Falling down the boycott hole

Many years ago when Radiohead was a new band and Pulp Fiction was still in the movie theaters, my college professor made a simple statement that rocked my world. She said, “every time you purchase a product, you are making a political choice.”

She spent the remainder of the class going through popular products like jeans and chocolate bars and detailed the nefarious corporate behavior that brought those products to market. It was the first time I learned about child labor in making clothes and picking cocoa beans.

The class had a profound effect on me. It made me understand that products don’t just have a monetary cost, but a human cost as well. I kept this lesson to close to me for years. I did my best to avoid products and services that made the world a worse place. Yet, with social media, everything went nova.

The French Revolution of boycotts

I really liked Twitter back in the day. It was my main source of news. I met cool and interesting people. It felt like a party and every once and a while, a celebrity would say hello. It did have a lot of faults, but throughout the years, I built a small following. I used it for years and figured I wouldn’t stop. That is, until Musk bought it.

I do not like Elon Musk. I confess that I was inspired by him and the accomplishments of SpaceX in the mid 2010s, but over time, but my viewpoint grew sour. By the time he bought Twitter, I loathed the man. So following my old college professor’s advice, I deleted my Twitter account. I wish I could say it was easy, but it wasn’t.

After I left Twitter, I found myself on Mastodon. This new community was excited about a possible Twitter collapse and people wanted more. After Twitter, there was a big push to boycott Reddit. Then, Google was next. Facebook was naturally a high priority target as well. Soon Firefox joined the crowd and followed by Windows. And now, WordPress.

People were making political choices, but it felt more like the French Revolution. No company was to be spared. On top of it, the opportunists were writing their articles of the “better choice”. I was exhausted. I avoided products that were doing active harm such as child exploitation and forced labor . These boycotts were about policy disagreements. There had to be a better way.

Seek to understand, and then be understood

In my junior year of college, the college administration hired an amazing new dean. His name was Trey Williams. He was sharp, thoughtful, and quite supportive of the student body.

In his first year, racial tension grew in the college over the cafeteria radio. The radio played over lunch in the one central cafeteria.

I don’t remember the specifics of the radio incident but I believe when hip hop played, some white students turned it down. Some black students enjoyed the music, so they turned it back up. No one talked. It was just action.

The tension grew as people turned the volume up and down like old people silently battling over a thermostat. This happened for a few days until the cafeteria was thick with tension. Some of the black students were upset because they never turned down anyone else’s music. Some of the the white students didn’t want to listen to hip hop every day at lunch.

Everyone turned to Trey to solve the problem. Trey did, but not in the way that anyone expected. He met with each group of students and told them, “seek to understand, then be understood.” He then charged them to work out the solution, otherwise, the radio would go.

They did. It was messy, but at the end of the day, people worked through their discomfort. I think they agreed to rearrange the DJ schedule so that different music was played at lunch but no one would touch the volume. I think some Hip Hop moved to dinner. I can’t remember the specifics, but after the solution, lunch wasn’t so stressful. People got along again.

The key lesson is that change requires communication.

Companies make bad decisions all the time and yes, supporting those choices is a political act. But exercising a boycott without any discussion does a disservice to everyone. Seek to understand why the company is acting in such a way. Reach out to them. Ask for clarity, and then, provide your own. Share with the community then live your values.

Your boycott may mean nothing in the grand scheme, but you are making your intentions known to all the stakeholders. That may do nothing, or it may do everything. The company may shift and those people deciding to be silent in their protest will have you to thank for it. And the world will be better for it.

Note: The cover image was provided by Getty Images through Unsplash. Artist unknown. It is not AI generated as far as I know.