Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

I mentioned before how corporate hate seems to be a common trend on the internet these days, but at the same time I wonder why these people don't make an effort to properly boycott them. See, people on the Internet love to complain, especially about how people who buy products from certain companies are basically "consoomer soyboys", "normies", or whatever derogatory term anti-capitalists are in the mood for using today. Yet it feels like all these people are doing is screaming at a wall in the hopes that something will happen.

At its very core, the big thing companies listen to more than anything else is money. They don't really take the time to course correct until their bottom line takes a major hit, which brings into question why people don't try to vote with their wallets more often. Some people are just hypocrites, they will talk big about how they hate big business and capitalism… as they prepare to head to Target to buy Battlefield 2042.

Keep in mind that "going after people who buy something made by someone you are against" is not the same thing as a boycott. A boycott, by definition, is you and a group of people abstaining from purchasing a product or group of products by a brand as an act of protest.

Voting with your wallet is honestly more powerful than some people realize. Just saying.

I sort of disagree, there's a high amount of boycotts, calls for boycotts and discussion on it. Boycotts, boycotts, boycotts, boycotts. You can't go far without seeing a call for one.

https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampaigns/boycotts

Effectiveness varies, but I think these talking points about general hatred or companies and how to deal with them is early 2010's. Distrust and use of of money to make a point is now ubiquitous across the political spectrum.

"Voting with your wallet is honestly more powerful than some people realize. Just saying."

Is it? I never seen that working out even once

because boycotts only work when the majority of a consumer base cares about the issue, and asking the average consumer to care enough about an issue to boycott a company is like asking a fly to understand English. Just take a look at gaming.

It's not necessarily about caring. I think people vastly overestimate how many people do research into controversies or otherwise have knowledge about products and companies.

Going off that gaming example, many people's thought process basically begins and ends with "this looks cool." You look at steam and you'll see things like people complaining about a visual novel "just being clicking"

That said, I sort of agree with Gilan about boycotting. It's not a binary.
The most important thing is less boycotts themselves and more talk of doing it. Companies will really bend over backwards for their PR.

You want examples of this tactic working?

Degica with the videogame Eternal Destiny, a game based on cards with anime girls with little to no clothing. In the Steam released platform they censored the game first but after complaints they decided to include an option to activate or deactivate the censorship. The game is still holding positive reviews by their core audience.
Link: https://steamcommunity.com/app/377880/discussions/0/368542844486831182/

Nexon with the videogame Hyper Universe, a MOBA with supposedly busty girls with lewd outfits. There were censorship practices on the design of the girls to cover the lewd parts, fans asked for an option to turn the censorship off and the devs responded "That would defeat the purpose of the censorship". In response, most of the playerbase dropped the game and the servers were shutdown.
Link: https://mmoculture.com/2018/10/hyper-universe-korean-server-of-side-scroll-moba-shutting-down-next-month/

Bandai Namco with the videogame Code Vein, an anime-based Dark Souls. The bath towel outfit. People noticed that in the west it's missing, they complained long enough and then the devs went "Okay, we'll put what you want", both female and male I should add.
Link: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/678960/view/1702854380384458480

As a final note: there is two solutions of boycotting as far as I can see.

Solution A: Support companies with good business practices. This is easier specially when consuming entertaining products. You don't need to keep buying AAA games if you realize that there are a ton more alternatives and with better prices (specially with indies). I've recently seen people skipping that game, Horizon Forbidden West, just to wait and play Elden Ring.

The consumer boycott is powerful, but it doesn't mean it's unstoppable, because the company can decide to ignore the people complaining. Which leads to the other solution.

Solution B. Pirate absolutely everything. This means that people will consume the product without giving money to the company, and they do it for various reasons: because the product is too expensive, because it's more a service rather than a product, because it doesn't enable the telemetry services that invade your computer more than an intruder in Among Us, and because of regional restrictions if you bought the original product.

Until companies decide to give the customers what they want, this will keep going.

Slactivism sucks, that's why

The average consumer not knowing about controversies has already been mentioned but there's also something to be said about gacha and MTX : how can you expect a boycott to go anywhere when one whale is willing to pay what a thousand players would be willing to spend? Even if that person hears about the boycott, sunk cost fallacy means they're likely to ignore it.

And sure, whales are dumb, but at the end of the day those businesses are banking on and cultivating that behavior. As long as you get your name out there, statistically, there will be at least one guy willing to throw several grands your way. When that happens, the copy you didn't buy was already paid for by that whale, so there's little point in entertaining the thought of a boycott.