On corporations and outrage culture

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Crystalpall

the F2P PvEr
I'm creating this thread inspired by the rice thread. I understand it's too much for some people here to ask to keep the discussion civil, but nevertheless I still have a glimmer of hope things will be kept classy. Mods, please don't close the thread just because it might seem imflammatory, but if people will just turn it into a flame fiesta then I guess there's no point in keeping it open.

This is what I believe now: no corporation is bullied to do anything by people writing on twitter or facebook. Please think about it. The only thing they care about is money, and no online "outrage" will realistically bring their sales down by any meaningful amount. Quite the contrary, the controversy is just a fantastic opportinuty to get free advertising for doing nothing, and easy PR if you decide to change the name, the logo or whatever. It's a win-win situation.

I also believe that the "outrage" is actually on the other side. Sometimes the claims made by the twitter mob sound ridiculous right? Often when I read about stuff like that, it's mind boggling that someone might actually think that. But guess what, I never see the posts first. I always see the posts of people ridiculing the idea, people making fun of it, people downright attacking the person for their opinion, people (get where I'm getting at?) outraged on the internet.

Lastly, my personal conspiracy theory: some of the brands pay someone or create the controversies by themselves to earn some easy PR and advertising.

Discuss. Keep it civil.

Edit: I do have a different opinion when a person is being the target of attack online, as opposed to a corporation. But I posted the thread already so it might be too late to do a writeup now.
 
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public companies are part of the problem

> when maximum profits is your be-all end-all purpose :haHAA:
 
Not sure how anything in the last thread was uncivil, I suppose this is a twink site after all and that's their perogative.

Anyway, I think that outrage culture, cancel culture, whatever you decide to call it is a product of online anonymity.

The studies of how humans interact with their surroundings when they cannot be identified or beleive to be alone are quite shocking. It can influence one's actions in a way they would never normally act.

When you pair that with slander, accusations, lies and out of context stories/anecdotes what begins is a snowball effect. More voices demand action basing their view on simply the echo chamber of the Internet.

Not all business profit from this kind of publicity, especially small businesses which cannot bounce back from the bullying.

I think you're right that sometimes a corporation will incite rumours or accusations themselves to create PR.

Other times i think its clear that bots and fake accounts bombard a rhetoric at targeted groups to influence more than just profit and loss reports. Elections for example.

I also get where your coming from, the initial outrage is outdone by those outraged about it, causing whatever the story started out as to be inflated beyond its origin.
This is part of the snowball effect.

But I guess that's why in the last thread I brought up the situation in Canada. Its all trivial stuff when a company changes a logo or an advert gets pulled, or an apology is demanded. But its not trivial when a group demands law changes to change the way you decide to express yourself.

The other elephant in the room is how much influence does social media have on a population?
And who/how do social media sites mitigate things such as fake news when it's so easy to post, share and spread?
Whos responsibility is it to filter what's fact and what's fiction?
 
Can't say anything these days without someone calling you racist or mysoginist, these snowflakes are taking away free speech soon you won't be able to voice your opinion. Especially if your a white man without enough power.
 
@hom

thanks for a well written post

So, to sum up for now, I believe we're agreeing for this:

- Public outrage affects targets differently, wether they're a single person, a small business/group or a big corp.
- For big corporations, such outrage is usually a positive thing, doesn't affect anything in a negative way and can often be beneficial
- For small groups/businesses and personalities, a controversy like that can be far more serious, but sometimes when it's especially ridiculous it can rally the fans behind them in support and give advertisment to a smaller business.
- Elections are affected by trolls, bots and loud extremes

Please let me know if we can agree on this, I don't want to put words in your mouth (or keyboard)

Where I don't think I agree with you is the law changes. Maybe I misunderstood your point, but I strongly believe that even the minor voices should be heard, and if they want law changes - it should be put down to vote.

@Neon

I don't know about that. There are of course people just shouting "racist" "sexist" etc without much reason or merit (a good example would be the story of a GW2 developer Jessica Price), but - even if the example i'm about to show is anecdotal - living with a fiancee for 5 years has shown me how little I really knew about female problems or their side of things as a guy and that sexism is still very, very real, and found often.
 
A huge part of the problem is the advertisement driven media model. So you have this incentive to write stories that get clicks with headlines like "People are DEMANDING Uncle Bens change its racist mascot" but the article quotes like 3 people on twitter with a combined 17 followers.

