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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31532 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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The Bud Light boycott continues. Anheuser-Busch is responding by sponsoring vet groups and commissioning ads that "will play heavily on themes such as football and country music". A glance at conservative comment sections reveals a few vocal consumers vowing that no amount of patriotic pandering will change their mind and that they will continue the boycott no matter what.

I am reminded of this apocryphical exchange between two Chinese officers late for battle:

What is the punishment for being late?

Death.

What is the punishment for rebellion?

Death.

Rebellion it is.

That is to say, a proper incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

On the other hand, the undisputed champions of pushing business and people around do not seem too keen on accepting apology. Or do they? The bottom line seems to be: If your public kowtow is more valuable for the propagation of the movement than the display of your head on a spike, you may get another chance (unless and untilyou even slightly step out of line again).

This seems ideal because the incentives for the victim thus contain an effectiveness criterion. Mouthing platitudes is not enough, you need to actually further the cause of your attackers. The uncertainty ups the ante for the victim.

On the other other hand, woke shaming campaigns might not be the ideal blue print for convervatives, given their lack of clout and high-brow media capture.

That is to say, a proper incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

Au contraire, the success of wokeness in politics and business has been the exact opposite in tactics.

I disagree. The woke deal is: you kowtow and hire our commissars and we stop hounding you. For now.

So I think you miss the mark a little. Wokeness doesn't survive contact with normal people. There is a bunch of people who are experiencing the trans-ideology for the first time and simply are not getting with the program. This is not liberal vs. conservative it is "terminally online" vs "people in the real world". The biggest lie that the woke tell us is that everything is political.

The boycotters are not concerned with Budlight finding itself with no way back and diving back into woke, they are sending a message to others that they actually do have teeth, an idea mocked as ridiculous just before this whole thing blew up, and not to even consider the math on whether it's worth provoking the backlash.

That is to say, a proper incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

I disagree, you're only thinking of the single iteration game. In a game with many iterations it's far more important to make an example of them. Go woke, go broke - no exceptions.

Tit-for-tat with forgiving is a better strategy than switching to defect bot.

It is, in a vacuum, but grudger strategies seem to be replicated in societies across the world while forgiveness ones tend to be the product of highly advanced societies with high social trust. Hothouse flowers, in other words.

It probably says something about the decay of social institutions when grudging feels better than forgiving.

I mean, grudging always feels better than forgiving. That's why we have to be taught and encouraged to forgive.

No it isn't. The correct response to DefectBot is to defect forever. Tit for Tat with possible forgiveness is a strategy that can interrupt mis-inputs ruining communication between otherwise-cooperative people. If you cooperate three times in a row and your enemy defects three times in a row, then they've proven who they are and you can mark them down as "Always Defect" and not a good agent allied with you that had a technical glitch.

Or, to take this out of the game layer, strike 1 was the initial campaign, strike 2 was the weak-ass 'wait for this to blow over' and not immediately and publicly firing the execs in question, and strike 3 was not immediately and clearly expressing how they had screwed up in language comprehensible to their core audience. It was revealed that Bud Lite's makers are fundamentally opposed to the values of its mean consumer; this is the result, and should be the result.

The correct response to DefectBot is to defect forever.

Even tit-for-tat without forgiving is better than that. You wait for the other to play cooperate and cooperate next turn. The goal is to reach a C-C equilibrium, not a D-D one. Otherwise you really do trap your opponent in the defectbot role forever, even when he wants out.

How do you determine your opponent actually "wants out" of that role, rather than simply saying whatever it takes to get you to not defect even when they deserve it?

They play cooperate for at least one round.

In less abstract terms: They give you a credible, costly signal that they're no longer interested in defecting against you. You can argue that camo-cans and country music ads are neither credible nor costly enough, but announcing that you will from now on be a defect bot against them no matter what is not a sound strategy.

A couple of good counterpoints have been raised in this thread:

Beat up the biggest meanie in prison: This is the first right-wing protest that has legs. The right needs to prove that they can sink an opponent.

Pour encourager les autres: The right needs to send a signal to other players that they are not to be screwed with. This is more valuable than cooperation with Bud.

Don't sell yourself short: The right can't give in right away because that sends the signal that defecting against them is a mistake that can easily be corrected.

But then again, forgiveness can be advantageous. Take the Heckler&Koch example. Their social media manager went on a "as a woman" tirade, was subsequently relieved of her duties and HK announced that they don't "do identity politics". The right quickly backed off and celebrated the move. That's what I mean by rewarding backpedalling.

DefectBot never co-operates; you cannot reach a C-C equilibrium because DefectBot always defects. Every time you co-operate with DefectBot, you lose more. So the correct response to defectbot is always Defect.

That only holds if you're sure that the other player is actually an always-defector. Otherwise your strategy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. In any case, tit-for-that against an actual defect bot does result in always defecting yourself. But it also contains the possibility to convert what you thought was a defectbot into a cooperating partner.

I'm saying that ...D-D-C-?

should be responded with

...D-D-D-C, not ...D-D-D-D

I always liked D until the other party has picked C one more time than they picked D while you were still picking C.

I think the point is from my perspective ABInbev hasn't picked C once, they're still picking D but using more diplomatic language.

I think there’s a danger in caving too early. If you accept the very first olive branch, then it’s pretty obvious that you weren’t serious and we’re going to cave as soon as possible. Boycotts are in essence demonstrations of consumer power, and if you’re accepting the first offer, you’re showing a lack of staying power. Once companies figure out that they can do whatever you want as long as they occasionally toss a few platitudes your way, they won’t be afraid to hit the accelerator on liberal/woke causes because they know that waving a few American flags around is enough for you. You’re cheap and easily bought off.

A very fair point.

Bud light tried to appeal to the underaged drinking market through an influencer no one seems to actually like and now is stuck between the Scylla of just declaring themselves the woke beer and maybe getting some sales from their other brands in urban markets and the Charybdis of sponsoring screenings of What is a Woman in theaters that come with free bud light. Or the other way around, it’s been a dozen years since I read the odyssey and I can’t remember which is which.

Obviously the latter is the better move, but they don’t want to do it.

They could pull one of their old commercials out of mothballs and air it.

That'd certainly show they're serious and willing to suffer consequences to regain goodwill.

Right, it seems like it would have to be that level of response for people to actually trust it for buying it again to be accepted. A credible level of "we're on your side" instead of neutrality that burns enough bridges that they can't walk it back.

Since Charybdis is the single gaping maw, I’m pretty sure you got the analogy right.

No, losing their ESG money, fight a hostile work environment lawsuit, and continue selling to rednecks is the better move over whatever they’re doing now.

How’s that working for Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Mike Lindell, John Schnatter, et al.?

Alex Jones, Mike Lindell

Maybe they should have gone a little less hard on the defamation? Honestly, Lindell seems to be doing better than I expected.

Carlson lost out on internal politics. I expect he’ll do fine once he gets any noncompete sorted out.

And Papa John is in a different category. He was stumbling over last century’s culture war, not trying to leverage this one.

Carlson lost out on internal politics.

That’s part of it, but there’s no way he would have been cut if his show was pulling in ad revenue proportional to his viewership. External politics creates the conditions by which the same factions win internal politics in companies all over the country.

That’s part of it, but there’s no way he would have been cut if his show was pulling in ad revenue proportional to his viewership.

Hard disagree. Businesses are absolutely willing to sabotage their own financial performance for other reasons - Carlson was incredibly sceptical of mainstream narratives on a variety of topics that made him persona non grata among the Power Elite, and I'd view that as the biggest contributing factor to his ouster. Making money is not the highest priority for Fox and they're accepting a big hit by letting him go. They went out of their way to make sure that he was still under contract and technically working there because preventing him from speaking is a more important priority than making money.

That could be true. I wonder if anyone has run the numbers on Fox viewership before and after.

They have. It’s Bud Light-tier.

Scylla has scales. Giant six-headed hydra-like thing. Is gonna make a solid run at your crew but only has so many mouths.

Charybdis is one giant mouth that will swallow the entire ship.

I got it backwards then. Thanks.

Charybdis is the one that kills all of you 100%. Maybe you think it's a better move for your side, but not for them.

On an unrelated note, it's weird to me that you lot in the West drink beers with 4-5% abv. In India, that's the alcohol content of alcopop, whereas Real Men™ drink the stuff that's 8%, right at the legal limit for beer.

Miss me with what weak watery stuff.

