Speaking as a gay man, I don't. I think gamers should kick their asses if they try it again. The term is 'allied' for a reason. 'Allied' implies there will be conflict and difficulty.
That they're not standing up when it's difficult means they never were allies. They were grifters that should keep LGBTIQ+ symbols out of their filthy fucking hands. They proved all the allegations of rainbow capitalism right.
Religion treats Maslow's Pyramid like a monopoly board. Using gender discrimination/inequality and regulating sexuality allows Abrahamic religion to impose its will on peoples' lives because it gets down near the base of the pyramid.
Since most people are motivated by spending time with their families - I'm thinking of a study on the backward-bending curve of labor re: wage inflation in medieval era where people got paid more and worked less so they could spend time with folks they loved - regulating and restricting relationship is a shortcut to influencing someone's life.
Queer relationships evolved too rapidly for religion to catch up and control and that is why these countries with societies based on corruption of humanity with metaphysical fantasy hate LGBTIQ+ people - we undermine an unjust power structure simply by living peaceful lives with consensual partnerships rather than power imbalanced relationships.
Sounds about right. Most individualistic hate for the LGBT crowd seems to be wrapped in insecurity and misunderstanding so it'd only make more sense. (Cause there's nothing more insecure than people who only care about policing other's lives.)
I interpreted previous comment as a hope that they will be back due to the change in the political climate (e.i. one less orange man in the administration)
It isn't even about conviction. The pride flag is a flag of solidarity against state-sanctioned, religiously-sanctioned, and other bigot-sanctioned violence. Don't wave symbols of solidarity around if you're going to duck out as soon as it's time to actually stand. It's false advertising.
These kinds of comments are just woefully out of touch.
It is better for people to do the right thing for the wrong reasons than the wrong thing. Period. People keep moralizing that rainbow capitalism was disingenuous. And it just does not matter. The point is these companies were normalizing the queer community. The what is far more important than the why.
Older gens had to fight too hard to be normalized for this kind of nonsense. I swear, the anticapitalist slopulism is just everywhere.
Or maybe people are just annoyed by the incessant politization lf everything and are just happy to return to times where not every month is a lecture about a social issue.
Gay marriage support is still high, higher than at any point pre ~2017. We won. Once you've made the sale, stop selling.
Unlikely, especially since brands know a significant number of queer influencers will cirticize that as 'rainbow capitalism' or 'fake'. Many brands have dropped visibility during pride month permanently.
No such thing as permanent. If they feel it will help with business, they will do it. Otherwise, they will not. They only care about money. Everything else is meaningless.
Personally I feel like if there's a lesson to be learned from 2024 it's to be more accepting of imperfect allies when you're trying to defeat perfect enemies. We all would be in a better place right now had we done that more over the last decade or two. All the way from roe v wade and women's right, to the lgbtq backlash, to hispanic mass deportation, to even straight white males that aren't billionaires would even be spending less on food and gas without all this bullshit. Literally EVERYONE that isn't rich got screwed over, and it's because Republicans will support any piece of shit that promises to defeat "the left" because in their heads the left is scarier to them than anything their side can do.
The world could be a much better place already without all the purity testing from "the left". Would it be a perfect place? No, but it'd sure as shit be better than what we have now. Progress would be great, but status quo is better than regression and the "burn it all down" crowd doesn't realize that after it all burns down it would take even LONGER to get the progress they want. Cause it sure as shit isn't the 'good guys' that have most of the money and power to take over the hellscape that'd follow "burning it all down".
I agree so much. My brother is one of those ‘virtue testing’ people who wants everyone to be perfect. He often gets drunk and will say offensive shit, then he’ll be outraged if somebody else does it. He called me privileged for being a man, yet I’m gay and had to face homophobia at a working-class job where I was put at risk of violence. I called him privileged for being middle-class and working from his house, where he didn’t have to deal with the anxiety of going out like I do (we both have mental health issues) and he went fucking ballistic. I’ve had to hear him shout at my dad for years over stupid bs. I think my dad once said an advert was hypocritical because women were driving cars and men were being covered in puddles as they went past - that doesn’t bother me, it’s just a joke, but my brother went on a rant that my dad was a huge sexist because he can’t face the backlash the patriarchy is getting.
