Just some additional advertising for todays boycott.
Retailers don’t give a shit about nobody buying anything on a particular day, if they’re all back the next.
This is a stupid idea.
I mean the point of it isn’t to deprive retailers of one day of profits altogether, it’s to show how much a sustained refusal to shop would hurt them. Whether or not it’s effective depends on how many people participate.
I don’t think it’s going to be effective, but I’m not going to be the reason it’s not. I can pick up my dish soap tomorrow
I mean the point of it isn’t to deprive retailers of one day of profits altogether, it’s to show how much a sustained refusal to shop would hurt them. Whether or not it’s effective depends on how many people participate.
yeah but its not a question of whether or not it would hurt them, the answer is yes, you cant make money if people don’t buy shit.
Weird little story, but i’ve never seen a company do any sort of accounting for this kind of problem.
Its not a bad idea on its face. A sudden and sizeable shift in public economic activity on a given day would be meaningful if it could be invoked to put on pressure at strategic moments.
But “collective inaction” isn’t enough. I might have taken this more seriously if they were paired with pickets. Perhaps for a reason more explicit than “We’re generically unhappy!” Or if they came from someone I actually know, rather than a graphic plastered on my computer screen.
These seem like political action cosplay. If you’re not in a movement and you’re not using this time to coordinate further actions… hell, you’re not even asking where this meme came from or who authored it… then what are you doing? How is this different than Valentine’s Day, where you see a bunch of memes that tell you to go out and spend extra money? Who are you sticking it to?
That’s the other reason I dislike this idea, “we’re generically unhappy” isn’t really going to change hearts and minds.
You need a specific, actionable goal if you want something to actually change.
yet another classic misdirection from doing things politically to improve the political environment. And yet we wonder why everything sucks so much.
Go improve the political climate.
If your protest is convenient it’s a shitty protest. I’m sorry, but this is a shitty protest.
That an corporations don’t care about their daily numbers unless they are trending. Like, people won’t buy stuff today, so they will just go buy the stuff tomorrow. Monthly and quarterly profits took no hit.
Businesses tend to notice trends during economic upswings/downturns. To date, consumer spending has been steadily rising in no small part thanks to upward pressure on wages and inflationary pressure on prices. If we’re entering a recessionary spiral, you won’t need to have a “No Spending Day”. People will reflexively cut their spending when they lose their income.
Something like this might have more teeth if it was paired with protest marches or sit-ins or other actions intended to signal that prices had run away from incomes. But that doesn’t seem to be the message this meme is sending. Nobody is getting encouraged to stand outside a Target and wave a big sign that says “Stop Bird Flu! Make Eggs Cheap Again!” or picketing an Amazon Warehouse over low wages and long hours.
Fully agree. While I wholeheartedly support the intent of this protest, it is entirely performative for the sake of the participants, not for the sake of actually affecting change.
I disagree with both the premise and the conclusion. Even if skipping corporate stuff for a day is only a mild inconvenience, that is still obviously not convenient. Second, there’s no reason to suspect convenience should strongly impact effectiveness. How much did it inconvenience anyone to boycott South Africa in the 80s?
Maximizing effectiveness for unit of effort is smart. And when a tiny change in share price can make a big difference in CEO compensation, we’d be complete masochists not to use that in our favor. But also even if you’re into maximizing pain, if we wanna talk about permanently going after these corporations then it’s gotta start somewhere. And it’s best to start with getting people to do what’s easy.
This does literally nothing unless you make it a consistent thing.
Ok. Make it a consistent thing then. Starting today.
I might agree if I believed there was any viable impact here, but even 1mil multiplied by zero is still zero.
This can have an effect in exactly two ways:
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retailers lose a bit of profit because they cannot optimize their staffing for this one day. They might be a little less profitable because they have one person at work who is not needed, for example. They might also get mad customers the next day when everybody goes back shopping and they haven’t prepared for it. Similarly, they might have to throw away a few fresh products and not have them in stock later.
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if (and only if) people buy the stuff they need somewhere else instead. If this is about grocery shopping, well, you need groceries at some point. Doesn’t matter much for the retailer when you buy it (apart from 1), as long as you buy it consistently at their place.
I support the protest, but if you want to make an impact, use that day to find alternative places to do your shopping in the future.
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why not boycott all major corporations every day? it does require a bit of work, but the more money you spend locally, the better your local communities will be
That’s just not how our economy works. “Local” business is not making toilet paper from trees they cut down in their backyard.
I’m probably getting downvoted for this but I hate hate hate this “consumption is power” bull shit boycotts. Consumption is NOT power. LABOR is power. If you work at these large companies you have a million times more power and influence by organizing.
Boycott today if it makes you feel good. But it’s so incredibly missing of the point that I have to assume it is purposely missing the point of collective power.