In the west, stronger beers do exist - double and triple IPAs are probably what the middle class here are familiar with. In the UK at least, there is (or was) stronger stuff aimed at lower-class alcoholics, like White Lightning (8% cider that came in an enormous 2l bottle). But these sorts of drinks have a really strong negative connotation. They're associated with binge drinking, alcoholism, and poverty, and have mostly been squeezed out by regulation. But the fact is that there is little pride in Anglo countries in smashing down high alcohol beer. Kiwis will boast of their 'crate-punch' records, but drinking nine liters of 4% beer is a test of your stomach and bladder capacity as much as your liver, and the day drinking retirees that haunt the Wetherspoons of England nurse Doom Bars and John Smiths - thick ales and stouts that are low on alcohol and price. It's not that there's no appetite for strong drink, but for that, you want spirits and cocktails. I think the root cause is just that beers become quite disgusting over a certain percent of alcohol.

I dont tend to think of IPAs when I think of strong beers (although, as you said, the doubles and triples can be); my first though goes immediately to stouts, preferably imperial/barrel aged, or the Belgian Tripels, or the barleywines. I'll happily go for a good 9% Old Rasputin, for instance, or the 11% barrel-aged dragon's milk.

That’s so interesting that the legal limit for beer is 8%. While that’s strong there are a lot of styles of beer that are almost always by default stronger than that.

Tripels, Dubbels, Doppelbock, Double IPAs, Triple IPA, Weizenbock, barleywine, imperial porters, imperial stouts, just to name a few.

Getting into the beer wars, and this is not a brand I know much about except for being vaguely aware of their recent advertising - Island's Edge by Heineken.

Seemingly it's "stout, but less bitter than ordinary stout" and they haven't made much of a dent in the Irish market. And I can see why, by visiting their website.

First, this is the most pathetic, cringy ad I have ever seen in my life. Were I a beer drinker, I'd rather go for Miller's Shite (remember, it's good shit because we take the bad shit and compost it down!) than this excuse for a pity party. This bunch would drive you to sobriety.

Second, look at the ingredients. Black tea and basil? In stout? If you think people won't notice the basil, I think you're wrong. There's nothing wrong with trying new ingredients or even trying for a less bitter beer, but not in stout. Try adjusting the roast of your barley or the variety of your hops instead of chucking in extracts of black tea and basil - those sound more like the recent bout of gins with all kinds of weird and wonderful ingredients:

Ingredients: Water, Malted Barley, Barley, Malted Wheat, Hop extract, Black tea extract, Basil extract

If I want a tea-flavoured alcoholic drink, this fits the bill.

I was only in India for about 6 weeks nearly a decade ago, but dang was that alcohol culture very different than what I am accustomed to.

  1. There would often be 12 beers listed on the menu. I'd be lucky if they had 4 in stock. Typically they only had one type of beer.

  2. There was one place that sort of advertised itself as a place with a bunch of beers. They advertised having something like 36 beers on tap. Most bars in the US will have a minimum of 20 beers on tap. 40 is more regular. A bar that advertises itself as a place with a bunch of beers on tap needs at least 100.

  3. Alcohol generally cost about the same amount. What I mean by that is a cheap US domestic beer in the US was about the same dollar cost as a cheap Indian beer in India. I was in an expensive area in India, but I also live in an expensive area in the US. Just about everything else was around 1/6th of the cost. My Indian coworkers were understandably more reluctant to drink.

  4. I liked drinking heavier beers at the time, we would definitely buy a bunch of Kingfischer Ultra to drink back and drink at the apartment. Light watered down beer is still the best for hot days.

  5. In the US casual dancing is accompanied by either drugs or alcohol. Almost no exceptions. In India people seemed to enjoy dancing sober. After experiencing both I prefer the Indian culture on dancing. But I'm a person that likes dancing. India also had a wider array of 'easy moves' that everyone could do. In the US you are either a near-pro dancer, or you look dumb. The drugs and alcohol are required to be willing to look dumb I guess.

  6. The benefit of drinking light beer all day is that it has a built in limiter on how drunk you can get. At 4-5% as long as you aren't literally trying to chug down the beer you will stay comfortably drunk/tipsy without too much risk of getting sick. Anything above 7% typically requires me to be very aware of my alcohol consumption or there is a high likelihood of getting sick at the end of the night.

In the US you are either a near-pro dancer, or you look dumb. The drugs and alcohol are required to be willing to look dumb I guess.

At least for omniculture costal urbanite themed types of dancing. A cowboy themed dance hall is basically the same social environment for a very different crowd and line dancing is not very difficult (see also the popularity of the cha cha slide at weddings displacing the chicken dance).

Alcohol generally cost about the same amount.

Alcohol is heavily taxed, so no wonder the prices seemed high to you. When Indians travel to the UK or the US, they invariably bring back as much duty free liquor as they can carry, since it's often half the price as at home.

To my relief, that meant drinking was reasonably affordable, and you can bet that I made good use of it!

Most bars in the US will have a minimum of 20 beers on tap

We don't really have a beer culture here, but I have seen microbreweries that have significant variety, though I never bothered to count the menu.

Almost no exceptions. In India people seemed to enjoy dancing sober.

I need a good percentage of liquor in my blood before I get dragged to the dance floor, but truth be told people still dance mostly when tipsy. I'd chalk that up to the idiosyncrasies of the places you've been.

Do you want a beer that you can drink all day or a few strong beers?

We don't have a culture of sipping on beer all day, so the vast majority of people just want 1 or 2 bottles at a time.

I can't see why you couldn't drink 8% all day though.

Are people starting to drink at cricket matches like Aussies?

Traditionally at that Gabba, people will be downing schooners of XXXX all day long. They get pretty smashed, but it's still only 4%ish so it's manageable.

(Nowadays they have better beer at the Gabba, but I don't approve. If it's not XXXX, it doesn't taste like Cricket).

drink at cricket matches like Aussies?

Like Queenslanders, please.

I have met many sober Aussies in my day, and even a few with a taste for decent beer. They all came from points south of the 29th parallel. The suggestion that "Aussies" in general drink XXXX is as offensive as the idea that "Americans" in general shoot varmints out of the back of moving pickup trucks.

First of all, I am Aussie, and I only said that we drink XXXX at the Gabba. I also said that they nowadays have better beer there, but I'm the traditionalist who sticks to the XXXX.

In other states, they traditional beer on tap was, Tooheys, or some other local equivalent of XXXX. These are affordable, not-very-strong beers that some people do indeed drink all day. I have seen the practice many times, and participated in it on occasion. These same people might sip wine and fine whisky at other occasions, but for them cricket calls for continuous rounds of beer.

The suggestion that "Aussies" in general drink XXXX is as offensive as the idea that "Americans" in general shoot varmints out of the back of moving pickup trucks.

Why do you consider pest control an offensive stereotype? Owning property and maintaining it seems rather positive and aspirational.

Then again. I know Sri Lankans who will drink whisky all day long at the cricket, so maybe the %-alcohol isn't the point.

I can't see why you couldn't drink 8% all day though

If you're used to drinking 5-10 pints on a night out 8% will get you way too drunk. Source: Irish drinking culture met Belgian beer.

Your beer's gonna be hot and gross rather quickly.

There's a long tradition of low alcohol beers for people out in the heat of the day. Small beer.

You can drink one or two 4 or 5% beers an hour all day and basically be functional while constantly having a beer in hand. Try that with something at 8% or more.

In my limited experience, that many 8% will leave you unfit for anything more complex than lying on the beach. And probably not even that. A case of Yuengling, on the other hand…

This could all be apocryphal or misunderstood, but I'm under the impression this is all a legacy of prohibition. When brewing was legally permissible again, there was a lot of baggage.

By the time Prohibition was repealed, the breweries that opened went with what they knew would sell in the 1910s: light, bland beers. One man who witnessed a batch of particularly strong beer go unsold at the time said, “It is just too much hop for this generation.” And even if Prohibition was over, the Temperance movement’s efforts to ban alcohol at the state and local levels wasn’t: The beer industry’s reluctance to offend it permeated the pages of trade publications for decades; cowed, the industry continued to promote beer as “a beverage of moderation.”

That's part of where the cursed 3.2% comes from as well. 3.2% ABW is roughly 4% ABV.

The 4-5% norm holds true in all Anglo countries (NZ, AUS, the UK). As far as I know it's about the same in Europe - Kronenbourg is 5%, Beck's is like 5% as well. It's nothing to do with Prohibition.

All Anglo countries went pretty hard for the Temperance movement. Only the US actually had prohibition, but other countries (and the US in other times) had restrictive regulations that fell short of bans. I wouldn't be surprised if these included incentives for moderating ethanol percentage.

Kingfisher is 4.8%, and by far the most popular beer in India.

Also: I’ve tried pretty hard to buy whiskey for adjacent tables at what few bars there are all over Mumbai and it’s pretty rare that anybody ever takes me up on it.

