White heterosexuals do outnumber LGBT people. But that’s not true of anti-LGBT bigots. That’s the entire reason that the whole “rainbow” advertising exists. Companies don’t participate in that because they actually care about LGBT people. They do it because it is profitable.
The issue here is not pure numbers. It is radicalization. Target specifically isn’t concerned about sales, but violence.
Bud Light is more complicated. Their issue was that, whether intentional or not, they had a huge following among the same base that has been targeted by the anti-trans hysteria. So, when they did the logical thing and tried to branch out to more customers, to make their brand appeal to more people, there was an intense backlash.
The problem is that they weren’t immediately able to make up for the backlash with new customers. There were some people who saw the outrage and wanted to buy Bud Light out of some sort of solidarity. But the product on its own just doesn’t appeal to many outside of the rural areas. It’s a source of mockery. So sales went down quickly, and Budweiser quickly backpedaled, losing even what support they had, while not actually stopping the backlash.
You could say that is about numbers. But it’s about the numbers who will buy Bug Light, not numbers in general. According to a recent survey, 75% of non-LGBT Americans believe that companies should openly support LGBT causes.
Do remember that the intensity of the culture war is directly proportional to how threatened the bigots feel. And they feel more threatened the fewer there are of them. When they felt like they were the majority, they didn’t feel the need to get upset.
Don’t mistake that for them increasing in numbers.
But Lite could have come up with an ad appealing to traditional customers. Instead, they ran this:
Which the right sees as mocking them as stupid. This also went viral against Bud Lite, and not a trans person is in sight. This is a culture war. I don’t even think the ad was intentionally insulting - just the product of an ad team disconnected from its customers and guessing what they are like. In other words, a terrible ad team.
Everyone should just lighten up. Maybe that’s all this ad was trying to do, and it backfired.
Step 1: people are boycotting Bud Light because they hate trans people and want Bud Light to either hate trans people or ignore them. It is, in your own words, a culture war
Step 2: Bud Light makes an ad that has nothing to do with trans people and is obviously just goofy like most other ads
Step 3: the same people from step 1 freak out again anyway.
Step 4: you conclude this was something Bud Light did
I think based on this analysis it’s fair to ask you about your actual position here. You’ve obviously got your finger on the pulse of the right wing media sphere. You know how the people freaking out about Bud Light promotions feel about trans people. Me, I’m against them. Where are you in the culture war? And if the answer is “I’m on Matt Walsh’s side” wouldn’t it just be easier to say that than pretend you think anyone else is going to watch that ad and think it proves something about Bud Light being in the wrong?
That’s a weird interpretation. Is there anything in that ad to suggest the people tripping and getting sunburned are right wing? It’s just a silly story about little mishaps, with the tagline, “leave your cares behind”.
I see the moral not as “our customers are stupid” but as “everyone has little mishaps”.
This fuss is being made about showing somebody drinking a beer. If LGBQT people can’t even be shown drinking a beer, how is it not about insisting that they shouldn’t be shown in public?
You think that’s universal? It isn’t even Canadian.
Sure. That’s exactly why a beer company was advertising to a LGBTQ+ influencer.
That has got to be one of the worse mis-readings I’ve ever seen on these boards.
And the next year, when these people say ‘oh, that worked. Now let’s take on anything that shows professional women as equal to or heaven forbid bosses over men’ or ‘anything that shows Black people doing anything other than menial jobs’?
Or how about this year, when maybe that fictitious marketing executive’s kid suicides, because their parent doesn’t think they’re fit to be seen in public?
This. Very much this.
How do you know?
– yeah, that’s a terrible ad. But it’s terrible because it says that people who drink the product are incompetent. Are you saying that Bud Light is losing market sale, not because any of this fuss over non-straight people, but because they sneer at their buyers? If so, then including LGBTQ+ people in the ads shouldn’t be a difficult decision for the ad executive at all; they just have to show smart and capable people, of whatever category, drinking their beer, and they’ll be fine. And if not, how do you know that all that lost money had to do with Mulvaney, and not to do with the incompetence ad?
That’s probably how they meant it; but I can easily see it coming off the other way.
I honestly don’t believe for a second a significant portion of the protestors were worried drinking Bud Light would make others think they had caught “teh gay.” No, what was intolerable was the implication that Bud Light drinkers were willing to share space with some folks who might be a little different from them. There’s no figleaf here of “protecting the children,” this is just raw, naked hositility on the part of bigots who want to hurt LGBTQ+ people as much as possible.
What employers are requiring their employees to sign DEI statements? In the HR world, a DEI statement is somethign the company puts out stating their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and may outline their plans to see that commitment through. It isn’t a document employees sign. And American employers have required their employees to sit through classes on all types of harassment for the last 30 years, why does DEI bother people?
I was wondering about this, too. Is there an example of a company actually doing this? My company is as progressive as they come. Yes, we do have to sit through anti-harassment training, and yes, we do have to acknowledge receipt of the employee handbook, but both of those deal with treating everyone with respect and not being a jerk. I’d really be interested in knowing if some company is forcing people into DEI training and making them sign some sort of commitment. Even my work doesn’t do that.
I think Sam is misremembering an ongoing right wing talking point about a would-be UCLA professor who had a lot to say about wokeness, including universities making DEI statements.
That professor’s podcast was found and objected to, and he was not hired. Right wingers were not pleased. Basically 100% of the discussion online, as these stories tend to go, is from right wing sources, but his name is Yoel Inbar if anyone would like to waste their time.
And for anyone else who might be confused; we’re not talking about Dylan Thomas or Bob Dylan for that matter.
I knew a man, his brain was so small
He couldn’t think of nothing at all
He’s not the same as you and me
He doesn’t dig poetry. He’s so unhip that
When you say “Dylan”, he thinks you’re talking about Dylan Thomas
Whoever he was
The man ain’t got no culture.
There’s also the complication that after comically protesteth-too-much cases like Larry “Tappy Toes” Craig and George “Luggage-Lifter Rentboy” Rekers, spewing vehement anti-gay rhetoric is practically a form of coming out…
So you’ve been the victim of a criminal offence for exercising your constitutional right to express your views (vandalism in Canada is caught by the Criminal Code offence of “mischief”).
Who do you blame for that? From your post, it sounds to me like you blame LGBTQ people for triggering a “backlash”, not the person committing a criminal offence and violating your constitutional right of expression.
If I’m mistaken and haven’t correctly stated your position, I apologise.
There is a huge amount of material online about the controversies surrounding mandatory DEI pledges as conditions of employment and promotion in higher educcation.
Instead of nebulous hypotheticals, could you cite some actual examples of outrage directed at, for example, one of the beer-and-hunting ads featured here:
