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Phoenix (凤凰) (spacelogic) wrote,
@ 2009-10-16 15:18:00

Current mood:

weird

the commercialization of activism
Hello, my name is Phoenix, and I believe in boycotts.

I was raised with a strict understanding that my family would not, under any circumstances, buy Nestlé products. No candy, no ice cream, no drinks, nothing we could find that had the brand name anywhere on it, including in the small print on the back label. I elected to not even eat candy I was given on Halloween if it came from them -- not refusing to accept it, because in the dark you can't always see, but carefully sorting it out for uses I can no longer recall. When Nestlé got ahold of Häagen-Dazs, I surrendered my favorite kind of ice cream bar with a bitter sigh but a strong sense that I was doing the right thing. (Wiki article on why, and just one activist site on the matter.) Nor did my family ever go to McDonald's, and I still won't. The idea of not giving money to people who do bad things was firmly ingrained in me from a very young age.

I grew up in a good area to avoid particularly offensive brands and chains. After one nearby town transformed into a strip mall, the small towns in the region became hostile to big companies coming in and "developing" near our homes. Even the strip mall is not completely open -- there's been a major conflict for years now over the possibility of a Target moving in -- and support for small local businesses is high throughout the region. While the Starbucks and the Borders and the other colossal chain stores survive downtown, so do their independent rivals, buoyed by strong community support and well-earned affection. Not buying evil brands is, of course, slightly harder -- they're sold in most local stores, due to high demand -- but alternatives are very available.

Somehow, though, when I mention boycotting a business, the most common response is a blank look. People understand, for the most part, preferring to shop local and/or buy from ethically preferable sources, but why go to the extreme of not buying things just because no ethically preferable source offers them? You don't buy things if you don't want or can't afford them, but not just because the business selling them is unethical or downright evil. It's not like one person not buying its stuff is going to make it change.

Ah, but one person buying from a company to reward it for good behavior, that's logical! The same people who can't be bothered to care about whether their favorite chain is making its products in sweatshops that spew toxic waste suddenly perk up if the company in question announces that it's giving some small percentage of profits to fight AIDS or breast cancer, or perhaps "going green" by putting its catalog only online. Buying things, you see, is what they were planning on doing anyway, so being able to feel virtuous about doing so is perfect. And the companies realize this, which is why they all do promotional activism these days (how many pink products have you seen in the last few years? Think about it.) The promotions tend to be pretty shallow, with some exceptions (I believe Newman's Own actually donates a significant percentage of its profits, but I have my serious doubts about how much AIDS research was furthered by Gap's "Product Red" thing or its spinoffs, and of course "donating" is problematic because they rarely name the specific organization that benefits, and organizations are not necessarily to be trusted to make proper use of donated funds anyway.)

I'm not going to say I'm perfect, of course. I break down almost instantly when it comes to music -- I know I don't want to give Warner Bros. or Sony money, but [insert one of my favorite artists here]! -- and entertainment in general poses problems for me, though with no TV around I suspect I do better on that than the average person nevertheless. But I do try, and it disturbs me greatly that this makes me weird.

The latest thing that I have been puzzled by is the Pepsi iPhone App Scandal. Yeah, fuck Pepsi. I get that. But why is it that the overwhelming response to Pepsi doing something bad is "from now on, only Coke!"? Pepsi's nastiness doesn't make Coca-Cola virtuous -- Coca-Cola is very far from that, as a few seconds on Google can show. Nor is cola a vital substance without which people will die, so that they must buy one brand or the other -- I haven't drunk the stuff in years, never did much, and I'm fit and healthy. The thing is, simply, that buying things is the popularly accepted form of activism, and so the perceived correct response to a company doing something you don't like is to pledge to buy only from their competitors -- regardless of who those are. Now, I'm all for supporting more ethical alternatives to unethical companies, but there's an important set of key words in that sentence: "more ethical." And that means generally, not just in a specific area.

I think I just decided not to go see Where the Wild Things Are for my birthday this year after all. If I can just quit the music!

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beccastareyes
2009-10-16 11:51 pm UTC (link)

Music is hard because you do seem to both have to deal with the record company and the artist. The artist might not be able to respond to a boycott by changing companies -- I know little about the music industry.

I honestly don't know much about where the food I eat* comes from, and I probably should. (Half the time I just buy the store brand, which means I don't normally even know where it's actually made.)

* With the exception of things like Vegtables from Farmer's Market and the Local Coffeshop's Baked Goods.