There's Kingfisher strong and ultra, which in my anecdotal experience are pretty popular, and also at the legal limit.

That's kind of interesting to think about: what is bar culture/drinking culture like in India? Are bars actually quite uncommon there? Do people drink less than e.g. Americans, or just differently? Is there a big class divide of some kind?

On the other hand, the undisputed champions of pushing business and people around do not seem too keen on accepting apology.

have they actually apologized yet? Last I saw they were still saying that it was an unofficial one-off. No tone or words of apology.

I'll actually admit I don't quite know what they should be apologizing for. Anheuser-Busch tried to make a targeted ad that advertised to a Dylan Mulvaney-adjacent segment of the market, and didn't think other parts of their market would ever see it, let alone care about it. They were wrong.

I don't think the mere inclusion of a trans influencer in an advertising campaign is some grave offense they should have to apologize for.

Just off the top of my head, Cardi B has partnered recently with Walmart for a bunch of a commercials, and she drugged and robbed men who wanted to have sex with her in the past. This is not to say that I think people shouldn't get second chances, but what Cardi B did was way worse than any of the reasons people are angry at Dylan Mulvaney, and I doubt that anyone could meaningfully cancel Cardi B or Walmart at this point.

Cardi B has a rather different market than Bud Lite. By revealed preference, fans of rap aren't put off by crime; just the opposite in many cases.

I don't think the mere inclusion of a trans influencer in an advertising campaign is some grave offense they should have to apologize for.

Mulvaney isn't any influencer. He's basically in womanface, doing a minstrel show and being upheld for it.

That video isn't just offensive in terms of stereotyping, it's viscerally off-putting and even disgusting. And this is coming from a forever-leftie, card-carrying New Atheist.

No doubt many conservatives just generally see transness as a pernicious trend (perhaps even moreso now compared to when Caitlyn came out, understandably) but this was a singularly bad choice of influencer too.

I'll actually admit I don't quite know what they should be apologizing for. Anheuser-Busch tried to make a targeted ad that advertised to a Dylan Mulvaney-adjacent segment of the market, and didn't think other parts of their market would ever see it, let alone care about it. They were wrong.

It was the partnership which triggered the red tribe's "satanic panic" reflexes in conjunction with someone unearthing an interview with the VP of marketing in which she describes her plan to replace the brand's "fratty" image with "inclusivity".

It seems like the red tribe is finally able to smell woke entryism. Took them long enough. And given that bud light is apparently a cornerstone of country culture, this was rightly seen as a broadside in the culture war.

I'm confused by many of the comments in this thread. It feels as though there is no means by which any company can market their products to LGBT people without creating some kind of conservative backlash.

Suppose Coors wants to sell more beer at gay bars. How can they accomplish this without reducing the amount of beer they sell in red states? Can anyone provide me an example of what an acceptable marketing tactic from Coors, aimed at the LGBT community would look like, one that would not create backlash?

Budweiser really shot themselves in the foot, and it looks like it was mostly down to the stupid decision by the marketing VP. On the one hand, I can see where she's coming from: the brand is slowly declining, even if it's still the number one, and they need to pivot to a new audience. So if that means appealing to the woke young college kids (never mind what she said about "fratty" associations), so be it.

The problem was twofold, though. Maybe even threefold, gimme a moment to count on my fingers.

(1) The interview with the podcast where she went on about the "fratty" image. Girleen, who do you think drinks your cheap light beer? People who want to be able to drink a lot over a long period of time without getting wasted too fast, and people who want to drink a lot on the cheap. So cheap boozing is college students, like it or lump it

(2) Dylan Mulvaney. Yes, I know all about the cans and that it wasn't a partnership etc. Great, you want to get Dylan's 10 million TikTokkers and the 2 million Instagram followers, and for "who is the hot new name right this minute?", Mulvaney probably comes up. Except.

What is the age range/age group of Mulvaney's followers? Are they legal drinking age in the US?

Mulvaney's other endorsements seem to be for cosmetics, fashion, etc. Do you really think a bunch of young women tuning in to see the latest lipstick shade are all going to decide to start swigging Bud Light?

Just because Mulvaney is Internet famous does not mean they are a good match for your brand; it's like asking the Chief Rabbi to endorse your line of 100% organic pork sausages and bacon. There's ways to appeal to the more liberal, younger set, but this was a bad idea.

(3) Why is the brand declining? Is it because younger people are not drinking beer, but rather spirits and seltzers? And if they are drinking beer, more likely to be the craft beers and micro-breweries? Or indeed, not drinking at all? Was there any research done, because it sure doesn't look like it.

They (or she) tried a marketing stunt and it went viral - in all the wrong ways. If your core demographic for your brand are older, more conservative, more redneck types, then coming out with an interview that basically says "we don't want your custom any more" and this sort of influencer is pretty much telling them "we think you're smelly and icky and we don't want you around anymore".

So then people said "Okay, if you don't want us, we're going" and switched to other cheap, low-quality beer. That was easily done, it's all on the shelves beside your brand, so there was no more effort needed than move three inches to the side and grab that 15-pack instead.

Oops.

And to rub salt into the wound, there wasn't an influx of new young drinkers or LGBT bars stepping up and buying Bud in support. On the contrary.

InBev/Anheuser Busch can rush out all the hokey country music ads and wrap themselves in the flag all they like now, but this is too blatant pandering for even rednecks and hicks to swallow, because they've seen the messaging: we want the rainbow dollar. It's not sincere, and they're not falling for it.

And this could easily have been avoided with just a little more thought about how to pivot and what way to do it. I don't think it's a "trans backlash", despite how they're trying to spin it. I mean, I find Mulvaney highly irritating, and the beer in the bath video was excruciating to watch. But more subtle appeals to the young and LGBT set? That could have been done. Embrace your 'fratty' college roots, but have it be the activist types (not too activist, though) drinking Bud Light and not the frat boys. But no, they went full-on absolute opposite to their core market, and showed contempt for them, and that's what people are reacting to, more than anything.

Now, however, they can't even give it away for free (as the rebate coupled with the mark-downs to get the stuff off the shelves before it hits the expiry date means it's practically free).

If you really want to make a trans bud light ad - make and advertisement how ugly girl drinks bud light and turns into Buck Angel ... It will make your chest hair thicken is not a message that will offend the current Bud Light drinker demographic ...

A guy goes to the bar to get a bud light. Hipster guy says "Bud Light? chuckles". Cool trans/lesbian/NB person comes up and orders a Bud Light. Or rolls their eyes at the hipster guy from across the bar while drinking one. It includes the people you want to include and attempts to manufacture some alliance between red america and trans. Something like that is "inclusive" while complimenting your current audience's good taste in the face of insufferable craft beer drinkers (of which I am one).

Or even an ad where a FtM trans person doesn't fit in, eventually showing up at a bar and is welcomed or acknowledged by someone drinking one of your beers. Now you've reached out to a new community, while communicating your core message (our product brings people together over shared enjoyment) and shown your core customer in a positive light.

Exactly! If you're trying to reposition the brand as inclusive and evolving and what-not, then get a trans man to be the face of your promotion.

Not whatever Dylan Mulvaney is, I really don't believe he's a trans woman, I think he's a gay guy that started a performance art/drag act during lockdown and now it's blown up into this big thing that is too profitable (up till now) to drop:

Mulvaney came out as a trans woman during the COVID-19 pandemic, while living with her "very conservative family" at her childhood home in San Diego. She began to document her gender transition in a daily series of videos published on TikTok titled "Days of Girlhood" in March 2022, and her videos began to gain in popularity. She said in an interview:

When the pandemic hit, I was doing the Broadway musical Book of Mormon. I found myself jobless and without the creative means to do what I loved. I downloaded TikTok, assuming it was a kids' app. Once I came out as a woman, I made this "day one of being a girl" comedic video. And it blew up. I really don't know another place online like TikTok that can make a creator grow at the rate that it does. Some of these other apps really celebrate perfection and over-editing and flawlessness. I think with TikTok specifically, people love the rawness. They love people just talking to the camera. I try to approach every video like a FaceTime with a friend.

My uninformed view on this is that Mulvaney is a theatre kid turned performer who, like a lot of performers, needs attention and an audience like a plant needs sunshine. Being locked down at home with no job, they tried the online performance and it caught on, and the rest is history.

This seems to be the second controversy over "we're not officially partnered with Mulvaney", Snopes is debunking the story but it does seem that Mulvaney claimed Tampax sent them a box of tampons to share with women who need them (I can't even begin to untangle the logic behind that line of thinking):

Responding to comments on Twitter, Tampax denied the claim about the partnership with Mulvaney. "Thanks for getting in touch, the brand wrote in response. "We can confirm that we do not have a sponsorship agreement with Dylan Mulvaney or Jeffrey Marsh."

