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Comment by hayleox | Hacker News Reader

From the essay: "Consumers have emphatically rejected brands that ventured too far into wokeness. The Bud Light brand may have been permanently damaged by it."

What Bud Light did was hire an influencer to promote their product in an Instagram video (and then of course they later backtracked). The only thing "woke" about the video was that the influencer was a trans woman.

If Paul Graham would like to elaborate on this passage meant I welcome it, but my read was that supporting a trans woman falls under his definition of "wokeness".

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Indeed. I mean, an article on censorious "priggishness" could have easily picked outrage mobs boycotting brands over deeming a trans person worthy of association as evidence that the "woke" people didn't have a monopoly on self righteousness and censoriousness.

Instead, he effectively endorsed the position that trans people were "woke" simply for existing and the consumers cancelling them had a point.

Better than endorsing Dylan Mulvaney's regressive and misogynistic "Days of Girlhood" act. A boycott was the right thing to do.

I read this less as "the Bud Light campaign was morally wrong because it was woke" and more as "the Bud Light campaign went disastrously badly for its brand and sales because it was woke". I have heard people call it "the gay beer", which is a pretty bad branding change when double-digit percentages of your (former) drinkers are homophobic and you sponsor NASCAR.

One of my personal beliefs is that paedophiles who never act on their inclinations and instead seek treatment are doing the right thing, but I sure as hell wouldn't market a beer using that belief.

How was the campaign "woke" unless you define "trans people exist and should be supported" as woke? If Graham dislikes prigs, shouldn't he be criticizing the censorious social conservatives that led the boycott?

I define "trying to market a beer that's commonly drunk by Republicans using a trans influencer" as woke because it's:

A) ineffective at marketing the beer, because it prioritises a social justice objective instead (making it a political stance)

B) ineffective at changing any Bud drinker's mind on trans people, because it prioritises aggressive performance (making it woke)

The problem is not "oh, trans people exist, that's so woke"; it's doing activism in a way that harms both your company, because your brand is now "the gay beer", and trans people, who have to put up with a public debate about the existence of Dylan Mulvaney as well as a damaging boycott that scares marketing departments and moves the Overton window rightward.

What social justice objective is being prioritized? By whom? Go watch the actual video — it's a flat joke about her not knowing what March Madness is but drinking Bud Lights anyway. It's completely unremarkable influencer #spon content. Her being trans isn't even mentioned.

The goal was not to change Bud drinkers' opinions. It was to expand the market for Bud Light to new demographics (women, younger people). We know this is true because the exec who spearheaded the overall campaign said as much before the boycott, and Mulvaney was just a small part of the strategy. I don't think most Bud drinkers were expected to even know about the campaign, since it wasn't directed at them in any way, and A-B chose one of the least confrontational trans influencers possible.

I'm not defending A-B here -- they ended up throwing Mulvaney and everyone involved under the bus in a shamefully craven display -- but I believe them when they say they hadn't actually intended to get involved in the culture war.

> B) ineffective at changing any Bud drinker's mind on trans people, because it prioritises aggressive performance (making it woke)

Really? Like seriously, this is your argument? I just watched the commercial and it was the most bland safe commercial possible.

The act of taking a beer with a strong existing brand that's popular among a mixed demographic that skews slightly Republican, and then marketing it with a "bland safe commercial" that intentionally uses a transwoman as the ambassador for said brand, is pure wishful thinking.

Okay, yes, you and I agree that we're not offended by the ad and it's not going to change our beer-drinking habits. We are not the only people on this earth.

The performance and aggression come from this silly dance where I say "if it caused impactful boycotts against the brand and made marketing departments afraid of using transpeople in ads, then despite my opinions it was neither bland nor safe" and then you say "but my opinion is that it should have been bland and safe". We don't live in that world. We should not stick our heads in the sand and pretend we live in that world, nor should we lash out at the world for failing us. We should learn from the failure of the campaign to achieve either commercial or activist success.

Is "please don't do activism when it's obviously going to be counterproductive" so ridiculous to you?

The promotion was not activism!

Jim Beam did an an actual ad campaign with Ru Paul's Drag Race at the same time. Travis Tritt (who supported the Bud Light boycott) tried to get people to go after them, too. It went nowhere, as had most attempts to protest LGBT marketing. Even Bud Light had done much more overt pro-LGBT campaigns before. The difference was that Ben Shapiro had Mulvaney in the crosshairs and A-B fumbled the response.

Again, the question isn't whether the ad campaign was good, but what it says about Graham's definition of "woke".

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