to "how does it impact you?" and what usually is the implicit idea behind it - that if you can't draw an easy direct causal link to some harm done to you, the changing of social norms should be of less concern to you.
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You are telling on yourself, respectfully. That means NASCAR/Trump/Rittenhouse/Shapiro has never actively suggested anything like ‘man=woman’
Ok pick whatever you think the opposite is. I am not getting at the exact likeness, just the idea. Like a MAGa commercial when i don't think Trump actually makes Anerica greater or something. It doesn't have to be 1:1.
A lot of people would boycott a Trump beer. (or maybe wine would be more demographically appropriate)
In fact, didn't some non-Yeungling drinkers try to get a Yeungling boycott going when the owner had the temerity to say he supports Trump as a political candidate?
The difference here is that the pissed off people actually consume the product, like, a lot.
Didn't that actually happen? Or was that a wine that people thought was associated with Trump, but it was unaffiliated?
Regarding Yuengling, the stated reason for disliking the brand is union-busting. How much of that is a cover for disliking Trump, or how much of it is not unique to Yuengling but only spoken about because of Trump, I cannot say. I do know that I appreciate Yuengling as a family owned company because (to my understanding) the kids don't inherit a share by default: they have to work for it.
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But i am wondering why. The ad campaign was targeted at a different demo. And it didn't say our current drinkers are transphobes or bad right? It just used a trans (pseudo)celebrity as far as i can tell?
Not even a political one. Just someone who is trans. Is that really enough?
The other thing that amuses me a little is i am old enough to remember when people drinking light beers were seen as not being manly enough. So that too is a little interesting.
...
You asked us to imagine how the scenario would play out given somebody that the left hates as much as the right hates Mulvaney -- it turns out there was an actual example, and the left got all pissy and tried to enact a boycott of a product that wasn't even targeted at them in the first place.
I'm not sure why this is surprising to you -- have you seen the things people have been up to in this CW?
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Replacing Bud Light with Yuengling as the schlitz of the red tribe would be the smallest W one could characterize as a W. On the level of "throw a tantrum to force Mom to stop at McDonalds on the way to get your shots". But if you can manage it, sure. Draping Bud Light in the colors seemed like a particularly cruel low blow. So I'll cheer.
Yuengling is far too decent a beer to replace Bud Light with. They do make a light, though. I've never had it, I assume it tastes like watered-down regular Yuengling.
I can confirm. I'd pick it over Bud Light any day.
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I am constantly offended on yuenglings behalf when Bud makes a patriotic commercial so... I'm all in on this one if it becomes a thing.
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Usually mom says 'we have McDonalds at home' but this time we called her on her bs! I didn't mean to make this explicitly oedipal but they didn't call it the Motherland by accident
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I wish you luck in the boycott, only because I want culture war issues to be seen the same way companies treat religious issues. There should be a giant blaring neon sign in the mind of any exec saying "TOXIC! STAY AWAY! BEWARE!" Where the only winning move is not to play.
I didn't watch the ad, I don't watch ads in general. I don't watch controversial things just for the sake of being aware of the controversy.
I won't be joining the boycott, I purchase Michelob Ultra pretty regularly because its one of the lowest carb beers, and I'm on a low carb diet.
The marketing exec that started this campaign did it as an effort to expand the brand to younger audiences. I do generally hate marketing departments. They are often filled with a certain type of person. They typically despise their customers, rarely use their own product, and only seem behind HR in terms of signing up for the latest woke craze. If anything good comes out of this it will be a tighter leash on marketing departments.
I think of it as the portfolio problem. Even if someone in marketing, fashion, Hollywood, consulting etc. is not woke, they need to think about their next job or commission, as well as their general reputation in their industry. One way to promote their reputation is finding ways to be woke, even if it doesn't make sense in the particular case. There are all sorts of reasons why your assignment might have failed that have nothing to do with you, but if you can say that it was a bold and innovative implementation of received wisdom, then there's a way to sell even a loss as a reason to hire you in the future. After all, maybe you were just ahead of your time...
Why do you need to think of your next job? Can’t you work for bud light your entire career and promote one product? This particular person was not a consultant or outside agency.
Also bold in advertising isn’t necessarily good if it’s stupid. It’s not most of the time the job of a marketer to take risks but instead to just keep pounding the brand image that works. Coke still sells Santa Claus and Americana.
Marketing is notorious for its churn. I don’t quite know why, but very few people seem to work in marketing departments long term.
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This is not the experience of almost any white collar (or blue collar, for that matter) worker I know under the age of 50.
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Fascinatingly, I heard an ad on the radio earlier today that was approximately "Listen to the Holy Spirit, allow the Holy Spirit into your heart" brought to you by iHeartRadio, subscribe to iHeartRadio meditation today and I nearly pulled over and called to make sure my radio hadn't malfunctioned.
Costco sells a Kirkland 0 carb seltzer, tastes better than 'virgin' to me. Might be worth trying
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