Although the TikTok star did not immediately respond to the claim about a partnership with Tampax, in a video of Dec. 7, 2022, Mulvaney denied working with the brand and getting any money from the company. The celebrity added that Tampax sent Mulvaney a box of tampons in April 2022 to give to women who needed them.

Why the hell would Tampax just out of the blue send this person a box of tampons for no reason except "share them round"? One box? Gentlemen, let me assure you that is not a lot of sharing around (though it does depend on the size of the box). And how exactly is Mulvaney meant to give them to women who need tampons? Approaching random women on the street and asking "Hey, honey, need a tampon?" Approaching random women in bathrooms? Yeah, that move is going to go over well.

Somebody is not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And if the Budweiser marketing lady was copying this move with "hey, send a promotional can with Mulvaney's face on it to them", then the decision was even stupider than I thought.

Why the hell would Tampax just out of the blue send this person a box of tampons for no reason except "share them round"?

Obviously he doesn’t need tampons, but maybe they figured having them in his purse would help him pass? Still seems dumb, but it seems like a box of tampons would be cheap to ship out, especially if it’s to someone who doesn’t actually need them and thus won’t need more than a notional quantity. Alternatively they thought he’d do a video on ‘contents of a girl’s purse’ or some such bs and they thought they could corner the trans market- after all, Tampax presumably doesn’t care if the person buying their product doesn’t actually need it as long as their credit card goes through.

It's a fetish...

Camouflage and Harley Davidson cans aren’t going to fix this, and they might just make it worse.

“Hey you dumb fucking red necks I bet you’d like some camouflage on your cans wouldn’t you you dumb fucking fratty racists. Now buy our shit and shut the fuck up while we core out your culture, you dumb fucking idiots.”

If I was in charge of Bud Lights marketing it would go like this:

“Ever had to apologize for saying something stupid?” With a strong implication that you’re talking about being a drunken idiot.

“…yeah we’re sorry. Free buds on us”

The make June 1st official “bud light we fucked up” day for the next 5 years. Here’s how you celebrate:

Commemorative cans that say “Sorry about what we said last night”, and every bar that serves Bud light gets a free keg and a free pallet of Bud light to give away to people who want it. Make it part of the marketing go apologize to anybody you sent drunk texts to. Make ads about people making these sorts of apologies.

Go on a Bud light apology tour where people can throw tomatoes or something at Bud light executives. Free food and of course Bud light for everybody.

I’d go to that, and honest it would probably make me drink some Bud light because of how funny it would be.

The woke move here would be to demand that Bud Light hire one of its people in some capacity.

If the conservative moment had any real power or leaders (which it doesn't) it could insist that Bud Light hire a conservative culture warrior into its PR team before ending the boycott.

Since that is impossible, the correct move for conservatives here is to just keep boycotting "pour encourager les autres".

They could hire Matt Walsh to do a "What is a Woman?" bud light add where he just admires the physique of scantily clad Southern women at Nascar races... Or Derek Chauvin to do a Voiceover from prison about hard working real Americans and the thin blue line...

But they certainly won't because any signal that would actually work would require all the executives burning all their bridges with the rest of woke corporate America and making themselves wholly dependent on Red America's good will to survive the lawsuits.

They would need to spin out the bud brand in order to do that. They probably should do that. Then hire you own Chris Rufus as CEO.

Balaji wrote something about how we are becoming 2 nations now. It’s a Texas/Florida coalition versus a DC/Cali/NY coalition. 2 people one country.

AnBev just needs to split in half. Sell wokey seltzers sugar water piss drink and cheap beer piss drink. Different marketing.

Bud as a brand now is dead. They were too slow to act and probably couldn’t act or their imports and seltzers would have had woke attacks. They needed to bring a powerful hammer down fast. What happens when a utility guy makes an OK symbol violating some twitter culture war unknowingly? He’s unemployed in 24 hours. A nurse put on leave for crying about black people assaulting her. Bud response should have been 2 dozen marketing employees unemployed in 24 hours. They didn’t do that. In order to save bud now they need to go much farther and make Bud a standalone exclusively not woke brand.

Target got the message. Shutdown Pride promotion overnight.

Ok, so let's say AB hires Matt Walsh as their new CEO of marketing. Would/should that end the boycott?

Would no. Should yes. This is one way that woke ideologues have planted themselves in nearly every business and institution. PR crisis? Hire some "diversity consultants". Now they have veto power over everything you do unless you want to be called a vile racist. It's super effective!

Obviously this is fantasy land though. Bug Light is not going to hire a conservative culture warrior to run sensitivity trainings.

They've already committed rebellion in the minds of many, and it's too late for them to back off now.

and it's too late for them to back off now

If that were the case, the rational strategy for them would be to market themselves aggressively as the woke drink of choice, not to put out country music ads and camo cans. Which presumably is the opposite of what the anti-woke want.

Well, Miller Lite who were picking up part of the switched custom from Bud Light, went and put out this ad.

As a woman (though not a beer drinker), I hate it. They want to show the role of women in brewing, and instead of showing us Babylonian goddesses and Finnish boozing parties, they give us a scold talking about shit. Does she look like she's ever drunk a beer for fun, instead of standing around giving lectures on feminism while everyone else was trying to have a party?

Well, shit is appropriate here. But guys, using naughty words that would shock Mrs. Grundy is every bit as stuck in the 70s as your blondes in bikinis.

I'd like to see women growers talking about strains of barley or hops for the beer, starting with the goddesses and ending with modern breweries.

And no shit anywhere.

Have a Tolkien quote from one of the Letters, and doesn't this sound more fun than "dig around in your parents' basement for evidence of Wrong Think and send it in to us, ya snitches"?

A propos of bullfinches, did you know that they had a connexion with the noble art of brewing ale? I was looking at the Kalevala the other day – one of the books which I don't think you have yet read? Or have you? – and I came across Runo XX, which I used to like: it deals largely with the origin of beer. When the fermentation was first managed, the beer was only in birch tubs and it foamed all over the place, and of course the heroes came and lapped it up, and got mightily drunk. Drunk was Ahti, drunk was Kauko, drunken was the ruddy rascal, with the ale of Osmo's daughter – Kirby's translation is funnier than the original. It was the bullfinch who then suggested to Osmo's daughter the notion of putting the stuff in oak casks with hoops of copper and storing it in a cellar. Thus was ale at first created. . . best of drinks for prudent people; Women soon it brings to laughter. Men it warms into good humour, but it brings the fools to raving. Sound sentiments.

Man, I'm definitely not familiar with that one. Which letter was it from?

75 To Christopher Tolkien

7 July 1944 (FS 36)

I feel like I'm starting to treat Tolkien's Letters as Gospel and I acting as his prophet 😁 But there's a lot in them about his own views and opinions, as well as the writing, that really comes in handy when people pipe up about "well of course he was a reactionary who loved feudalism" and the likes. From another letter of 1944 to Christopher, about travelling by train from Oxford to a school reunion in his home town:

I found myself in a carriage occupied by an R.A.F. officer (this war's wings, who had been to South Africa though he looked a bit elderly), and a very nice young American Officer, New-Englander. I stood the hot-air they let off as long as I could; but when I heard the Yank burbling about 'Feudalism' and its results on English class-distinctions and social behaviour, I opened a broadside. The poor boob had not, of course, the very faintest notions about 'Feudalism', or history at all – being a chemical engineer. But you can't knock 'Feudalism' out of an American's head, any more than the 'Oxford Accent'. He was impressed I think when I said that an Englishman's relations with porters, butlers, and tradesmen had as much connexion with 'Feudalism' as skyscrapers had with Red Indian wigwams, or taking off one's hat to a lady has with the modern methods of collecting Income Tax; but I am certain he was not convinced. I did however get a dim notion into his head that the 'Oxford Accent' (by which he politely told me he meant mine) was not 'forced' and 'put on', but a natural one learned in the nursery – and was moreover not feudal or aristocratic but a very middle-class bourgeois invention. After I told him that his 'accent' sounded to me like English after being wiped over with a dirty sponge, and generally suggested (falsely) to an English observer that, together with American slouch, it indicated a slovenly and ill-disciplined people – well, we got quite friendly. We had some bad coffee in the refreshment room at Snow Hill, and parted.

I for one am supportive of this new character arc. It’s almost like this gentleman had a way with words.

But he's a Dead White Male. That's why the "Rings of Power" had to update his work for a modern, inclusive audience and succeed in making me cheer for the Lord Orc Father - I beg his pardon, they prefer "Uruk", respect their pronouns!