Your power is in your ability to withhold labor. Not withholding consumption for one day that you’ll just buy the next day. Hell, if these planned organized single day boycotts, if they actually had an impact, would be a way to maximize profits to reduce labor requirements for those days. It’s so silly.
Organize your workplace. That is where your power is!
We need maps of what helps, and how much.
No more saying stuff doesn’t work and misses the point. Only pointing to where it is on the map. Better for organizing.
Sorry. If you’re actually asking but I thought I was pretty clear. Labor organizing is where power is. This starts at YOUR workplace. There are plenty of resources and “maps” to get you started but that is often very unique to your location and place of work. There is not a single meme image that I can post. This takes work. The start of that work is looking for labor organizing movements in your area and place of work. If there are no existing unions or labor movements you can contact the AFL-CIO or other organizations in your field.
This takes work. If I could post a meme image like the OP I would. But it doesn’t work that way. You need to be ready to do work. Talking to your coworkers, agitating, etc.
Chris Smalls is your inspiration but we need 1000 more Chris Smalls throughout the country. Not one day of a consumer boycott.
We need maps of what helps, and how much.
political ground campaigning, probably.
Okay, what helps? Standing outside Starbucks, Walmart, amazon warehouses, anywhere non-union, and spend your time trying to convince their workers to join a union. There’s a reason that, when the Nazis took over, “First they came for the Trade Unionists”. Don’t say nothing. Let’s Make More Trade Unionists
Not always possible. In rural areas, Walmart in particular is a mom and pop shop killer. Restaurants maybe, groceries and the like, this is not that universally possible.
Im guessing many folks or at least more than the usual percent on the fediverse do this to some degree. I have seen other comments about it and have done them myself. Its really not to much work to me but its a continuing thing. Regularly thinking about what else you can cut out or if you think you can finally cut out a particular thing. So im not where I would want to be and im past low hanging fruit and it will be slow going forward of where I am not but I will continue.
My wife told her family and all of them are very enthusiastic to join (20 ish people). Unfortunately I still have trouble convincing my family that Trump shouldn’t be allowed to do illegal things
Why tf do I keep seeing posts about boycotts and protests the day they’re happening
Because unfortunately the point of these protests isn’t achieving change, it’s patting themselves on the back for their “positive action” (despite how conveniently non-intrusive said action is their lives and how it requires absolutely zero risk or material sacrifice).
Since the point is to self-congratulate, no reason to wait, I guess.
not sure but I can say this has been floating around for awhile as part of several on the fediverse with multiple dates. Since this is a cartoon they are just putting this up I think as more support than information. Here is a link from newsweek mentioning it a week or so ago and if you type in google feb 28th blackout you will see how many news places picked it up back then https://www.newsweek.com/nationwide-economic-blackout-february-28-list-stores-being-targeted-2030269 im not wild about the media coverage though as they say its all from one org and define it more narrowly than it should.
Because this is the best people who are trying to be singular in deciding a low impact protest for their followers think of and rush to make it happen because instant gratification of a shorter turnaround time feels better with our shorter attention span.
I’m still quite annoyed that this is still thought of as some community action when it is more or less a small group of people getting some of their friends across a large global space to agree that it sounds good and then hope everyone else just agrees and does it with no end goal in sight.
It’s reactionary action without purpose or action.
boycotts dont work but ill support any attempt at it, sure.
Boycotts do work. Starbucks has actually had to admit their sales went down due to the boycott. The problem is that these things take time and doing a boycott for a day or a week doesn’t really impact these corpos bottom line where they actually notice.
It’s different when targeting a specific business as that kind of boycott can continue indefinitely. A boycott against spending any money or going to any business can only last so long and therefore companies will see a downturn and then probably a spike in sales as people buy a bunch of stuff at once that they were planning to buy during the boycott. I agree with the other comments that organizing workplaces to eventually form the base for a real general strike would be a more effective strategy to actually hurt businesses.
It’s totally possible to never shop at any of these big businesses again.
Maybe not possible for everyone, but for many if not most.
again these are initial salvos. they will notice a massive dip for one day. there are other more targeted ones.
Ok, but what is a massive drop in sales? $100K, $1 billion, $1 trillion? Because Bezos makes $26 million per day, so for them to notice we need to create between $100 million to $1 billion loss, but also we can’t just go immediately back to normal afterwards because they are expecting this.
Its going to depend on the company. The main thing is when they present their powerBI graph that the dip is significant. This would be divisional as well because I believe most of amazons profits now come from aws but not 100% on that but they will have a team that talks just about orders from the site I assure you.
Yeah their sales went down, but did it change anything about the way they do business?
Not yet, but I don’t plan on stopping
Cool, just don’t mistake mobilization for actual organizing.
Ill be sure not to.
