Just some additional advertising for todays boycott.
Retailers don't give a shit about nobody buying anything on a particular day, if they're all back the next.
This is a stupid idea.
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Not only that but I haven't seen a single actionable demand by the advertisements for this campaign. It's a hollow, confused threat that simply doesn't make sense.
Ironically I haven't spent money anywhere today but that's just because I spend most of my life trying not to pay giant chain retailers.
If someone wanted this campaign to work they would have united the whole thing under a banner or a brand, declared that this was not the first protest they would be staging, say something like: "this is only a threat, if companies don't do X in 3 months we will organize a week-long blackout. Then if they don't do anything after that week-long blackout we'll do another one for two weeks or a month."
That makes sense. That's negotiation and it's how you demonstrate the power the people hold.
The X should be something policy-based and actionable. It can be a huge sweeping demand but it has to be actionable. It should not be a laundry list of long term demands. Then, when you get that first demand met you can delay action and keep pushing later since you've proven the tactics work.
Compare that to what this protest is doing. It's pretty far-cry.
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Having worked retail sales earlier in my life and working as a developer in e-commerce in later parts, single day drops mean nothing. They're often a statical anomalies, even when there is a "reason" for it. If the business is short on monthly or quarterly goals they can always make up a single day loss with a strategic sale or product marketing & placement.
If we really want to hurt these companies, we need to orgaize larger than a single day of "fuck you". A single day might be good for awareness, but TBH, it's comes across more as virtue signaling and enabling social media bragging "I'm doing my part for TODAY".
All that said, I am doing my part for today, and have been doing my part for quite some time now, and will continue doing my part for the coming months and years.
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That's not true, companies are plenty worried about this sort of thing. Look at how Bud light panicked over the kid rock boycott. If he can do it, anyone can.
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Its not a bad idea on its face. A sudden and sizeable shift in public economic activity on a given day would be meaningful if it could be invoked to put on pressure at strategic moments.
But "collective inaction" isn't enough. I might have taken this more seriously if they were paired with pickets. Perhaps for a reason more explicit than "We're generically unhappy!" Or if they came from someone I actually know, rather than a graphic plastered on my computer screen.
These seem like political action cosplay. If you're not in a movement and you're not using this time to coordinate further actions... hell, you're not even asking where this meme came from or who authored it... then what are you doing? How is this different than Valentine's Day, where you see a bunch of memes that tell you to go out and spend extra money? Who are you sticking it to?
That's the other reason I dislike this idea, "we're generically unhappy" isn't really going to change hearts and minds.
You need a specific, actionable goal if you want something to actually change.
What if my actionable goal is crashing the broken economy that's burning our planet?
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The image fits, a kid throwing a tantrum, cause it’s really all they can do. I mean it’s nice to give the staff a slow day but the corporation and the people on top won’t even notice it
P.s. sabotage costs them more
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If your protest is convenient it's a shitty protest. I'm sorry, but this is a shitty protest.
That an corporations don't care about their daily numbers unless they are trending. Like, people won't buy stuff today, so they will just go buy the stuff tomorrow. Monthly and quarterly profits took no hit.
Businesses tend to notice trends during economic upswings/downturns. To date, consumer spending has been steadily rising in no small part thanks to upward pressure on wages and inflationary pressure on prices. If we're entering a recessionary spiral, you won't need to have a "No Spending Day". People will reflexively cut their spending when they lose their income.
Something like this might have more teeth if it was paired with protest marches or sit-ins or other actions intended to signal that prices had run away from incomes. But that doesn't seem to be the message this meme is sending. Nobody is getting encouraged to stand outside a Target and wave a big sign that says "Stop Bird Flu! Make Eggs Cheap Again!" or picketing an Amazon Warehouse over low wages and long hours.
Fully agree. While I wholeheartedly support the intent of this protest, it is entirely performative for the sake of the participants, not for the sake of actually affecting change.
Honest question, what is an accessible first step for a population that has basically never performed any collective action that isn't performative?
Is standing outside a local government building holding a sign to protest federal policy affecting change?
In my view, at least this one day action has a marginal economic impact. Holding a sign on your lunch break so you can post some pictures to Instagram is way more performative.
But it doesn't have marginal impact. It has zero impact. Whether you spend money on Thursday or Friday, the bottom line is the same. We are starting from the false premise that this has any impact, when the smallest amount of critical thought renders that false immediately.
Yes, get the hell out and stand in front of government offices with signs. Make noise. Be seen. Do anything other than pretending keeping your items in your shopping cart for one additional day has any impact.
That's completely backwards. It costs elected officials and our corporate overlords LITERALLY nothing to ignore your protest. It's bad PR at best. Even then, manipulating news coverage, headlines and soundbites is second nature to these people.
How long would an economic strike have to be for it to have an impact you won't handwave away? There could be prepped food on shelves today that gets thrown out tomorrow. Do it over a weekend and no tickets get sold to a show. Do it for a week and logistics starts getting fucked up.
Standing around and making noise without any other change to your lifestyle or attempting to organize your efforts is completely hollow. Not to mention, infinitely less accessible to people who can't afford the time or don't have the physical ability to attend.