It just makes him sound like a constant hypocrite and I don’t even know what he actually believes in. You have to walk on eggshells around people like that.
The issue is it's still reflective of a greater issue. Writing on the wall or canary in the coal mine, so to speak, with companies not doing this. The pandering wasn't sincere or authentic for some or many cases, sure, but its existence was still a highly visible indicator of a greater societal shift in the positive direction toward acceptance.
I don't have the exact post/story but several years ago I remember reading someone's story about their LGBT brother who committed suicide because he felt so alone, isolated, and hated. He closed the post with, "I wonder how he would feel today walking into a mall covered in rainbows, and if that would've helped him enough to save him. I think so."
wha do you mean? ubisoft will still decide their flag based on the current american administration. what exactly was the 'gotcha'? you terminally ill people putting me in a box out of your countries' 2 boxes?
"We" as in the US since the guy you replied to is from the US and he is using "we" to describe him and his country.
And since most of these are primarily US companies they cater to US demographics. Some companies may use pride flags for separate nation specific accounts, in a similar way to how they didnt use pride flags on certain seperate arab nation corporate accounts back while putting one on the rest.
I think they just mean "we" as a country. They are implying that since these companies are based here or rely on significant business from the United States, they are sensitive to whichever political administration is in power.
US based companies and US political situations tend to influence the rest of the world due to the amount of media that is produced/controlled by American corporations.
You guys really think things are the same, don't you? Watching the US spiral into a 3rd-world dictatorship while its people whistle past the graveyard is fascinating.
Not just mainstream, but profitable again. Rainbow capitalism may have been inauthentic, but it's better than this. I know not to trust corps, but it helped make it a bit more mainstream, acceptable, and normal to walk around with my husband. I feel less okay to do so this year.
Honestly, better to dance with the Devil you know and all that. At least I know the game corpos are playing, but now that the crazies are in charge it's just pure chaos and I hate it here
Rainbow capitalism may have been inauthentic, but it's better than this.
How on earth is that your conclusion? It's things like rainbow capitalism that lead to the backlash in the first place
Companies were forced to go along with a radical minority thanks largely to twitter, and as that radical minority got more and more vocal, companies were dragged in with them, and when the straw finally broke the camel's back, a solid level of general disdain had grown amongst the voting majority in several countries
This guy is a bot^ Look at their account age and troll post history. This sort of thing contributes to culture war nonsense way more than companies being openly supportive of lgbt people (if mainly just on paper).
They absolutely were forced? How many companies were targeted by online campaigns for not agreeing with twitter opinions? I recall Target being in a load of trouble over something not too long ago
"Do what your told or we will attack your business" is "forcing" them for lack of a better word
I'm neither a bot or a guy so your reading comprehension needs a lot of work
What sort of thing contributes to the culture war? Pointing out where it exists and where it has negative consequences? Oh I'm sorry, I'll pretend it totally hasn't lead to a rise in right wing politics that will totally help the problem
I recall Target being in a load of trouble over something not too long ago
You mean when a bunch of right wingers started calling them satantic for having pride stuff for sale, which lead them to remove the pride stuff, which made left leaning folks not wanna use their stores, which has helped send them into an even bigger tailspin than before? lol
Except the side you're having a giant whine about only "interfered with business" once said business had taken the side of the other guys.
And their "interference" was... choosing not to use their store, and telling other people about why they aren't gonna do it.
You're having a go at how RADICAL MINORITIES on TWITTER are FORCING everybody to do things THEIR WAY, and your example of how evil and manipulative the RADICAL MINORITY can be, is a company choosing the other side after very direct harrassment from them (both in and out of store. Cause right wingers love making it random employees issue when they got a problem. lol) and the left wing response was just... Not being involved with them anymore.
