Slickriven wrote:.
> @benstylus So what you're essentially saying is that boycotting companies for some
> bad things or ties to a person or country is dumb - so like the whole cancel culture
> that's vomited all over society for the past handful of years? If so, then yes, please
> let's end that crap.
No, I'm just saying you have to pick your battles.
Russia is an easy one for people to fixate on right now because they are in the news and actively trying to invade and take over an internationally recognized sovereign country in a time when that sort of thing is heavily frowned upon, to put it mildly.
China is a harder boogeyman to boycott simply because so much of our way of life depends of the cheap labor we get from making things there. People talk about decoupling our economy from that and bringing back good manufacturing jobs to the US, but good jobs equals good wages equals much higher prices than we are used to, and Wal-Mart (another common boogeyman) has proven that the bottom line is the most important thing for a lot of people. Was recently watching a kickstarter board game offering "made in America" as a selling point. It was floundering because the cost was quite high - $90 for the base game. They canceled the project after a week or so, took a poll as to what people wanted from a relaunch, and the vote loud and clear was lower prices, even though the poll specifically said that meant production in China. They relaunched yesterday with a $65 base game price, and they have already funded. So much for boycotting China over human rights abuses if it means your game costs 40% more.
As for the so-called cancel culture of individuals, I'm less concerned about the public shaming for horrible and overtly racist/hateful/violent behavior (for example,
flying into a rage when you are in Chinatown because a random person there is ethnically Chinese,
telling your black server at Olive Garden to get the manager so you can demand a white server, or
telling someone to "go back to your own country"), and more concerned about trying to get people fired over stuff like religious beliefs about gender and sexuality (Again, as long as those beliefs don't move into the hateful/violent part of the spectrum.)
Calling people out is 100% ok when done to politicians. It's their job to represent the people, so when they are failing to represent you, they need to be told.
I'm against the more extreme methods like doxxing, swatting, etc. That falls into an additional category of "violent, but I want to let others do the actual violence because I'm safer here behind the anonymity of my computer."
I guess the TLDR version is that on some level everyone is a hypocrite who tells themself whatever they need to hear to sleep at night.