(Seriously, when you have your Girlboss Heroine and the Villain engaging in a face-to-face exchange, and the villain monologue which establishes one of them as a ruthless, sadistic psychopath who revels in torture and slaughter doesn't come from the Orc-Father, and he's the one who comes across as both sane and sympathetic, you done fudged up).

I thought that had to be intentional, and snuck in by the one competent writer on the crew. It was so blatant.

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It was a weird moment when I realized that the cancelled 1970s Boorman script was truer to Galadriel's character than RoP...

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Does she look like she's ever drunk a beer for fun, instead of standing around giving lectures on feminism while everyone else was trying to have a party?

Much of the appeal of her Comedy Central show Broad City was Ilana being half naked and partying a lot. Not sure how much was a completely fabricated character, but if it's based partially on her then she was probably pretty fun to be around in her college days.

Then that makes it even more hypocritical of her, if she was a Fun Party Girl in her college years, to be turning her nose up at "they put us in bikinis".

It's just a stunningly stupid ad; it's insulting men, it's treating women like we have no brains, and it tells nothing about real women growers of the ingredients for the beer, just a bunch of actresses willing to talk about "shit".

They would have liked to -- their former marketing person thought they could -- but smarter heads realize that isn't going to work. So they are trying to backpedal, but it may be too late.

Do you think woke urbanites are going to start drinking Bud Light now because of a marketing campaign?

Bud Light's move is absolutely the correct one here. True, they have already revealed themselves to hate their core audience. It's going to take a lot of grovelling to get them back. But that's still easier in the long run than getting wine snobs to start drinking Bud Light.

This might be the point you were making, just spelling it out...

Bud Light's move is absolutely the correct one here. It's true they have revealed themselves to hate their core audience. It's going to take a lot of grovelling to get them back. But it's possible. Whereas getting a wine snob to start drinking Bud Light is impossible.

That would require some of the boycotters to abandon their maximalist "never touching Bud again" stance. The viability of that stance is what I wanted to discuss here.

What you describe above only works if Bud abstinence is conditional.

On the topic of boycotting woke business: did anyone bother to make a website listing all potential boycott targets and their offenses? It seems like an empty niche that could be filled fairly cheaply, though the list will be quite long. People just forget about yet another woke commercial outrage fairly quickly, having something that could be quickly linked might go a long way.

incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

Following the logic of your joke, this would make rebellion the solution to evading any punishment, since there's a non-death ending available down that path.

I don't think it's an apology that's required. Also the 'apologies' I've seen were non-apologies and minimizations, that it wasn't even an ad campaign. This I think largely misses the point.

Their customers it seems largely don't want to drink globohomo beer. The not an ad campaign was a bridge too far.

A HK style, we don't do idpol would have been better.

An HK style, we don't do idpol would have been better.

what was the story with them? I missed it

Their Twitter account briefly thought it was a good idea to wade into the commentary on the Miller Lite commercial.

As an actual woman typing this, I’ll use more words for you to comprehend: using bunnies to sell products is trash marketing. Supporting women by not doing this is good.

The tweets were swiftly deleted and followed with the roadsign tweet.

They've gone further as of today. Not exactly sure if they're cheekily referencing all the talk of shit in the Miller Lite ad that kicked things off.

Someone on their social media posted in support of Miller's anti-girls in swimear beer ad that went viral a few weeks ago. There was an outcry and H&K posted the road sign tweet linked by /u/avocadopanic.

That is to say, a proper incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

Each individual person boycotts 100% or 0%, but the overall effect of this among a group of customers is that the group boycotts by some percentage that scales with how good the backpedalling is. So I don't think this is something to worry about.

You know, a part of me wants to go "Turnabout is fair play". Because all this woke capital bullshit has finally made me believe that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. You should not give your money to people who hate you.

I always thought those phrases were just Marxist seethe and cope. Now I get it. Because it's palpable how much the present ruling regime in buearocacy and capital management hate me. The answer still isn't communism. The answer is to stop consooming. At least as much as you can. And try to support artisans who genuinely support your values where you can. Or buy used to deprive the company of income. I also feel no moral qualms about piracy of legacy IP when some new conglomerate buys it up and decides to hold it hostage and vandalize it, while beating me over the head with propaganda.

Or buy used

My immediate thought was "how would I buy used Bud Light? After it's passed through someone's bladder?" And then I thought "would I even notice a difference?"

/s

Man, I have to respond to this. Are we really going to pretend like Bud and Miller aren't easy-drinking beers? Valuable after mowing the lawn on a hot day?

I love getting punched in the mouth with an IPA, and have trained my palate to do so repeatedly. Saying that fresh light beer tastes like urine or is "low quality" is bullshit. It's unbitter to the point of almost being sweet, doesn't sit heavily in the stomach, and is the result of millions of man-hours through development and production to ensure a consistent product at an unbelievable scale.

These beers are successful because of marketing, yes. But that success is also because they appeal to a wide range of people with varying tastes. They have been specifically designed to be taste good to the majority of the planet.

I'm trying to think of the equivalent in Ireland (mainly because we don't really have 'long sunny days where you're drinking beer while working') and I think the older version would have been shandies, even further back small beer, and modern versions are lagers and the like.

Guinness and others have tried making wheat beers and light beers and they never got off the ground. Light 'summer' beers tend to be imports, and yes we have Budweiser and Coors and Miller as well, though there have been some recent Irish lagers which seem to be taking a good share.

I'm in no position to judge the merits of Carlsberg versus Budweiser, someone who drinks beer needs to chime in on this. The legendary "light, cheap, may taste like piss but you can drink cans of it" lager here is Dutch Gold 😁 And apparently it's a stablemate of Bud Light, being an InBev product!

Shandies (and radlers, and half-and-halfs) are tremendously underrated, and it feels like it's high time someone capitalized on it.

As far as Carlsberg vs Bud, I'll give the edge slightly to Carlsberg. Weirdly enough, if Budweiser ever came out with Bud Dark, I'd be willing to give it a go, based on my experience with Heineken and St. Pauli Girl's dark versions. Much more to my taste.

Isn't Leinenkugel available nationwide now? Summer Shandy is far and away their most popular variety.

Leinenkugel's solid, but i was thinking of something targeting the "cocktail in a can" demographic.

I really should have thought of it sooner, but cider (hard cider) is the summer drink of recent years: it's tasty, low alcohol (depending on what brand, ranging from 4.5% ABV upwards but since excise duty on anything 6% or over is hefty, the lower rates are the most common) and you pour it over ice so it is longer drinking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cider_in_Ireland

The traditional one is Bulmers/Magners, a.k.a. Clonmel Chardonnay from where the factory is located.

I wonder if former Bud Light drinkers would switch to cider instead?

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Fair enough, but I had a Budweiser a few weeks ago (my first in years, probably) and I thought it was gross. It didn't literally taste like piss, but it didn't taste good.

Everyone has different tastes for sure. I started brewing when I was 18 and went through the whole cycle of moving from pilsners to ales to stouts to IPAs to....

and then I kind of stopped at sours when I realized I was paying $1 extra per 12oz "pint" to add fruit notes from rotting away the beer.

Circling back to open myself back up to light beers was trivial, especially since I do live where it's hot. It makes something cheap I can tolerate very easy to find, which is an asset at bars or in the boonies.

Are we really going to pretend like Bud and Miller aren't easy-drinking beers? Valuable after mowing the lawn on a hot day?

I can enjoy a good lawnmower beer, but I've never enjoyed the taste of Miller/Coors/Bud. To each their own.

And they're exactly the same doesn't matter where you drink one, what time of year it was brewed, etc. It'll taste exactly like every single other one you've ever had for your entire life. Very very few beers can get anywhere close on a single one of those variables.

When I was a kid in the 80's and 90's, and beer brands seemed to be a more core part of the average American Male's identity, my father and our neighbor always got into light hearted spats about how shitty the other's beer choices were. My father always, and I mean always (as in died of a cirrhosed liver), drank Coors Light, and my neighbor drank Bud Light. One day, when I'm like 5 or 6 years old, my dad used me as a prop for a joke on my neighbor. In front of the neighbor, he asks me "Do you know how Bud Light is made?" I say "No" and he follows with, "They feed hops and water to cows, and they bottle up the piss". I honestly thought that was how Bud Light was made with the sincere naivety of a child for at least a year.

I had the opposite experience as a child when they told me that honey was basically bee spit and I refused to believe it, perhaps the first in many contrarian opinions I've held that didn't pan out.