Thats not people. Thats not a mob. Thats just someone looking for a controversy because the revenue model of the online media industry runs on hate clicks. But now we have this idea that twitter mobs are forcing corporations to change branding. And then politicians who really just want to be celebrities grab onto it and fan the flames and now youve got people genuinely believing a fucking bus load of antifa supersoldiers is coming to their town to forcibly remove the Uncle Bens rice from their cupboards.

But anyway, yea. It's always troublesome when the outrage machine does manage to get going and it ends up punching down. Punch up, always punch up. And never cry crocodile tears for the corporations and celebrities that get caught in it. Theyll be fine.
 
Well, taking the uncle ben's logo change example. I haven't seen any big social media outrages about it, it has just been a topic for long and I believe their CEO's just considering changing it. It's a mature move, time and views changes, as far as I know the logo was made in the 40's - where racial stereotypes are normalized

Can't say anyone won on it though. The logo looks stale and boring now - it got less identity. And how many succesful companies have a black person as a symbol? I think black people lost on it too. I don't think the logo portrayed anything degrading, Uncle Ben wore a suit and looked generally formal.

However, I think it's actually racism when white people spots a cartoon'ish figure of someone with another ethnic background and then consider it to be racism.

We had that in Sweden for "Kinapuffar" , "Chinese puffs"

cbc5f167-88b1-4b81-82c5-86207edae49b.png

the asian figure is now removed

I don't think anyone took offense to it other than white people feeling it was wrong to asians. It's becoming to a point where you remove every non-white person from logos - and that's towards racism if anything.

Meanwhile no Swede even cares about "Kalles kaviar", which is also a racial stereotype
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public companies are part of the problem

> when maximum profits is your be-all end-all purpose :haHAA:

You know. I've made several actual twink and WoW threads, but the amount of off-topic comments are way higher than on-topic. I try to report them, you aren't doing anything about the off-topic comments. Each time I'm making threads, I always resist making them, thinking XPOFF doesn't deserve it. But I sometimes get random impulses and try to make this a funnier place despite it.

So now I made actual off-topic threads instead and I got surprised by the Uncle Ben topic because it was the first time people had serious debates about non-WoW matters. It's something positive and I gave out likes to both sides of the argument.

Then you came and locked it with a shitreason. What's the point of an off-topic section if you aren't allowed to discuss non-World of Warcraft stuff? The subject itself was world news and there was no inappropriate behaviour showing in it.

The fact alone that people made a second topic to keep talking just shows that you had literally no reason to lock it and that the thread was still active.

You're just giving me the feeling that I should go back to square one again and just refrain from contributing to the community as it isn't worth the time when you're killing healthy activity for no reason.
 
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@Crystalpall look man I aint here to talk about female problems but their problems are not really that bad and that is the truth. Society would not be anything if it were not for men.

Also idc what race you are pls stop being offended by everything most annoying thing when you say a view and someone calls you racist
 
...3 people on twitter with a combined 17 followers.

Thats not people. Thats not a mob. Thats just someone looking for a controversy because the revenue model of the online media industry runs on hate clicks...
humans run on hate clicks. feel-good clicks are boring. i have evidence that proves you believe this too.
rice is like 1/3rd of my caloric intake...
ah-ha! but's what your pineapplic intake? (yeah! made up a word, suck it!)
 
feel-good clicks are boring. i have evidence that you believe this too.
o yea, no argument from me. We've completely replaced any actual community and interpersonal relationships in the real world with just the mutual but alienated rage at whatever culture war bullshit is the item of the day. And Im as guilty of biting on that as anyone.

ah-ha! but's what your pineapplic intake?
None. The opinion that might finally get me ostracized from this site is that pineapple is disgusting
 
The opinion that might finally get me ostracized from this site is that pineapple is disgusting

did you know those fuckers are fighting back by trying to digest you while you digest them? at least that's the impression i got from some bullshit i read on the internet, so.... must be 100% accurate.
 
@Crystalpall look man I aint here to talk about female problems but their problems are not really that bad and that is the truth. Society would not be anything if it were not for men.

Also idc what race you are pls stop being offended by everything most annoying thing when you say a view and someone calls you racist

I don't think I can agree with anything you said here. I won't even try arguing.
 
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