Do it for a week and logistics starts getting fucked up.
Yes, change the entire nature and scope of the protest and it might be impactful, I agree with you.
Do it over a weekend and no tickets get sold to a show.
....do you think people are still primarily buying event tickets from in-person box offices same day?
The point is that it has an impact that you're arbitrarily ignoring. If you scale your sign holding and chanting up to 3 million people in a state capital then it might be impactful as well.
The key here is which of these is a more accessible and reasonable thing to ask people to do as a first action? Is it easier to organize 3 protests of 50,000 people in a month or have 500,000 cut their spending in half for a month?
But this continues to ignore the entire crux of the argument - if you're supposed to give me $100 on Wednesday but don't give it to me until Thursday, by Friday I'm still holding $100. Period. End of discussion.
I don't know why we keep pretending there is more to this. There isn't.
Again, my argument isn't that scale and scope don't exist, it continues to be that any number times zero is still zero. Period. You are being led astray into feeling impactful so as to dissuade you from meaningful impact. This isn't harmless, and this isn't without intention.
When politicians see you gathered outside their offices, you're right, they can absolutely close the blinds and ignore you. But at least they understand you care enough to make a stand and they have to put in the intentional effort to ignore it. When the powers that be see shit like this first off they don't even have to ignore it because it's literally nothing and will resolve itself in the books literally in the same week. They don't see people who care enough to take a stand, they seem people who wanted to participate in a trend.
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Gotta start somewhere with people. The point is that anyone can do this, and it's easy to do, but it isn't really any more difficult to show up to a town hall. And while yes, you and I can (and probably do) take larger, more effective steps, longer boycotts, etc. We need numbers, and that, I think, is the real value of this.
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First I've seen extending this to restaurants. That seems a bit much. Most restaurants around me are small businesses. Not cool for the folks trying to keep a single place afloat.
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why not boycott all major corporations every day? it does require a bit of work, but the more money you spend locally, the better your local communities will be
That's just not how our economy works. "Local" business is not making toilet paper from trees they cut down in their backyard.
I'm probably getting downvoted for this but I hate hate hate this "consumption is power" bull shit boycotts. Consumption is NOT power. LABOR is power. If you work at these large companies you have a million times more power and influence by organizing.
Boycott today if it makes you feel good. But it's so incredibly missing of the point that I have to assume it is purposely missing the point of collective power.
Your power is in your ability to withhold labor. Not withholding consumption for one day that you'll just buy the next day. Hell, if these planned organized single day boycotts, if they actually had an impact, would be a way to maximize profits to reduce labor requirements for those days. It's so silly.
Organize your workplace. That is where your power is!
An example of spending as power being a fallacy is high-quality products that everyone who buys them loves them. Then, to boost profits the company uses a lesser quality metal (like pocket knives, guns, etc.). It is short-sighted, but it may increase profits. If buying exerted power, companies wouldn't trade out materials that people liked.
The engine of the modern economy is mass consumption just as much as labor, especially since a lot of labor is done overseas these days. Everyone not buying stuff from Amazon is just as much an existential threat to it as the entire work force striking. Either way you deny them there profits and force them to pay there fixed capital costs with no revenue.
You could argue it's less feasible to organize the mass of consumers then it is to organize a workplace, but the power is still there either way.
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We need maps of what helps, and how much.
No more saying stuff doesn't work and misses the point. Only pointing to where it is on the map. Better for organizing.
Sorry. If you're actually asking but I thought I was pretty clear. Labor organizing is where power is. This starts at YOUR workplace. There are plenty of resources and "maps" to get you started but that is often very unique to your location and place of work. There is not a single meme image that I can post. This takes work. The start of that work is looking for labor organizing movements in your area and place of work. If there are no existing unions or labor movements you can contact the AFL-CIO or other organizations in your field. They can help you learn more about your resources.
This takes work. If I could post a meme image like the OP I would. But it doesn't work that way. You need to be ready to do work. Talking to your coworkers, agitating, etc.
Chris Smalls is your inspiration but we need 1000 more Chris Smalls throughout the country. Not one day of a consumer boycott.
This is not about being a downer towards any movement. It's about understanding that class war is always filled with distractions like these single day consumer boycotts that do absolutely nothing. People that are downers about them are trying to direct people towards what should actually be done. It's not one massive movement out of the blue. It takes a lot of local and small work to even get to having any leverage at that scale.
Once we actually have a massive labor organizing movement in this country THEN the leaders of major unions can call for and organize something like a general strike. But that doesn't happen on its own because someone posted a "general strike" meme on reddit. It's takes a lot of work, organizing, and very specific demands, and strike funds.
But this all starts with you and the organization of labor in your workplace.
We are fighting capital. It doesn't just end up with a bunch of peaceful protests and the capitalist class rolling over and saying "ok you can all have healthcare". They have all the power of the police, state violence, and media agitating. It's why you need massive organization, solidarity, and funding for your cause. And most of all very specific and united demands. Otherwise these movements quickly die when people can't pay their rent or buy food.
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Why tf do I keep seeing posts about boycotts and protests the day they're happening
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