That is to say, a proper incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

What possible confidence could anyone have that it is genuine? What possible confidence could anyone have that they won't just launch another "tranny ad" in 6 months time if forgiven? The woke are not exactly known for backing off when it's clear their bullshit isn't wanted in a space -- they keep trying and keep trying, by hook or by crook. No no, I think the consumers have it right here, they must be made an example of.

Furthermore, they never actually apologised. Aiming a new round of propaganda at their old audience as a sop isn't an apology. Their execs still likely hate their audience. Still stand by the original tranny ad. Can't back down even if they wanted to, because of the optics.

This explains the particular kind of pickle the find themselves in: https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/macintyre-bud-light-is-trapped-in-a-hell-of-its-own-making

This feels entirely like the I believe it’s called the innovators dilemma. Existing brands can’t innovate because they would kill their own cash cow products. Which then leaves usually a market entry point for a new firm which the existing brand can’t compete with because they are protecting profits elsewhere for as long as they can.

What possible confidence could anyone have that it is genuine?

Why does it have to be genuine? Most pro-woke propaganda is probably not genuine. The question is whether it's effective and how you get more of it.

Most woke propaganda is also clear that it's woke propaganda and thus hostile to other views.

AB is trying to have it both ways by refusing to apologize. (Does anyone think they wouldn't if they got on the wrong side of the progressives?)

But that means it isn't the equivalent of woke propaganda. It's some mealy mouthed halfway position.

Why should they be rewarded?

Most woke propaganda is also clear that it's woke propaganda and thus hostile to other views.

Woke propaganda always has the motte of "equality" and therefore somewhat plausible deniability.

You see, we are not discriminating against men, we are merely elevating women to offset all the disadvantages they are facing. We are tipping the scales back to the neutral position! Yes, that is precisely why we need more women-only scholarships in fields that are 60% female. We are, uh, tipping the historical scales.

Explicit anti-trans messaging, for example, doesn't have that deniability. something along the lines of what I am suggesting here would come closer.

That is to say, a proper incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

Can the reward not simply accrue to those that haven't defected? I suppose tit-for-tat is a stable prisoner's dilemma solution, but if there are always observers that can and will enter the game, permanent punishment against a defector seems like an entirely feasible strategy to get what one wants from the next seller up. AB-InBev simply doesn't offer anything that other drink conglomerates can't, there is no need to reward them for a tepid backpaddle.

But really, this is still overcomplicating it. There's no way for Bud Light to take it back. If you're at a bar and order a Bud Light, some non-trivial percentage of people now think of it as the tranny beer. You're ordering the tranny beer and your friends will snicker at you for it. Apologies aren't going to change that. Nothing you or I say will change that. For the first time in my recollection, the right successfully branded something as super lame for their base and they have reacted accordingly. Much like the woke mobs really do think that so-and-so is a vile racist bigot Nazi and thus there is no way to call them off, rednecks think Bud Light is the tranny beer and Matt Walsh doesn't dictate that ending.

Can the reward not simply accrue to those that haven't defected?

Sure! But is it optimal? One reason the woke movement has such power is that it can make its victims work for them.

I can't actually think of an example of the woke movement successfully defenestrating a company via consumer choice, causing it to knuckle under. I can think of examples of using the legal power of the esoteric interpretations of Civil Rights law that became the norm, and this remains the primary weapon used against "bigoted" companies. I can think of companies that had execs pretty much always wanted to be in cool crowd anyway. I cannot think of an example of a company that was right-aligned, faced people on the political left electing to stop purchasing their product, then changing.

Does this fit? Just over a decade ago Target got on the wrong side of the gay marriage movement. A few years later, they declared themselves as allies.

Yeah. At most you get slight shifts in Chik-Fil-A’s choice of charities or whatever. I don’t know any examples of actually switching product or even policy based on consumer boycotts. It takes Title IX to change the calculus.

Man, that article is wild. I'd forgotten about the shooter who showed up with a box of chicken sandwiches.

The culture war has always been fucking bizarre.

It's hard to prove whether some particular woke change in a company is a result of entryism, woke backlash, or coincidence.

Nope, if anything, the goal is not to regain Anheuser-Busch as a conservative stronghold. The goal is to inject fear in every other organization, that 1 mistake is all it will take. Anheuser-Busch might be forgiven if they grovel, but not if they apologize.

Conservatives do not want SJW hires to be rendered impotent. They want SJW hires to be screened out at the hiring phase itself. Sadly, given the pool they're hiring from, that seems like a lost cause.

Yeah I think this is the only viable lesson that companies should be learning from this and the Disney vs. Desantis kerfuffle:

Just don't openly take a side in a pure culture/political controversy. Just don't do it. Maintain something as close to neutrality as you can. Hire a Chief Neutrality Officer whose job is to follow execs around and zap them with a cattle prod if they open their mouth to pontificate on any pending legislation, litigation, or controversial event du jour.

Also screen out the motivated activists, as you say.

The company's job is to produce [product]. Keep that central to the mission and avoid making any ad campaigns that are explicitly going to enflame the political sensibilities of your customers. Make [product], sell [product]. End of.

Of course such a person needs to be able to stand up to the lefties who will scream "SILENCE IS COMPLICITY" and the government's subtle nudges to take a stand, so they probably need to have some iron balls to boot.

The company's job is to produce [product]. Keep that central to the mission and avoid making any ad campaigns that are explicitly going to enflame the political sensibilities of your customers. Make [product], sell [product]. End of.

Well OK, but what if pontificating on the issue du jour helps you sell [product]? Indeed, let us imagine that there is a spectrum of throwing one's lot in either side of the culture war, where at one end there is Black Rifle Coffee or whatever it's called and at the other is the left-wing equivalent. Doesn't it seem unlikely that in most cases the position on the spectrum which well sell the most [product] is exactly in the middle, of all the possible stances? Budweiser have made an error here it seems, but there are plenty of past cases of entering into the culture war delivering higher sales, and given that the business of business is business there is no reason why they shouldn't try to exploit those cases. Hence the CNO will have to stand up not just to committed lefties but also the manager or board member asking why X company managed to boost their profile by taking a stances, and why the company is excluding themselves from such opportunities entirely.

Budweiser have made an error here it seems, but there are plenty of past cases of entering into the culture war delivering higher sales, and given that the business of business is business there is no reason why they shouldn't try to exploit those cases.

While that is true, there are ways to switch to the progressive support angle. Every company pretty much swathes itself in rainbows for Pride Month, to the extent that LGBT activists are cynical about woke capitalism.

Dumping your core demographic before you have the new client base in place was a bad idea. I saw one Twitter or Instagram or wherever video where a woman was going on about "do the rednecks not know that thousands of dollars of marketing research went into this, do they really think their little tantrum is going to achieve anything, don't they understand that a huge business like this wouldn't do anything without a plan in place?"

Well, looks like none of that was true. I think it was a test run by the marketing VP to try and get limited exposure using a popular influencer to start switching to the younger, liberal audience, and seeing by the results how this would go (would they all indeed go over to the March Madness Bud website and enter?) but it went badly wrong.

And all the "we never partnered with Mulvaney" isn't much cop, seeing as how Mulvaney's Instagram still has the video up with the hashtag #budlightpartner, oh dear:

Happy March Madness!! Just found out this had to do with sports and not just saying it’s a crazy month! In celebration of this sports thing @budlight is giving you the chance to win $15,000! Share a video with #EasyCarryContest for a chance to win!! Good luck! #budlightpartner

I think the big mistake was the promotional can with Mulvaney's face on it; sure, it might only be one can (or several, how many they sent out was unclear) that were never going to hit the shelves in stores, but there have been so many promotional cans that did hit the shelves, it's easy to see why people assumed this was the same thing.

Well OK, but what if pontificating on the issue du jour helps you sell [product]?

Seems like a high variance strategy, to be honest.

Because it turns out that it isn't easy to predict in advance which side might take offense to a particular stance and how the public opinion on certain issues might shift over the course of a matter of years. It would seemingly take less effort to stay in the middle of the road than to correctly determine which extreme will produce more revenue for you.

And it certainly seems more sensible to build a reputation of "they produce quality [product] and provide good service" than "they have an agreeable stance on [issue] so I don't mind poorer quality or service." Since the former can be kept consistent, the latter maybe not.

But more to the point, I don't see why executives, acting in their capacity as executives, should be expected comment on purely political matters if their company or the broader industry isn't directly implicated or effected by said matters. This seems like a situation where there is ONLY downside to be had.

And I'm focusing my critique here on so-called 'publicly-traded' companies since as the name implies their interests are not bound up in a single person or small group of people who suffer directly for their decision making. There's a near 100% chance that their shareholders come from across the political spectrum and have a huge panoply of personal views that it would be impossible to account for when setting out the company's actual stance on a given issue.

