InsaneJournal

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!