Exactly. Withholding consumption is not where our collective power is. Withholding Labor is where our collective power is. These “consumer power” movements are so incredibly capitalist brained. Our working class is so brain rotted by capitalism that they can only think of “power in the hand of consumers” which is one of the biggest most obvious lies capitalist tell.
I once read a quote by someone that went roughly like “Voting with your wallet means the ones with the biggest wallets get the most votes” and it has stuck with me ever since.
A single day isn’t going to do shit
Especially if you just shift when you buy something by a day. You still bought it.
it will for the weekly meeting where they go over metrics. its not going to solve all the problems we face. its not boom do this one thing and done. its just a thing for today for those who want to be part of it. obviously most of the whiners will not, at least I assume. maybe they whine and participate I don’t know. likely a mix.
Hahaha this boycott was Dead on arrival
“One day boycott with no terms or conditions, that’ll show em!”
I mean, I’ll still do it because why not? It’s easy (which is part of the issue), but like…this will do nothing.
A one day boycott is a start. It will get people thinking about where and when they buy stuff. And maybe thinking about other things and the possibility of doing them. Like a general strike.
The way I see it, you have to start small before you can go big. Get people used to the idea so when you call for a general strike later, it doesn’t seem totally outlandish.
Then there should be a stronger focus on getting people to organize and unionize in their workplace. Cause a general strike won’t work without a strong organized work force and this kind of action focuses much more on individual action that makes you feel like you’re doing something when you’re really not. I’d rather direct the energy that people have right now towards things that will actually have an impact like providing resources and pushing people to unionize to build the base needed for a general strike.
I think the bad guys are actually making it easier to have an effective strike. The bad guys are cutting employment to the bone and beyond- so it’s way worse for them if even a small percentage of their workforce doesn’t show up, and stuff doesn’t get done
Organizing around denying consumption is the exact opposite of what a general strike would do. This does nothing but make people feel like nothing they do matters because it’s focusing on the exact opposite of what we should be organizing on. We should be organizing around labor.
I can’t tell if these online “consumption power” movements are just a reflection of the complete lack of class consciousness. Or if they are planned distractions that are designed to fail to make people feel powerless. I think it’s a bit of both.
I suppose that’s a decent point. Like I said, I’ll still participate and I’m not trying to be defeatist about it. Let’s see where things go!
You guys buy things every day ?!
As a family. yes. Especially groceries but often enough other things. Thats not important though. The important part is 50% or more (assuming maga won’t participate) of folks that might get something today don’t so that the metrics shows a massive drop in activity for one day. Company metrics easily show stuff. I worked at one that did superbowl ads and you could see the effect of the ad on the site. This is the time the ad ran and this is how soon google searches trended up and this is when visits to the site went up.
I dont have a car, so buy groceries and things in a lot of small trips of what I can carry. Maybe not every day, but at least every other day. Also keeps me active and walking since I like to have a destination / objective to motivate me.
If you buy one giant load from Costco a month, then I can see not needing to go out much but that’s just not possible for me.
Does seem a bit odd to me. I could fairly easily go for weeks where the only thing I buy is from Aldi.
if I was single I could see that but I do like to do more small shopping trips now buying fresh food. I don’t like the fridge being packed and I don’t like to be deciding if something is to old to eat.
Hardly need to go to the shops every day for fresh food though. Potatoes and cabbage last a while without any real change. Rice lasts essentially forever. Most fruits are good for several days at least.
works out best for us if we shop for that days or next days meals. also when I say fresh food I mean more greens, fruits, and such. I don’t really think of grains as fresh food because they last so long. Unfrozen meat to. Again though we want to use it well before bad so we like small amounts for the next few meals.
Cabbage is green
cabbage and potatoes sorta fall into this middle zone for us. Like with rice and flour we have it on hand because it lasts to long but with potatoes and cabbage they last awhile and there is a lot or reasons to buy a lot (when twice as much potatoes is a dollar more). So we tend to buy them for a meal but then we keep in mind with future meals to use up whats left. Because of that we tend to buy them on a really great sale and then make it a point not to buy once we have used them up. Less so with cabbage where usually any leftovers will just bleed into one or two more meals.
I’m not from America and the answer is still no
Hey, did you know that half of all day to day retail spending is done by the economically top 10% of the US population.
These are people who for the most part don’t care about economic hardships of the lower classes and have closer to 65% of the liquid assets.They already under spend for their wealth and likely also won’t care about this. And will spend or not and make no impact.
Not to be negative, but to be realistic.
This is pointless.
Like literally without a point or purpose but to “show those business we mean business” and that isn’t an actual point and they don’t care about a 1 day shopping freeze.The reach on this with it already being the day of the protest is already a major hinderance to any progress hoped to be achieved and then we still don’t have a point.
