I genuinely don’t understand why the “boycott Starbucks because of Gaza” thing happened. It has no locations in Israel and isn’t on the BDS list. Did TikTokers just get their wires crossed with the union thing (which never called for a general boycott)?
@kate oh they're always a disaster, especially when they're like one-day boycotts. It's a vehicle for poster activists to makes themselves feel morally righteous and like they're doing something when they're not. All it accomplishes is confusing people on what boycotts and "strikes" even are.
@kate i've seen about five different calls for three different general strikes in the past couple months
@kate there are a worrying number of less prolific but still generally embraced boycotts that have taken off even beyond Starbucks. Ive heard the names of so many companies just appended to boycott lists with what seems like no organisational impetus
@kate i think a big part of the problem is the people get wires crossed between “strikes and boycotts are tools to change the behavior of corporations” and a very christian morality “you are a bad person if you buy stuff from this company”
what i can suss out is that it sued the Starbucks worker union specifically over copyright infringement for their logo being in a pro-Palestine post and just kinda indiscriminately snowballed from there?
@kate ive seen an uptick in young people thinking that "week of action" or "strike" means "not posting about anything but palestine for a week". as in, retweeting a cat video or doing a twitch stream is "crossing a line". Concerning!
@kate this is specifically among like, 14 year olds who like minecraft. so the seriousness is inherently questionable. but damn we gotta be setting these kids straight whenever possible
@kate they are attempting to right a legitimate moral injury and fear for people in the only way that they understand the world, which is unfortunately through posts. we gotta figure out a better tagline than
the usual advice of "be involved in your local community" "attend a protest" "do your research and teach people what you find" cause the kids do not know what the fuck that means
@kate it's a little more complicated in that the union put out a statement supporting palestine and starbucks decided to sue them saying they weren't allowed to use the starbucks trademark alongside "terrorism". but the union, afaik, still hasn't called for an official boycott? so it's definitely people jumping the gun
I honestly think basically every totally disorganized boycott/general strike/whatever is just complete wrecker behavior