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One of the wonderful and unfortunate realities of TikTok’s Stitch feature is that you often end up watching the same videos over and over again. I’ve seen more responses”white woman burning spaghetti on fireAs many as I can count This week, she arrived in Echo jeans, boots, a blue-gray T-shirt and a white baseball cap while driving past a can of Bud Light in a pickup truck. The original TikTok never showed up in my feeds, but there were tons of reactions. ,[Anheuser-Busch] Did the bare minimum to recognize a marginalized community, and you’re having a fucking heart attack,” went one. “How blessed are you that this is the biggest problem you face?” Another pointed out that on that Bud Light The walking truck was a Chevy, made by General Motors, a company that, like Anheuser-Busch, supports LGBTQ+ rights.
All the commotion started earlier this month when Budweiser partnered with trans TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney, who dressed up as Holly Golightly on Instagram. breakfast at Tiffany’s And speaking of March Madness, drank a bud. While this may not cause alarm in many circles, conservatives began to protest. kid Rock shot up A few cases of lager on Instagram. An influential figure known as the Conservative dad launched its “Ultra Right” Beer. Country star Travis Truitt tweeted a promise to remove Anheuser-Busch products from his Tour rider. Others followed Rock’s example, destroying or dumping Bud Light and several other related brewers to express how upset they were that Bud Light had partnered with a trans person.
It is definitely a trend within a trend. Ever since Fox News’ Tucker Carlson opined on the evolved sexuality of M&M’s, calling the company’s actions “woke” has become a way for conservatives to disparage an organization’s efforts at inclusivity. they can’t understand meaning or origin of the word, but it seems to have gotten the message that if you call someone or something that word, you’re sure to ignite a response. And then a backlash for backlash.
This, then, is the latest iteration. While reactions and @-replies and response videos have been tools in public debate for decades now, the rise of TikTok as a category of public discourse – and, relatedly, the disintegration of Twitter – changed the way these debates play out. Is. While most people on Twitter yell at each other in text, GIF, or (sometimes) video form, TikTok’s tools allow for a “let’s roll the tape” approach that shows users an offensive image and then clicks on it. Allows to comment or verbally refute it. Arguments, videos, photos and other images. Twitter threads can be — and are — the same thing, but there, everyone can chime in in one place. On TikTok, further comment turns into an infinite loop of stitches and responses.
Online commentary has always been a huge and unruly thing, but what’s made the Bud Light controversy—and I use the term loosely—so fascinating to watch is that now, three weeks on, the conversation is now Bud Light. Not even about Light and Mulvaney . Not necessary. Instead, people are pointing out that the beer brands people are switching, like Coors, support LGBTQ+ people, or are discussing which brewer Ultra Right is brewing beer. they’re talking about boycott have any long term effects on Anheuser-Busch’s bottom line or rejuvenating the brand — and whether the boycott even works, given similar efforts against Nike (for Colin Kaepernick Endorses) and Disney (also for subsidiary LGBTQ+ Issues, It has become about the business of debate itself.
Which, okay, okay. Maybe there’s a place for that. But when the debate about a beer company supporting a marginalized community goes on for nearly a month, it draws attention that the conversation is no longer about the marginalized community. Anti-trans rhetoric is everywhere, and if people want to bash a lager because its parent company sent someone a few cans and a few well wishes, maybe it’s time to talk about why.
