Why "Get Woke, Go Broke" Never Succeeded

[End]

I had discovered this a few days ago and then this dude drops a vid today that goes over everything I discovered after I first laid eyes on that post he quotes almost verbatim:



I don't know how much longer that vid will be allowed to stay up so watch/download it while you can. If you were scratching your head as to how the hell these woke companies weren't crashing and burning and why every other company on the planet seems to be getting super woke well, here's the definitive answer. 10 trillion dollars under the command of a single individual with a hard-on for "Social Justice" trumps market forces. Who could have guessed? Why does he have such a raging boner the size, lust, and longing of which words fail to encapsulate for the Death Cult?

The end of the video hints at it and I can't wait for him to cut it but suffice it to say the PTB were really sweating when it looked like Left and Right were about to join common cause and go after the fat cat motherfuckers directly. They needed a big distraction, something that would act as an effective wedge to keep the two sides at each other's throats. Wokeism/The Death Cult is that wedge/distraction.

Spread this gospel to all to your friends and family folks. Tell them of the truth!

[Kalinoche buenanoche]

Maybe the only thing that can make markets free again (?) is the fall of the internet

[timber]

I wondered for years, when BlackRock would finally make an appearance, on the16t.

[Teslobo]

After looking into it critically, I think this is very far from a silver-bullet answer to the question of why many companies sprung for a social-justice angle that backfired.

For one, the video asserts that these business decisions make "no sense" which I think is a really bold and wrong claim to make? They look to me like any other trend-chasing attempt by companies that isn't tasteful or adequately researched? It makes perfect business sense... within the limited scope of their perception of what consumers want. Look at NFTs for an example of pretty much exactly the same thing from the other side of the fence - nobody wants it and the pursuit of it is costing them dearly, but they're still pushing for it because they saw an NFT sell for $60m so they have to get on that gravy train.

Secondly, regarding ESG scores, the attempt to frame it as a woke score is just kind of... wrong? Many of the agencies that supply ESG ratings only use equality and diversity insofar as hiring policies are concerned. For many such agencies, the "S" part of ESG pertains to general business ethics and not violating human rights - putting out performative products and media to appease the "woke" does not factor into any of the ESG criteria I have seen. I don't doubt it might exist for some agency somewhere, but they will be the outlier when looking across a scoreboard.

Additionally, many agencies have implemented an ESGC score, the "C" standing for controversy. Whenever a company does something which creates public backlash, this can lower their ESGC score pretty drastically, e.g the BP oil spill (the spill itself doesn't impact the E score because ESG reviews policies, and "creating an oil spill" isn't an express policy, so these two don't stack like you may think). In this sense it is actually encouraged not to put out things that nobody wants - Gillette took an ESGC hit after their ad aired. The way to game the system in terms of ESG, then, seems to be to keep your head down and don't attract any attention.

So overall, while ESG and blackrock may explain things as far as hiring and internal policies go - it fails to explain media output of companies. I would suggest it is far more likely that they genuinely believe people want these things, but in many cases miss the mark or just do not understand how to do it tastefully. That's corporate brain for you.

Not an actual point and more of an unrelated comment, but black pigeon/felix rex is kind of a joke among political commentary youtubers. A lot of his videos are Baby's First Fallacy and I generally recommend approaching anything he says critically. We see above that he pretty much just saw "social" in ESG and immediately jumped to "omg woke score" - he's a lot more interested in wrapping things back to buzzwords.

[VewyScawwyNawcissist]

Me thonk cwiticawwy

[xerx]

Catholic schools have fired teachers that have done OnlyFans. If a company with a family-friendly brand (like Walt Disney, for instance) wants to fire a spokesman who tweeted the n-word, is that really any different? I feel like there's a bigger discussion being missed here, about brand-name and the social contract (currently in flux and being applied haphazardly) that sustains a consumer-oriented society.

[timber]

Social Credit Score.

We outsource our innate goodness to "the system", and then stop becoming caring by default. Its happened to the chinese citizens, if you follow the YouTuber Winston Sterzel, SerpentZA. He lived there with another YouTuber for ten years and they both married Chinese mainlanders. They now live on the US and make highly critical videos about the CCP and the social credit system that is warping psychology there.

Its not a question of whether going woke will stop, it won't, its not a trend. Investor ESG scores are the same symptom of the underlying issue. There are problems and "they" - corporate brands and social media platforms, have the solutions, if only we all get on board. Its a modern day Puritan movement, but far more insipid because the authority comes from every angle, not just one, or two, organizations. People want to feel good about what they are doing and what they support and are associated with, but that goodness needs to be a measurable metric. Yikes.

[xerx]

I thought that the Dr. Seuss thing, when the company stopped publishing certain controversial books, shined a bright light on people's real attitudes towards freedom of speech.

I believe that it's important to understand the beliefs of previous eras, and I personally don't prefer what happened (not that those books are hard to find on the Internet anyway). But, like any other business, Dr. Seuss does in fact have the freedom to publish whatever books it wants. It also has the freedom to project a certain brand image, which is part of its product.

As of now, grocery stores don't have to sell a certain cereal; a bakery doesn't have to bake a "gay cake" or any product that clashes with the owner's inclination; a newspaper has full editorial freedom; and a podcast or TV talk show has the freedom to select (and deny) certain guests and topics. If all of the aforementioned are fully acceptable to you, then it would be oddly specific to reprimand Dr. Seuss.