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spacelogic
2009-10-16 11:59 pm UTC (link)

Typically, as I understand it, artists have very few options -- the contracts tend to be ridiculously restrictive, and it's hard to get by as an independent artist or with a small label. Of course, that's precisely why the best thing to do is to support independent artists and small labels, especially since that way more of the money tends to actually go to the artists in question. But, yeah, I really wish that weren't the tradeoff.

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	beccastareyes 2009-10-17 12:05 am UTC (link)
	I suppose there's always concerts, if you like concerts and they play in the area. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

spacelogic
2009-10-17 12:14 am UTC (link)

Not really. As I understand it, the profits from those also go through the label.

I am thinking that I might only buy new music (MP3s, CDs) from small labels or independents, and satisfy my longing for other kinds of music with vinyl since that pretty much means buying used records (no longer directly profiting anyone except the store) from two local independent stores. This means missing out on new stuff from big labels, which means a number of my favorite bands, but it's still my tentative plan.

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	yonmei 2009-10-17 11:09 pm UTC (link)
	I buy so little music that I don't even pay much attention to which corporations I ought to be boycotting if I did... well, all of them, probably. :-( (Reply to this) (Parent)

yonmei
2009-10-17 11:14 pm UTC (link)

One of the many reasons I love my local greengrocery (which is a mile and a half away, but still walking distance on Saturdays...) is that it specifies where the fruit and veg comes from. So I can deliberately buy apples grown in England (or, failing England, France or Belgium if I must) and, of course, back when I was boycotting everything from South Africa, boycott SA fruit.

(It is a truly strange change in the world to me, that I no longer have to boycott everything from South Africa in order to end apartheid. Because we did.)

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	beccastareyes 2009-10-18 02:34 am UTC (link)
	The local grocery store does note when food is grown in-state (or in the local area) -- right now, that's the last of the apples. There's also a farmer's market and the Ag. Club on campus during the growing season. I could probably find more, since I live in a very green town -- there's a big locavore movement. (Reply to this) (Parent)

keieeeye
2009-10-17 09:54 pm UTC (link)

o.o Boycotting seems normal to me as well. Money talks - not giving it to people with a clear demand for changed behaviour, such as with Nestle, is one of the most effective ways to get a message across to a company.

I also hate cola. It just feels weird in my mouth, it has a strange after-texture. :/ Which is not the point, but everyone on the internet wants to know what I had for breakfast, right?

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	yonmei 2009-10-17 11:10 pm UTC (link)
	I pretty much hate all fizzy drinks. Including fizzy wine (champagne's OK, but I'd always rather have a still drink). (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

keieeeye
2009-10-17 11:15 pm UTC (link)

Yeah - I only have lemonade mixed with midori, other than that I drink water, milk at dinner, and juice as a rare treat. Though on special holidays when people are drinking wine the non-drinkers (whether always non-drinkers or simply choosing not to on that day) get sparkling grape or apple juice, which is an even rarer treat. Sometimes I do buy V, which is fizzy, but that's more due to my fucked up sleep cycles and needing something to wake me up even the slightest amount, and I can't stand coffee.

I find the carbonation is a lot softer in sparkling fruit juice, though, and lemonade+midori is watered down with the non-fizzy midori. V does the same thing of making my mouth fuzzy but not as badly as coke does and because it's expensive I'm not drinking it in large amounts.

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yonmei
2009-10-17 11:06 pm UTC (link)

Pepsi and Coke have themselves set up the public perception that one must choose between one or the other (years ago, I read a fascinating little book called The Cola Wars, or somesuch, by Pepsi's head of marketing, about how Pepsi presented themselves to the US public (by such things as "take the Pepsi challenge") as the alternative to Coke (and in fact as the preferred alternative to Coke).

(I agree completely about boycotts in general and about boycotting Nestle in particular, but that's almost by the way: of course I don't buy Nestle, even if it means never getting to eat a Rowntrees chocolate treat ever again.)

Anyway, I think that's why the "Pepsi are evil so I'll buy Coke!" comes from - Pepsi's own marketing strategy. Ironic, isn't it?

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spacelogic
2009-10-17 11:22 pm UTC (link)

Well, if either of them folded the other would be an obvious monopoly, and that would kill their main market, so it's in both companies' interest to ensure that people are buying from one or the other. Just like Apple and Microsoft need each other. So I wouldn't be surprised if that side effect were intentional.

(The really evil sneaky version of this was the Lord of the Rings vs. Harry Potter rivalry, since both series were produced by AOL Time Warner companies. I have vast admiration for how well they spun the box-office competition there.)

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