And, likewise, they owe all those shareholders a duty to try to maximize shareholder value, and if they lose revenue through taking a stance on a political issue that they didn't have to comment on at all that seems like a dereliction of that duty.

So it really beggars belief that execs who are nominally accountable to shareholders would:

A) Active risk offending said shareholders' personal beliefs, to the extent those beliefs are irrelevant to the company's business anyway (i.e. an oil company will always offend an environmentalist).

B) Actively risk their company's existing revenue streams for SMALL potential gains in marketshare or popularity. There's just no way that picking a side in a culture war battle is a winning strategy when you're already in a near-dominant position.

I have yet to hear an actual consistent explanation for why giant companies need to set out a legible political stance at all, other than "if we don't then activists might get mad at us."

That seems to be overstated, a little. They can take a side if the gain in loyalty from the one side is worth the shunning from whatever customers, employees, contractors, etc. are on the other side.

I'm trying to imagine the scenarios where it would be worth, if we assume the company in question is already in a fairly dominant position and thus already has significant loyalty from each side.

Can't think of any U.S. examples of a company which 'boldly' set out a political position on an issue and burned existing relationships only to make it up by forging new ones with their new allies.

Perhaps if there are several, relatively neutral competitors, it could give a reason to choose them?

And they will need less irony balls if they have a third of the country behind them steadfastly refusing to bow to leftist shunning, government pressure and the compulsion to consume.

The goal is to inject fear in every other organization, that 1 mistake is all it will take.

It seems to be working.

Hmm. Just the other day, my manager was complaining (apropos of nothing) about Target hiring a Satanist. I don’t know what Facebook-equivalent told him about it, since the best I can find is that some of their pride collection is a little too goat-friendly. Or maybe it’s just that the designer was tainted?

We’re getting another Satanic Panic, except gayer.

While I agree about the panic, the guy didn't really help himself here.

I see holiday creep has now reached the secular feast days. It's not June yet, but they already have the Pride stuff up?

Is this new? I don't think I've been in a Target since Covid. I don't remember Target or Walmart stocking LGBT themed stuff even in places like the greater Seattle area.

I haven't been in a target since the bathroom wars many years ago, but given that it doesn't surprise me. My only regret is that I can't boycott them any further, unless I start boosting stuff.

This is completely inaccurate take. Anheuser-Busch never really apologized, they refused to admit that they did anything wrong. The best non-apology strategy they have is something like that this was one among many influencers and that it was not a campaign and so forth. So in a sense there is no apology to accept.

It is too late to downplay the situation now and pray it disappears - they voluntarily walked into this political mess, so now deal with it. Obviously they do not want to back down and say they did wrong, because then they would anger woke people - plus I'd guess that PMC people in that company genuinely despise their customer base and they would never admit they did anything wrong. So I think it is absolutely okay to continue despising them back, there is no resemblance with your apocryphal proverb. If they come out that they fired all people responsible for that shit, and that they pledge percentage of sales to go for anti-woke causes - like let's say helping detransitioners with their plight - then I would reconsider.

This is also why I vow never to buy Gillette product unless they denounce woke stuff - which will of course never happen.

I believe them about this not being a campaign etc. but it makes little difference since they handled it so badly. And then rushing out "this will appeal to the country bumpkins" stuff like the country music ad and camo cans was so obviously done in a spirit of "the rednecks are so dumb they'll fall for this" that it dug the hole even deeper.

This is also why I vow never to buy Gillette product unless they denounce woke stuff - which will of course never happen.

I haven't bought a Gillette product since the infamous ad. But pondering what would make me reconsider, I can think of a few things. For example, an ad with an equal budget highlighting how boys are falling behind in education, how men in the workplace face discriminatory hiring practices, how men do all the necessary but dirty jobs etc. That would piss of the woke but it also wouldn't get them in legal trouble.

Would a superior product at a good price move you?

No.

For example, an ad with an equal budget highlighting how boys are falling behind in education, how men in the workplace face discriminatory hiring practices, how men do all the necessary but dirty jobs etc.

I'd rather not enter the victim Olympics, I just want the competition to be shut down. Can I get an ad about the razor instead of how hard having a penis is?

That has been the non-woke stance since at least 2008. It has not been very effective.

I'd also be happier to just grill. Alas.

Grilling is a coup-complete problem.

Clearly, the only solution is for them to release a new 11-bladed razor.

That ad would have to feature white men almost exclusively to mollify me. I could easily see them making such a thing and stuffing it full of minority men.

Why would that be an issue when it comes to making up for misandrist marketing? IIRC the original ad also featured male perpetrators of all stripes.

Did it though? Watch the ad again. It was very racially aware. For example, there was one scene where a white man goes to catcall a white woman, and a black man steps in to say "not cool". Now flip the races of the two men and ask yourself if they would have aired that version.

The ad is living in a racial fantasy land knowing what we do about who actually catcalls in the U.S.

Because I want an unambiguous anti-woke statement, not one that can be fudged with excuses to fly under the wokes' radar. I want it thrown in their faces the way the original ad was an attack on me.

I suggest you become a little less sensitive if a razor advert constitutes an 'attack' on you. An ad executive ploy should not be able to bother you to that extent

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HRC?

But as it happens yes, I agree one shouldn't be bothered in the reverse case either. Those two certainly don't seem like attacks, and no-one should be personally bothered by them.

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Why? What is the significant cost of perceiving an ad executive ploy as an attack, and being angry about it? Do these costs apply to all people who get angry about social signals they don't like? Because from where I'm sitting, the argument that such behavior is not adaptive is flatly incredible, and really ought to be backed with elaboration and evidence.

The most widely memed shot in the ad showed a white man checking out a girl from behind and his black friend advising him not to do so. Maybe I'm being paranoid but I don't think the respective races were accidental. Don't make me break out FBI crime stats on which races commit more sexual assault per capita.

Wait, is that meme from an ad? I thought it was from a sitcom!

They haven't even fired the executive most responsible for the ads or offered the nearest thing to an apology to the customers they offended. They can continue to shrink until at least those are complete. Their statements weeks after the event have been:

[AB] works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics.

We need to clarify the facts that this was one can, one influencer, one post and not a campaign

We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.

I translate these as we're not stopping how we market our beer; you need to stop being so divisive. When they admit they fucked up and ask for forgiveness they can be forgiven until then, honestly, I think it would be far better for the rightists if ABInbev were left a smoldering crater to serve as an example to other brands that can be forgiven should they offer more substantial changes.

The marketing VP is on leave of absence and has been replaced. I think there will be some quiet opportunity to leave of her own accord and move on to better and greater things offered. I don't think they have solid grounds to fire her and it would be a messy lawsuit to fight it out, so just letting it all settle down under the radar (with maybe a fat severance package) is the way to go.

I think that's potentially a reason the boycott got off to such a strong start. A core AB customer knows if they cost their work money they're likely to be canned immediately. How much was the Bud Light brand worth on March 31, 2023? This puts the brand value of Bud and Bud Light at $7.6 billion. How much is Bud Light's brand worth today when they aren't selling when priced at $19 with a $20 rebate stuck on them? If a welder/machinist knows he's gone for screwing up a $25,000 job, but someone cratering a $3 billion brand doesn't get fired, I'd understand how they'd feel a bit rustled in the ole jimmies.

Right, but "I might forgive once there is an actual apology worth considering" is a completely different stance from "I will never forgive, no matter what". The second is akin to the Chinese death penalty for tardiness.

Sure, but until the other party shows any real interest in apologizing, it's probably better to gird yourself for pushing all the way to their demise.

I suppose you have to prove that you are capable of killing someone before you can convincingly offer plata o plomo.

Then again, you also have to show that you are willing to part with some plata.

Then again, you also have to show that you are willing to part with some plata.

They have shown that already, which is why the company is as big as it is/was and why the boycott is hurting as much as it is (if they hadn't been spending money, the boycott would have no effect).

Football and country music are at best orthogonal to the culture war issue in question. Is Anheuser-Busch willing to put out a statement saying that transwomen are men, or perhaps to send out a commemorative can to a prominent anti-trans celebrity like J.K. Rowling? If not, let the boycott continue until the company is bankrupt, the office buildings burned, the executives' heads on pikes, the barley fields sowed with salt.

They are trying to apologize to their base without alienating progressives; they are trying to go back to appearing neutral. Cannot be done. They made the decision to enter the culture war; now they have to pick a side.

the barley fields sowed with salt.

Bud is about 30% rice. If American adjunct lagers died as a style, demand for barley might increase! I know, I know, hardly the point, but I'm still entertained.

