I understand why a domestic beer company would sympathize with the far right-- that's pretty much their customer base. But why are companies like Starbucks and Target doing it? Doesn't seem like a smart financial move.
If being normal seems far-right to you, then you just might be far-left. The vast majority of normal conservatives, which is everyone from far-right to center-left, do not want sexual immorality constantly shoved down their throats. It's an extremely tiny percentage of the population who think that's a good idea. Like any company, 100% of Starbucks' activity should be to maximize shareholder profit.
“Normal” people aren’t bigots who go around saying that companies who dare to acknowledge the basic fact gay or trans people exist in the world, as ‘Sexual immortality getting shoved down our throats’.
It’s hateful religious crap like you are spreading right now that gets shoved down our throats more than anything else, that’s the real bullshit right there.
lots of people here seem to be indicating that target and starbucks are doing this because it's not profitable to do rainbow capitalism. it still is, as much as rainbow capitalism is kinda revolting conceptually. nothing has changed except the following:
far right nazis, emboldened by the increasing political power of nazi homophobes like trump, desantis, and like 60% of gerrymandered state legislatures, are sending death threats to places that put up pride decorations and products. they're also showing up to harass and scream at employees about it.
it's terrorism. this is what conservatives do. and starbucks and target are full of cowards for letting terrorists dictate their behaviours.
quickly editing in sources since some homophobe in other replies tried to lie about it:
but rainbow capitalism still works for profit. the reason they're backing away is terrorist threats from the far right, and harassment of staff and management. they're literally scared that the death threats they get over this stuff is going to result in a mass shooting. and thanks to accelerationists in US nazi politics, it realistically eventually will
that's no excuse to cave to these people. but that's the reason it's happening.
Oh please companies don't give a flying fuck if their employees suffer, the only logical explanation for companies stopping being on board with the LGBTQ crowd is that the profits aren't big enough to be worth the trouble of supporting them.
Honestly, even as a bi trans person, I’m horribly concerned and quite mad at how exponentially shamelessly sexualized LGBT (especially Q) merch has gotten over the years. It just feels tacky and like it wants to paint all LGBT people as hypersexual fetishist nymphomaniacs.
Do you think Starbucks is selling dildos? We're talking about rainbow coffee cups. I'd like to see a coffee cup that paints an entire group of people as "hypersexual fetishist nymphomaniacs"
Oh, so we’re gatekeeping which bi trans people get to be LGBT people just because they don’t agree with everything the mainstream does? I thought we agreed that it wasn’t an okay thing to do.
I'm a few weeks late in replying to your comment, but we didn't have moderation when you posted this. A few of us have just started moderating, literally today, so please give us a bit to catch up.
Please check out the stickied thread about what kind of rules and guidelines you would like to see, if you haven't already. We don't have those guidelines to work with yet, but blatant bigotry, trolling, and spamming are our first targets while we work out the details.
It's about time. Corporations are finally starting to realize the vast majority of their customers are not onboard with the increasingly radical leftist agenda. Go woke and go broke.
Friend, my account is less than 24 hours old has has karma of -236 (probably lower by the time I finish writing this) almost entirely due to this thread. So let's talk about echo chambers, yours and mine.
Everyone (from across the political spectrum) knows reddit's r/politics abhors balance and neutrality in favor of extreme far-leftist idiocy. It's widely assumed that's due to the mods, so I figured there's no way that bizarre phenomenon could be repeated on another platform. Well I don't think it can be explained by moderation in the present thread. I think it's clearly that all the children from r/politics flocked here, creating a self-manifesting filter-bubble. It's a pretty interesting phenomenon, really. I don't think I've ever seen something like that manifest anywhere else.
Ideally, if this is m/politics, it should be well-balanced, encompassing perspectives from all sides, and always upvoting the level-headed conservative viewpoints. In this day and age, when the Left has gone so off-the-deep-end crazy, embracing evils such as homosex and baby slaughter, a balanced m/politics would downvote all extremist viewpoints, which means basically anything from the Left these days.
I commented on this article shortly after joining, when there were very few other comments on the article, with fingers crossed that all of the naive children from r/politics wouldn't be here en masse. Clearly I was wrong. But as you grow up, and become more conservative (like we all do with life experience), you'll learn that almost every adult is essentially conservative, and striving to become more mature (ie more conservative and traditional) as we age. Obviously some people fail at that goal, and yes there are some 80yo stoners out there who act like teenagers, but by and large the filter-bubble of normal adults is extraordinarily huge.
Social movements like equality and abortion are extremely popular, both amongst the voting population and the public in general.
Why do you think massive corporations jump on this stuff? They want the free PR so they can make more money! Corporations do not have political ideologies unless they are privately held and run by individuals--any company that has public investment is legally obligated to increase profits above all else.
Look up "rainbow capitalism" and you'll realize that the actual activists, the real leftists you are so scared of, don't like what they see any more than you do, but because of the empty slogans and meaningless marketing gestures. Because it's not real progress!
Why do you think massive corporations jump on this stuff? They want the free PR so they can make more money! Corporations do not have political ideologies unless they are privately held and run by individuals--any company that has public investment is legally obligated to increase profits above all else.
Just a minor point here... corporations absolutely do have political ideologies. those ideologies are dictated, as you mentioned, by seeking profit. Which is why they interfere in politics so much- it's less expensive for them to create a favorable regulatory frame work in place than it is to actually not be assholes. For example, one of the things that directly lead to trump's victory in 2016, was an episode where the Koch plant in Corpus Christi, TX got dinged by the EPA back around 2000. (technically for not reporting benzene leaks. unofficially, they removed monitoring equipment and were letting that shit go. because the EPA relies on self reporting... they actually have no proof at all that they were leaking shitloads of benzene.)
this lead the Koch brothers to back republicans basically everywhere, including Trump, where some of the stuff he actually did... involved deregulation of environmental protections. Yeah. Because not leaking freaking toxic pollution into the air, directly harming residents in the area is too expensive and too burdensome.
edit to add: on the other end of the spectrum, you have companies taht are definitely afraid of things like climate change (and whose business won't be adversely impacted by those regulations) absolutely lobbying for things to reduce the impact of climate change. (or, because their business is predicated on building solar or windmills, and such like.)