This "boycott" idea, that consumers should choose wisely to spend their money where it doesn't hurt other people has morphed into a strange creature these days. Remember when South African goods were boycotted? Then the 90s rolled around and lists were being made of goods to boycott because they had shady practices, used child labour, polluted groundwater, killed Orangutans and so on.. I was really into this for a while, I will shop items I need from companies that are ethical, produce locally, and so on. But now I have to keep track of which CEO likes to hunt wild game, who donated a bit of his paycheck to a pac, and which ones are run by Christians because they seem to be boycotted all the time. But heeeey, high tech gear produced in factories where suicides are rampant, that's A-OK. Buy more of that. I guess what I'm saying is, it's starting to get a little warped.

Justine Tunney, who has an awesome-looking pixel portrait of themselves on their page, has also posted their opinion on this web mob here: "In Defense of Gavin McInnes"

It's rational, levelheaded, timelines the events for a fuller picture and uses the brilliant word "clicktivists" ... oh and here's the thing... Justine is trans. Is Justine allowed to defend Gavin then? I wonder if their twitter timeline was as agitated when that came out, and if anyone is tumblering that post with a "Fuck YOU" on it. The Progressive Mob Mentality Justine writes about is like digital riots, it can quickly get out of hand. As a prior example, Justine brings up Brendan Eich. Remember Pax Dickingson? http://adland.tv/adnews/pax-dickinson-turns-internet-mob-his-own-pr-channel/

Justine already has some experience with this type of mob, so I hope people take the time to READ what they says proper before getting the tar and feathers out. Justine has many good points, brings up the invariable fight between memeplexes to explain why this particular topic keeps flaring up in this manner, and here's just one:

"This paternalistic sanctimonious nonsense has got to go! As a trans woman, I don’t want the media white-knighting on my behalf. I refuse to accept the notion that being trans and female makes me weak. I like to think of myself as a smart courageous woman who’s perfectly capable of defending herself. So I’m sure you can understand how unhappy it makes me to see cisgender activists acting all indignant in my name, because some random dude said something politically incorrect about trans people."

Sing it.

I'm not sure This article has nothing to do with the content of Gavin McInnes' essay. It has to do with your response to it. was clear enough. Maybe we should bring back the blink tag?

As an aside, I did actually read Gavin McInnes' article, and I'll just note that there are many, many red flags in it that indicate it's a giant troll, but I'm not going to debate that here since the topic is how trolled people are. The troll, is now a media. Goodness, if we troll right, we can sell it.

Gavin McInnes used to make Vice the Do's and Don'ts that were homophobic and mean, and well generally sucky to all of mankind but especially women because most of the time we critique what women wear. Whatever. So I didn't like Vice, didn't read it, didn't care and suddenly Vice has become this really trusted documentary maker with long form journalism that we all trust and generation whatever watches with baited breath. The brand travel there is pretty interesting and we should write about that sometime, because I still can't shake the sleeze from someone photographing a girl asleep at a party in NYC with her clothes torn off, labelling as "don't", and then selling that shit for money. Maybe I'm weird that way. OMG integrity, it's the worst amirite?

But yeah, so then that guy says something that (surprise!!!) is pushing every possible button, right now to offend. and offended people were. Like schools of fish people swum up to compete in the offended olympics, and SWJ sharpened their blogs to write back.

This used to be exactly his job though, rile people up, make them swim here, there, anywhere.

So when you point out that the reaction is probably what is wanted.
And so he did, but the tide turned against him because he was surfing the wrong wave right now, and so he'll get fired for it.

I'm sorry, but that's sort of faboo. It's like watching a digital wipeout...

In the end, as I understand, I now suck because I have now let my " your platform be used to police the response to transphobic drivel, and further support a violently oppressive status quo whose bodycount continues to grow across the world. How you try to make this about respectability politics and to police the anger of people denied dignity, careers, and even their lives absolutely disgusts me.". Similarly, tumblr allows their platform to be used to publish "fuck you's" like that.

Ok. Me and my ovaries will go shut the fuck up. My bad.

I'm curious about the fakes. I did an experiment when the promoted post pay thing just became available, and used some ten dollar voucher Facebook gave me to try it out. The posts seen by numbers were higher, but I also got a few comments in Spanish and Thai. These people commenting were not fans of adland, nor working in related businesses.... And I wasn't targeting Thailand or south America (a bunch of Indians also commented, but in Indian mixed English). To top it off, the campaign ran past my ten dollars in an hour, and by the next day I suddenly owed Facebook money.

Organically shared posts have always pulled traffic, but as the log reader it's frustrating that I can't tell who is talking about us, so I can't learn which audience likes what. Similarly when I paid for a promotion, it was a black box who saw it.... And seemed to be mainly fake accounts, just to boost the numbers.

I'll pass.