Football and country music are at best orthogonal to the culture war issue in question. Is Anheuser-Busch willing to put out a statement saying that transwomen are men, or at least to send out a commemorative can to a prominent anti-trans celebrity like J.K. Rowling? If not, let the boycott continue until the company is bankrupt, the office buildings burned, the executives' heads on pikes, the barley fields sowed with salt.

Wouldn't that open them up to lawsuits based on a hostile work environment or some such?

Wouldn't that open them up to lawsuits based on a hostile work environment or some such?

Even if they did, ABInbev has the resources to go to the mat and fight such lawsuits all the way to the Supreme Court. If they did that I'd likely prefer ABInbev products, though not Bud Light.

Lawsuits from disgruntled employees are only one prong of the assault. If they came out and said “Dylan Mulvaney is a man” in a way that would satisfy Matt Walsh, an Alex Jones level cancellation would be on the table. What if the NFL told InBev to take their ad money and shove it? What if any channel that shows Bud Light commercials gets the Tucker Carlson treatment? What if every company that sells Bud Light has angry mid-level management angry that they have to sell “hate beer”?

If any of these sound unrealistic, you’re right. It would never happen. Corporate leadership would chicken out before any of these things took place.

Lawsuits from disgruntled employees are only one prong of the assault

Not just the lawsuits themselves, but the drumbeat of bad press from liberal outlets while you fight this out.

Corporations settle out of convenience in less daunting cases.

Of course. Which is why only one side wins the culture war.

I have to ask - has anyone ever been sued for a hostile work environment, and the "look at all the woke stuff we're doing" was found to be a valid defense? I'm a bit tired of these mundane "gosh, we didn't want to, but we really had no choice" theories of corporate action.

"Appropriate corrective action", usually meaning immediate warnings or firing and removal from the premises, is pretty well-supported in the caselaw: Pakizegi found that an employee's acts were specifically outside of the scope of the employer's liability because they fired the employee after a complaint, and this rule is codified in the CFRs (see national origin, sex).

Having and requiring anti-harassment training, and having and promoting complaint procedures is not as clear in the statute or regs, but is largely supported by caselaw as an expansion of the regulatory requirement for "reasonable care to prevent and detect". For sexual harassment (and because of the convoluted history there, anything gender- or orientation-related) Meritor Savings comes up again, but Faragher v Boca Raton has the bettery summary when it specifically held:

When no tangible employment action is taken, a defending employer may raise an affirmative defense to liability or damages, subject to proof by a preponderance of the evidence... The defense comprises two necessary elements: (a) that the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior, and (b) that the plaintiff employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer or to avoid harm otherwise. While proof that an employer had promulgated an antiharassment policy with complaint procedure is not necessary in every instance as a matter of law, the need for a stated policy suitable to the employment circumstances may appropriately be addressed in any case when litigating the first element of the defense. And while proof that an employee failed to fulfill the corresponding obligation of reasonable care to avoid harm is not limited to showing an unreasonable failure to use any complaint procedure provided by the employer, a demonstration of such failure will normally suffice to satisfy the employer's burden under the second element of the defense.

These cases dealt with more direct 'conventional' sexual harassment, but the expansion of their dicta to hostile work environments is pretty established at this point. ((Some states also just require this training, outright: Maine, Connecticut, California, Delaware, and New York, with Maine starting the trend in 1991.)) The Sixth Circuit has some dicta actively requiring it for any related employer defense, from Clark v. United Parcel, where:

While there is no exact formula for what constitutes a "reasonable" sexual harassment policy, an effective policy should at least: (1) require supervisors to report incidents of sexual harassment, see (2) permit both informal and formal complaints of harassment to be made, (3) provide a mechanism for bypassing a harassing supervisor when making a complaint, and (4) and provide for training regarding the policy.

But I don't know of any serious literature for how many other circuits use something akin to that rule even if they haven't explicitly said it. Kolstad does mean all courts have to consider anti-harassment training when considering if the employer has provided a "good-faith effort" to preventing harassment, and thus may not be held liable for punitive damages.

The general 'did good things'-style corporate progressive indulgences is more complicated.

Generally speaking and with some exceptions, courts disfavor character evidence, either good or bad. Saying "we posted rainbow hearts everywhere, so we couldn't have fired an employee for being gay" is not only an unsuccessful defense, but in many environments would even be acceptable to bring to a jury, for the same reason that most jurisdictions don't allow "this employer said this sexist thing unrelated to my case, so they must have done said a sexist thing while I did work for them" (there are a few increasing exceptions here in recent years, like California).

But for hostile work environments, the question isn't whether a specific bad act was done, but whether the overall culture of the workplace was "a working environment heavily charged with ethnic or racial discrimination", or their gender/sex/whatever. So there's definitely space for the overall charge of the working environment to be relevant evidence. But it's also a question of fact, eg something that would be resolved during a jury or bench trial, which leaves a lot fewer marks.

((Or even earlier: with a few exceptions, workplace discrimination lawsuits must first be submitted to the EEOC for mediation before a lawsuit can go anywhere.))

I was shocked at how employer friendly hostile work environment law actually is. Anything short of finding a noose in your locker and your supervisor laughing about it on multiple occasions generally gets dismissed. Cowardly and/or ideologically captured general counsels and HR departments have just been gaslighting CEOs about their level of liability for decades. None of this stuff is required from a legal perspective, and to the extent a company actually has to worry about hostile work environment liability, a fig leaf of "we made everyone attend anti-whiteness workshops" isn't going to help. Its just that by now, everyone is too terrified of their own young employees to call the bluff.

I don't think this is an accurate analysis of the current state of the law, or even the last couple decades. Reeves v. CH Robinson was 2010, McIntyre-Handy 1997, Robinson v. Jackson Shipyards was 1991. These might be bad behaviors, but they're not "noose in your locker" bad or Oncale bad.

Pakizegi technically found the bank not-responsible for an employee having "hung pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeni and a burning American flag in Iran in her own cubicle, and that the Bank failed to have the pictures removed for several weeks"... but only because "There is no dispute that after Ms. Pakizegi complained about the offensive photographs, Mr. Doggett ordered Ms. Dephouse to remove the pictures, had Ms. Dephouse transferred to another area of the Bank and subsequently discharged Ms. Dephouse, as part of the Bank's corrective action."

The thing is, almost all of these laws use the “reasonable person” standard. What a “reasonable person” considers hostile, intimidating, or abusive in 1990s Texas is very different from what a “reasonable person” considers hostile, intimidating, or abusive in 2023 California.

I have to ask - has anyone ever been sued for a hostile work environment, and the "look at all the woke stuff we're doing" was found to be a valid defense? I'm a bit tired of these mundane "gosh, we didn't want to, but we really had no choice" theories of corporate action.

That wasn't the claim. My claim is that a public anti-trans stance would open them up for lawsuits.

American courts always seemed kind of insane to me, so it wouldn't surprise me, but come on... how can advertising with JK Rowling be grounds for a lawsuit more than advertising with Dylan Mulvaney?

You're a gay employee. You have a fallout with your boss and you are fired. Now you get to claim that your fallout was caused by a culture of homophobia at the company, as evidenced by public statements.

You could construct a similar case with Dylan Mulvaney, but I somehow doubt courts will entertain the idea that those ads are evidence of an anti-Christian or anti-women bias.

You're a gay employee. You have a fallout with your boss and you are fired. Now you get to claim that your fallout was caused by a culture of homophobia at the company, as evidenced by public statements.

Except you won't find any statement by JK Rowling that's homophobic. You won't even find one that's transphobic. Your argument would end up looking like "JK Rowling is perceived by the trans community to be transphobic, therefore advertising with her is an anti-trans statement" or something. Now, like I said American courts are kind of insane to me, so the argument would fly for all I know, but the argument "wouldn't it open them up for a lawsuit" seems to explicitly assume the courts are ridiculously slanted, but the passive voice makes it sound like there's nothing to see here.

Except you won't find any statement by JK Rowling that's homophobic. You won't even find one that's transphobic. Your argument would end up looking like "JK Rowling is perceived by the trans community to be transphobic, therefore advertising with her is an anti-trans statement" or something.

No, it would end up looking like "JK Rowling is a well-known anti-trans hate monger as evidenced by this list of prominent anti-trans hate mongers published by this very serious NGO that employs very serious credentialled people".

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That is to say, a proper incentive structure should not only contain costs for injecting woke politics into business but also rewards for backpedalling.

Sponsoring ads that are supposed to appeal to vaguely conservative sensibilities is not backpedalling, it's hoping the problem goes away if you don't talk about it. The drama around H&K's tweets, which you discussed yourself, is an example of backpedalling. They need to address what happened.

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