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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   27785 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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I don’t know why these people find it tough. It just isn’t. Don’t censor. But someone said something I consider naughty? Who the fuck cares.

There are plenty of people who aren’t interested in a place that tolerates anti-semitism. Somebody on /r/TheMotte or /r/slatestarcodex once made the interesting point that maximizing speech is completely different from refusing to censor anything — at a certain point you’re driving out as many viewpoints as you’re enabling by tolerating certain people.

Also advertisers – advertisers care.

Also advertisers: advertisers care.

To be clear: they care about not being attacked by establishment NGO's, not about "being associated" with something objectionable in the eyes of the consumer.

I’ve heard this claimed before but admit to knowing nothing about it. What is the evidence for it?

Examples of companies losing business due to reaction from consumers are few and far between. Bud Light is probably the only one in recent memory, and they didn't really change course all that much as a result of it. Also advertisers were constantly being associated with offensive content on Twitter, Youtube, etc. It's not until the establishment media do a "it's bad to advertise on $platform" report that they actually bother to pull out.

All in all, there's very little evidence they care about being associated with something offensive, and a much simpler explanation is that it's the media coverage that bothers them.

In part, probably because the only people who saw those ads were “bad people” anyhow so there was no taint to their brand. But then the media blew their spot up.

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