Businesses don’t care about “the majority” though. They care about their intended audience. The most popular audience is the young adult demographic: 18-34 years olds, but many are more specific. They also care about getting the most involved customers, as those are the ones who not only stand by them, but who advertise by word of mouth.
I suspect that, if a company is listening to Twitter, they have good reasons to believe the side they are listening to is in fact indicative of a good portion of their fanbase. And if it’s not a pure majority in their target audience and desired demographics, it at least is much more common than the other side.
I do suspect that, since Twitter is how people give feedback these days, it must be a rather valuable tool. I would expect that the business people have crunched the numbers to be able to convert Twitter opinions into actual statistics. (Twitter does give them a lot of info, after all, with likes and retweets and such). These may be statistics on how well these opinions correlate with their audience, or even just statistics on what makes them more money.
The old adage was “Get woke, go broke.” But clearly this has changed. Society has changed enough that often going “woke” is actually better than either supporting the other side or staying neutral.
Heck, the decision to do so may even be entirely independent of Twitter many times.
Yeah, but the brand didn’t change because people were protesting pancake mix, it was changed because there were global protests against police violence and racism, and the brand thought this was a good way to coattail a massive social movement. The reaction on the left wasn’t, “Yay, we won!”: it was “We’re out here fighting for our right not be murdered by cops, and we’re supposed to care about your crappy syrup?”
I think this could be true, but I also think some companies could see criticisms of their brand and think, “You know what? That’s a good point.” None of the things they are “canceling” are likely to impact their bottom line, so there’s no financial risk to being slightly less shitty.
Welll…not exactly. It’s been something that elementary teachers have been talking about for several years now. And a lot of us have decided to stop reading Dr. Seuss to students because of some of his issues. And during the time when we’d have been reading Dr. Seuss, we just stare quietly at the little children sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the carpet. Or sometimes we teach them to sing the Internationale.
Wait, that’s not what we do. Those of us that have decided to stop reading Dr. Seuss are instead reading Mo Willems. Or we’re reading something spectacular like Her Right Foot (video of the read-aloud), or Patricia Polacco, or some other excellent children’s author.
In other words, we improve our pedagogy, quietly and without much fuss.
But that doesn’t make for good TV or good ratings. That doesn’t whip octopus and other mob-members into a frenzy. So when the corporation says, “Hey, y’all have a point, maybe we’ll stop publishing the Worst of Seuss anthology,” that’s when the right wing really grabs the pitchforks. And they, hilariously, shout about liberty all the time they’re trying to cancel Seuss’s heirs for being a little less shitty.
Edit: but if you mean people weren’t out in the streets protesting Seuss, yeah, you’re right.
Yes, exactly. Look, I said “protest.” Not “criticize,” or “not like,” or “favor less than other authors.”
Was there a letter writing campaign to get his books pulled off shelves? Did anyone threaten to boycott anyone in connection with Seuss? Did left wing media spend hours of air time piously wondering about the “problem” of Dr. Seuss before these books were pulled?
No, of course not. So, please miss me with this pedantic bullshit, okay?
I agree that’s also true. I just am in general very cynical about companies. The Dr. Seuss company? I suspect that could be a principled stance, given the purpose of the books. For a company like Amazon? I do suspect number crunching was involved in deciding exactly what things they won’t allow sold on their platform. With eBay I could go either way on their decision to not allow the books to be sold there (even old ones).
And I suspect the Potato Head decision had nothing to do with Twitter at all. You don’t need Twitter to know that younger moms tend to like more gender inclusivity, and it’s a very minor change in marketing.
To be fair, when reading Bud, Not Buddy, I’ve done a simulation exercise to explain how labor unions work, that I pulled out of a 1990s labor union organizer’s manual. It’s a great, fun way to get even 9-year-olds to understand the power of organized labor. So you can call me comrade if you want :).
Has anyone seen John Rogers’ tweet thread about the Idiot Ball? Octo appears to be the carrier of the Idiot Ball for going on four years now.
This is a term used to describe when one character, in order to make the show work, has to behave, uncharacteristically, like a complete idiot.
…
The modern conservative intellectual movement is now reduced to passing around the idiot ball. Dr. Seuss is this week’s idiot ball, and in order to be part of the show, you have to carry it. You have to make bad faith or stupid arguments to be part of the show. The difference is, now, everybody has to pass the idiot ball around, all episode.
Freedom Fries. Antifa. Dr. Seuss. Millions of missing ballots. Neanderthals. Ordinarily smart people have to pretend to be earnestly dumb and make idiotic arguments about each of these, or be tossed from the show.
…
But remember, the ball’s just the ball. The person carrying it’s the idiot.
I love Miller, but wow does he have a mean backhand that appears to show itself at odd times (from my POV, anyway). This reminds me of the time he said I was not being fair to a certain 8 armed troll (no link handy – just from my memory).
Sorry, getting “Well, actually…” 'd twice on the same post, in a way that missed the point in exactly the same manner both times, was a bit much for me.