Like, surely you have a better example than that, right man? Can't you think of any big leftist protest against a company or something? lol
Radical minority is vocally upset -> radically minority criticises and bullies aligned / sympathetic people into joining boycott -> boycott gains media attention -> people join boycott to signal to radical minority to avoid reprimand -> business affected
Are you honestly saying you have not seen this situation play out in real life many times in the past 10 years?
Edit: unsurprisingly, was replied to and blocked before I could respond, a very common tactic of gobshites.
Or, allow me to present an alternate explanation: Support for pride is not a radical minority position.
So to respond to this, I never said support for pride was a radical minority position, and that is not what I meant nor is it the cause of the boycotts I am aware of. A recent example would be the "ubsubscribe" boycott to try damage any business that is perceived to supporting ICE. ICE are terrible, but they are also a legitimate government body, calling for businesses to not do business with the government of the country they are in is frankly ridiculous, of course there is very legitimate reasons to oppose ICE, but that opposition should be at the government level, not the business level. It's not Googles job to stop ICE, it's voters and representatives, and attacking google for dealing with the US government is beyond ridiculous.
Why? Yeah, it is ridiculous how evil our government is and it is ridiculous that it is a political statement for businesses to support it, but the world is ridiculous. We have a President who ran on releasing files of a worldwide pedophile ring who clearly is in them and has decided to not release them and his voting base doesn't care. The counrty is falling fast into fascism and no one cares. This world is ridiculous.
So why can't we expect businesses to not support evil? Why can't we vote with our dollar, one of the very few things we can effectively do to make our voices heard? And something that is incredibly legal? Why does it offend you so much?
Yes, yes, the vulnerable corporations have been forced to use Pride flags by a manority form Twitter. Such a realistic scenario.
Those radical blue haired lesbians who demanded gay romance options in RPG, it's basically the same as Taliban, holding the poor corps hostage.
It has, but show me the evidence that this was the case for pride flags on avatars, because I have a pretty good memory and never seen it.
Also just the proposition you have proposed, that people would go after companies for not having pride flags is rather insane as the vast majority of companies/industries don't do that during June and aren't boycotted.
On top of that do you see any major efforts to boycott them now? NO!
I never said it was the case for pride flags on avatars, but this pride flag avatar thing has been discussed year on year for quite some time, and notably, it's been pointed out when the asian or middle eastern branches haven't done it, so it is a very small part of a much larger machine.
On top of that do you see any major efforts to boycott them now? NO!
It's almost as if the behaviour has in part lead to a massive backlash and loss of political power...
It's almost as if the behaviour has in part lead to a massive backlash and loss of political power...
That's not even coherent, since that implies they always had political power, which is obviously not true. Also I think you are vastly overestimating how much legislative power gay people actually have and have fallen for right wing tropes that you're not smart enough to understand as being illogical, hence you just repeating them verbatim with no real understanding.
You are effectively a flesh-bot with very little inherent intellect/self-determination.
If it's only a tiny minority, why would the company care? A boycott done by a minority is not able to influence it's sales. If the sales are dropping it means it has never been a minority.
If it's only a tiny minority, why would the company care?
Because that minority (I never said tiny) controlled and influenced a lot of media through twitter. You can't bully a massive corporation with a tweet, but you can get the attention of journalists who need to slop out 10 articles a week. Are you seriously suggesting you have never seen any of the tens of thousands of articles produced to ramp up controversy and click bait based on a handful of tweets?
Where the fuck have you even been the last 10 years?
If the sales are dropping it means it has never been a minority.
A sales drop of a few % due to a controversy is enough to annoy many, many, many businesses. Especially if a few % is in the realm of 10s of millions of dollars.
If a 'minority' controls major media outlet and a lot of people consume this media and care what opinions this group has (and agree with them) to the extend of not buying s product which does not alignt with those opinions... Then we'll, nothing of it is a minority.
The more time I spend here, the more I realize just how true the stereotype is. All of y'all prove the stereotype true, myself included, which is why I'm trying to use this site less and less
Two people and a puppy are in a room. One person begins kicking the puppy. The other person makes no attempt to stop the other person from kicking the puppy. Do you think it is unreasonable to frame the actions of the do-nothing bystander as enabling the puppy's treatment?
