Transcript
8 panel comic
Panel 1: Yellow guy is working on a laptop in the background. In the foreground is a Brand Manager. Yellow Guy: “Sir, shall I put up our rainbow profile picture?”
Panel 2: Brand Manger snaps his head round and hisses “Cool your jets, Eugene. I’m checking the Profitometer”
Panel 3: Gonna do my best to explain this. We see The Profitometer. A huge machine that whirs and ticks. A digital display at the top of the machine reads “Supporting Pride equals”Beneath this display is a huge gauge with “Max Loss” on the left and “Max profit” on the right. There is a needle that is pointing exactly half way between the two extremes.
Panel 4: Close up on Brand Manager’s face. His teeth are gritted. Sweat trickles down his brow.
Panel 5: Close up on gauge. The needle remains exactly central
Panel 6: Close up on Brand Manager’s eyes. They are concentrating intensely. Also, more sweat.
Panel 7: Close up on the gauge. The needle clicks ONE DEGREE towards profit
Panel 8: Brand Manager screams like a football coach “GO GAY EUGENE”
Say what you wanna say about Rainbow Capitalism, but it’s kinda a mine canary situation. If they don’t do it, it means it’s not profitable, which is a great indicator shit is not going good in public acceptance.
No, it’s still profitable by sales, but not profitable by politically-motivated IRS investigations and anti-trust enforcement and arbitrary tarrifs. I don’t think the consequences of a fully politicized regulatory system has come into view yet.
Go gay Eugene needs to be an emoji
It’s actually an example where 100% soulless corporatism can result in better moral outcomes than a particular ideology. Disney corporate doesn’t give a fuck about queer folk as human beings, but because there was money to be made, they were more likely to side with them than with the DeSantis administration. This is only so long as it’s profitable, but it’s still actually preferable to actively seeking to persecute theys and thems purely out of ideological hatred, even at the expense of tearing down a chunk of the economy.
I worked at a company which did the gay pride logo switch.
I know it doesn’t mean much from people but the ones who pushed changing the logos were from our LGBT employees.
I don’t know, Disney got hit pretty hard on that. Its difficult to believe that was a big enough brand hit to counteract DeSantis’ spite
I do believe companies also support causes when it doesn’t cost them anything and may give intangible benefit.
The same meter is used for every decision …
- show gay pride flag
- show pink ribbon
- show black ribbon
- pizza party Friday
- use more AI
- throw children in boiling oil
- use more solar
- use more green energy
- supporting Nazism
- replace lead paint in offices
- raise worker pay
- apply more OSHA regulations and keep workers safe
- destroy all life everywhere
- bean bag chairs
- ping pong tables in workplace
… and depending on whether or not anything will throw the meter to Maximum profit or Maximum loss, the company, the CEO and the board will get behind anything, as long as it means more money for them.
The second coming of Christ could arrive tomorrow and if supporting Satan to battle against the Son of God meant more profit for the company, the company would throw all their support behind the Dark Prince and they would all hail Satan, regardless of how Christian they might have been beforehand!
Wait wait wait tho! I base all my buying decisions on the frequency of company pizza parties and interdepartmental pingpong tournaments. Don’t disillusion my activism!!!
“Fallen, Fallen, Babylon the Great! Her merchants weep because she is no more.”
This is one thing I wish people who either love or hate companies based on how they outwardly appear to support their pet causes would understand. With very few exceptions, they Really Don’t Care. Like, at all. Your passionate belief that Company X is on your side is probably just another tooth fairy, and so is the cozy feeling that you’re doing The Right Thing by buying toothpaste from them instead of the Evil toothpaste company.
Corporate virtue signalling is very much a flavour of the day kind of thing.
People who think organisations are genuine or caring or give a shit about them at all are deluded. The fanboys are the worst.
But it is hilarious to see people break their keurigs, flush their Gillette razors or burn their Nike’s when the do the most milquetoast progressive commercial. I wish we would get more of that
I think the same also goes for hating corps for not virtue signaling, but saying that on social media is like pissing on The Flag™.
Either way, it all boils down to expecting a Sociopath to genuinelly care about what’s good for anybody but themselves, rather than just claim they love whatever to get something out of others or don’t claim it because it’s not going to lead to them get anything from others.
They really don’t give a shit about you and your feelings unless they get something for themselves from making believe like they care.
Go, Gay Eugene
— Vs. —
Go gay, EugeneA comma makes all the difference
Hey that’s not nice my aunt was in a comma
Far be it from me to be a pedantic asshole but I think the label on the graph should be Net Loss/Profit.
It’d have to be four panels for Loss.
Those are the default meanings - you obviously didn’t read Appendix H.
Look, Appendix H can go fuck itself, I’m not falling for that trick again.
There wasn’t max profit in those labels.
🥁 😁
Unless Max Profit is the name of the person they release to make things rainbow colored, in which case I withdraw my complaint.
Who tf calls his boss “sir”? Not in this industry.
This comic 🤝 The worst of the alt-right ghouls
Hating the pride monthThe comic is about how companies are entirelly performative when they “support” causes.
And my point is that performative support is way better than open, unrepentant hostility.
Companies are also entire performative when they “support” the opposite cause.
As I see it the point of the cartoon is that you can’t trust them either way because they only give a shit about money.
PS: More broadly, changing one’s mind because of “known name/brand” is profoundly idiotic. For example why should anybody change their mind on transexuality because of what J.K. Rolling says?! Better have Principles than have superficial opinions that flop back and forth like a flag on the wind depending on what brands and celebs put out.
We really live in a fucked up society when people let themselves be guided in the Moral space by incredibly superficial branding or statements from famous people - those things are way too important for being influenced by anything other that actual Principles.
I don’t think it’s about hating pride month itself, rather how corporations make meaningless gestures based on profit margins. Example Target pulling LGBTQ+ merch a year or two ago because it being anti-DEI was in fashion. Or how Tesla used to boast being the most inclusive workplace, and now, well, yeah.
It goes to the adage, if someone (in this case, a corporation ) has to tell you they’re a good person… they probably aren’t.
That being true, having corpos doing pride month celebration in their own corporate way doesn’t hurt LGBTQ+ community more than corpos just existing. On the contrary, it helps with normalisation and mainstreamisation. Mocking corpos for doing it, however, hurts the community, because it gives chuds more ammunition. They want for corpos to stop slapping rainbows on everything more than you, and for the reasons you don’t want to know about.
![Brand Manager getting ready for Pride Month [Smooth Dunk]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/abf10137-2fee-4a37-805f-7b849fd33e37.jpeg){kind=link}