Honestly we need to be deciding what change we actually want to have occur and start steering the ship that way little action at a time as possible but instead let’s just keep trying to make 1 day events a thing with the shock the wealthy see of us standing together enough to make them see the light of God and turn around and change for us. I’m sure that will eventually work even though it never has.
As someone confortably in that top 10% and unfathomably infinitely outside the billionaire club, I hope you know I’m on your side, and I do care.
Annecdotaly, the majority of my peers are as well.
Our complacency is a huge part of the problem.
But for what it’s worth, we’re increasingly waking up to the fact that we’re also quite fucked by what the billionaires are up to, in the long run.
The top 10% are split right now. Kamala won handedly with the professional managerial class liberals who form a big chunk of that 10%. A lot of them may not care about poor people, though a lot do, but most of them hate Donald Trump and Elon and what they’re doing to their beloved liberal institutions.
The reach is fine. There were many posts on this prior to today, and even my girlfriend found a post on it from tik tok or Instagram, it has spread. This one may not be that big, but if it does make a blip and the news covers it, then people will be more open and familiar with ideas like this or eventually a general strike.
Before unions became more formalized a lot of strikes would start out with a minority of the most militant workers striking, which would inspire others until the majority got on board. There were cynics like you, often paid by management, telling the militants that it was pointless and they wouldn’t accomplish anything, eroding solidarity, and sometimes if they eroded it enough the strike would break. Sometimes though they were able to push past that, strengthen their resolve and solidarity, and get their demands.
So if you don’t think something will work but support the cause, shut up. Your comments serve to erode solidarity and resolve which helps enemies of the cause. For what? So you can say i told you so when it’s done?
I disagree. Your post is long but boils down to “I don’t think it will work.” Im fine if you choose to do it to humor us and would appreciate it.
It boils down to a collection of reasonable thoughts and requests for a good protest and while I am participating through the sheer audacity that I purchase something every day like the people doing shein hauls makes me cringe it does not change my normal economic activity and therefore doesn’t change the companies you hope to take notice bottom line.
It’s about having people actually take some time to have critical thoughts about their actions and the ones we want to do to make changes.
Your dismissal is exactly how this fails to enact change.
It’s “I don’t think it will work immediately, for my specific goals.”
Are you speaking for me?
@[email protected] said:
Your post is long but boils down to “I don’t think it will work.”
My comment was an indication of what I think your post boils down to.
maybe something got lost in the mix but my reply was to Krauerking. I do find mbins threads get hard to follow after awhile though.
I named you specifically, that’s why you got a notification to my comment.
ah. yeah. I see. I did not realize it was a correction. I guess I could write it that way but its like I think your comment is what you think. Feels busy and unnatural.
IMHO we should have it every Friday or Every 28th or something like that.
I wasn’t going to buy anything today anyway, easiest boycott I ever saw.
I think doing a “Whiteout” would be better, where people only shop at pro-humanity or mom n’ pop stores. Costco, Winco, ect. People must spend money for their necessities and to enjoy life, but if that spending can always be directed into the pockets of decent people rather than Bezos, that would be far more impactful than a day of blackout.
In that vein, I think incentive programs to switch people would be ideal. Something like CostCo giving a free membership if you buy an amount of goods equal in value, and a free pizza/rotisserie/hot dog(s) for buying $15 of stuff.
I’ve seen other infographics for this protest encouraging that local business is still OK, not sure why it’s not all of them saying that.
Some are advertising this as anti dei so that would open up some. Like anything there are many grassroots around it so its not a single voice. im on the nothing from me today except for places were its so local I know the owner and their views and how they operate. That being said we are doing nothing today except my wife has a doctors appoinment which ah. we are not going to boycott healthcare as much as we sorta wish we could.
You wish you could boycott healthcare?
yeah its horrible but there is no real choice in it. Sure you can maybe find another doctor or such but in reality you really can’t.
You’ve lost me. Maybe because I’m not American and it wishes differently there.
Why do you want to boycott healthcare?
My partner is a clinical nurse and the local clinic is holding on by the skin of their teeth. Surviving on grant money, and if they go down it’ll be a 30 minute drive to the next town for medical assistance.
our healthcare is privatized shit. you get insurance through work mostly with no choice in what you have and then find a provider that takes it and then they ask for a credit card because the insurance system for billing is hard and they will not work through any issues and charge you but have a maximum out of pocket and if it does not show as coming from insurance it essentially dings you double and oh then they charge 10x the price because the insurance pays 1/10th the price but if they go after you for it they will be looking for the full inflated price and maybe cut you a deal and reduce it 20%. Im sure I missed a whole lot of other horrible things with US healthare but there is so much its hard to keep it all straight. oh every single hospital thing is going to create phone alls and work to get the payment done on the level of doing taxes that is also something you do not really know how bad it is till you do it american style.