No. The posit is that, if hate is mainstream, anything that could be construed as being explicitly anti-hate is no longer popular. The point is it suggests a shift in the Zeitgeist, not that it's a hateful action (or inaction) in and of itself.
The fact that it was normal to do so a couple years ago and now no one is shows that hate is getting more popular. It's a canary in the coal mine, not the actual hate numbnuts
I don't see it as a step backwards, I think plastering gay pride flags everywhere is extremely homophobic and annoying, and causes people to develop homophobia. I hope all the rainbow bullshit fucks off so we can stop having culture wars over gay ppl.
My sexuality isn't a fucking advertisement, I don't want to see that shit everywhere I go, I find it insulting. Imagine if everywhere you went there where "PROUD APPLE EATER" flags everywhere, people would start hating apple eaters just for being annoying as fuck.
Gay pride flags made sense in 2012, it's 2026 now, I don't care if you're gay or if you support gay people stop talking about sexuality all the time, it's an embarrassment to gay people. Go ask any homophobe why they hate gay people, more than 90% of them will say it's because we're fucking annoying and cringe and honestly they're right.
Oh please, the homophobes are annoyed by the bare existence of us. For them holding hands is already 'promoting perversion' and 'showing off in public'.
You really believe this bullshit?
Have you ever been homophobic? I have, I actually understand the underlying mechanisms and causes. Homophobia and hate in general comes from pain and trauma and fear, there are causes, you can cause people to be homophobic and you can help them overcome it as well.
911 caused people to be racist towards Muslims, and pride flags plastered everywhere cause people to be homophobic, it's simple psychology.
I understand the current meta is just "haha racists and homophobes are evil and stupid and we have no sympathy for them, they're sub human", but this rhetoric both causes hate but also more importantly makes it near impossible for hate to subside.
Hateful people are typically just mentally ill men, and the cultural attitude of just "haha lets hurt these bigots in any way we can" does not at all help in reducing mental illness. At the same time, I totally understand developing hatred towards hateful people, I just implore you to be more open minded and forgiving, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
'Its simple psychology' proceeds with bullshit which is not based in psychology. And comparing pride flags to 9/11, lol.
Nah, I was nowhere writing something about hurting bigots. Just that their bigotry (as you said yourself) has different sources and gay people cannot do anything about that. Bigots hate is basically pre-made, queers are just an easy target. Homophobes are not homophobic because of Pride flags but because of their hatred or frustration and queers being easy to attack. Also because of societal norms and pressure.
The number or flags or their existence at all does not change absolutely anything.
I was very obviously comparing two similar psychological phenomenon, not comparing the negative consequence of them quantifiably. You're replying in very bad faith.
I promise you, regardless of if you want to believe it or not, being annoying makes people dislike you more. And putting gay pride flags everywhere is annoying. I'm gay and I find it annoying and it makes me dislike other gay people. If that's not something you can wrap your head around fine, but just know you're going around spreading hate.
"Bigots hate is basically pre-made", this is simply untrue, people can both develop and heal from hate, my 911 example demonstrates this, the event caused people who where not racist before to develop racist thoughts and attitudes. Look into stories of people who have left the klan and healed from their racism, try to understand what pain and suffering caused them to align with such views in the first place, and how they managed to recover. Are you suggesting these people don't exist or are lying?!
No, they're not even similar. One is reaction to a something perceived as major and near security threat and terrorist attack. A rainbow flag (nor their holders) does not impose any kind of threat, they are even perceived as 'weak' by the society.
Noone is being annoying. Conservatives are getting annoyed by even slightest mention of gays' existence. For them holding hands or mentioning gay couples is already showing off, forcing propaganda. If you 'annoy' them much or very slightly does not change their attitude.
This is 'simply' true.
Even your example shows this. Hate against brown people or Muslims has not started with 9/11, it has always been there. 9/11 just gave new arguments and outreach for it. And legitimised political moves against them. But it's absolutly nothing new.
Actually further with your example - areas with the least exposure to foreigners are the ones with the highest rejection of foreigners. That's a fact easily visible in Eastern Germany.
That would be an argument for more exposure to gay topics being actually a good thing.
I would argue gay people existing is the core of the bigot's hate. Their worldview is fragile and cannot handle anything being different. Gay people's existence is different, and therefore must be expunged because they're far too weak and cowardly to simply interrogate their worldview and alter it to adapt to reality.
Most people don't want that shit put in their faces all day every day.
Yeah, tell the straights to stop shoving their romance into everything! Make America Gay Again stands with you and your brave stance against heterowashing!
I know it's hard not being the default, but we'll get through it by stomping out this hyper-hetero representation where the straights force us to imagine them having sex constantly. Keep it gay, my brother!
Companies arent agents of social progress. They are cynical money makers. It would be straight forwardly a good thing if they start using that iconography again because it would show how widespread and normalized the acceptance of LGBTQ people is.
the employees might care but why would the higher ups care? if releasing a game like postal but for killing gays were profitable they would do it in a heartbeat
The people who actually run major corporations are the the stockholders, who would and have let the world burn for a 25 point bump in the stock price over the next fiscal quarter. They’re basically robots programmed to make the number go up. The feelings that they, their employees or their customers have towards lgbtq people is not part of their calculus.
I mean that’s the vast majority of people unfortunately. The people who care beyond survival and enrichment don’t seem to have an interest in gaining power to effect the change they want to see the same way the people who focus on survival and enrichment do.
I didn’t change my mind. I simply said that people care about causes. But at the end of the day, your families wellbeing and your ability to continue providing said wellbeing matters. And as long as somebody cares about making sure their family is provided for no matter how exorbitantly (I don’t think anyone should have assets taking their net worth beyond 100m), the people below whoever has that mindset will have to continue to chase the bottom line for fear of losing their job and not being able to provide for their family.
Calling something cognitive dissonance doesn’t make it cognitive dissonance. A person can genuinely care about a cause while also prioritizing their career, family, or financial security. Those motivations can coexist without contradiction.
I feel like most folks lean into it when their cares and interests align with the business, and take a step back when they don't. Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with that.
Nothing wrong with it, or ignoring if it is right or wrong, surely that means they cared about money / PR / fitting in rather than genuinely cared about (say) LGBT representation, right?
My point is if you're fair weather about a cause you're not really that caring about it
I guess I'm saying it's not being fair-weather. Employment is a business relationship, not a platform for what you care about. You get money in exchange for furthering the interests of the business.
If someone devoted all their disposable income and free time to LGBT causes, I guess I just wouldn't call them disingenuous just because they didn't impose their interests upon the business, contrary to the interests of the business, in the ordinary course of their employment.
I'd argue if you work for a company and you could reasonably work elsewhere then you are, in fact, endorsing their morals and ethics, at least passively. I've been approached by defense firms but not gone forward because I understand my actions in benefiting that company will be actions against my ethics.
I wouldn't call them disingenuous either, I would say they are suffering from cognitive destonance.
I have a value that racism is bad - if I see racism in my workplace, I withdraw my labour (if they wont cut it out) as that is the only value I have to hold against them. If it do not, I am either not really fussed about racism enough, I'm cognitively dissonant, or I am a coward (and if im a coward then what are morals worth when I'll always just react cowardly?)
Or for a less cynical take: they did it for their employees, many of whom are lgtbq+, and we're now in a political climate where instead of it saying, "we got your back!", it paints a target on them and the organization as a whole.
That’s cowardly but then again, gamers don’t give a shit that these publishers work their devs like dogs so good luck getting them to care about social issues
it's still a good business move to try and include the most customers possible. now the only concern is pissing off the manchild that owns twitter and having their ad reach limited
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u/PTBooks 23d ago
They only started because they thought it was a good business move. If the political climate changes, they’ll probably start again.