I’ve cancelled my Paramount+ and Disney+ subscriptions over their handling of Colbert and Kimmel. Are there any companies worth NOT boycotting? One I can think of is Netflix, whose former CEO Reed Hastings and current board member recently donated $2M to the Yes on 50 campaign (the California redistricting proposition).
Any other companies deserving of not boycotting?
Handling because they suspended Kimmel, or because they re-instated him?
When you cancelled your subscriptions, did you also contact the companies to indicate why you were “boycotting” them? Did you indicate what actions they could take that would restore your faith in them?
This is the part in your argument where you need to consider common sense. He doesn’t have to message them. When you boycott someone, you just simply stop buying their product. And anyways, it’s a mass boycott, they got the message when they reinstated Kimmel. However, that’s not enough for people because it boils down the fact that Disney is fucking actors over like they did with Scarlet Johansson. People have had enough of their bs.
Yes. The cancellation pages of both services had a “reason for cancelling” field and said I was cancelling because of their cancelling of Colbert and Kimmel.
I wasn’t saying they had to, I was just asking whether they did.
I expect a number of people cancel their memberships for different reasons, so not every cancellation would be considered a boycott, even if it occurs during a time when people have stated they intend to boycott.
That’s not to say it won’t have an effect, but I was just thinking that including some sort of contact to explain why one cancelled their account would have more of an impact - it would confirm one’s intention for cancelling, and the effort taken would give more weight to the action.
Just a thought.
Boycott The Atheist Republic because Armin called John Gleason’s (AKA Godless Engineer) wife “retarded” after she called him out for supporting Charlie Kirk.
It’s possible they know.
I hate to say I told you so…
Make me… 
No idea who he is, and no interest to know.
I haven’t seen him in either of the two forum categories I have been reading, so it wouldn’t be right for me to weigh in on what has allegedly been said, or the context.
Back when NotSid started this campaign I Googled Amin. Amin has a video podcast either published on this platform or linked to from this platform (I forget which, but it looked as least superficially like official AR content). He did, in fact normalize Kirk and made the ridiculous claim that somehow the almost endless video and written evidence that Kirk was a raging racist and homophobe and Christo-fascist are misconstrued or fabricated. He did in fact indicate anyone disagreeing with these claims was retarded and beneath contempt or discussion.
I don’t like that he didn’t make rational substantiated claims and he wasn’t Mr. Persuasive. But I don’t see that our volunteer moderator(s) or anyone else here on this side of the AR site has anything to say about it, or should. Also I presume I could post any random thing to anyone willing to watch / listen and AR would take the same hands off stance in the interest of freedom of thought. If there aren’t community standards or moderation for that kind of thing then it just kind of is what it is, like any random post on X or BlueSky (although I guarantee you that particular content would have, at minimum, gotten widely blocked and basically zero engagement on BlueSky).
He was streaming from the Atheist Republic YouTube channel when he said those things. He literally created the Atheist Republic.
And you guys pretend you don’t know who he is?
Why would I necessarily know? I joined this discussion forum a few months ago because I found others I’ve used lacking for various reasons – one had weird, overbearing and even incoherent moderation, the other has come to have very low participation. I found value in this discussion section, but …
I have no more than glanced at the rest of the AR site. Apart from this forum, a lot of it looked neglected, abandoned or poorly organized to me. I found no value other than in the discussion forum. So I shrugged and ignored the rest of the site. I know nothing of its history or who founded it.
One of those other atheist discussion fora that I mentioned was originally part of a similar site to AR that was founded by some guy who arbitrarily decided one day to shut down the discussion forums entirely, with almost no notice. One of the forum users resurrected just the discussion part under a different URL and most of the forum users found their way to it over time. So this phenomenon of a discussion forum under an umbrella being a community unto itself (to the point where the owner felt the forum wasn’t contributing much to the original site) appears to be an organic tendency. Which isn’t surprising.
This is a discussion community, we support and interact with each other, the rest of the site is whatever it is [shrug].
That is literally a lie. Only one person has asserted they don’t know who is.
And you called me retarded as well. Let’s boycott you for being a hypocrite. You’re way worse.
While there is certainly merit in opposing things like this it strikes me that it’s not dissimilar to the idea of boycotting movies that were made by people who did really bad shit. Harvey Weinstein for example… seriously depraved man who was producer for films like:
Basically some of my favourite films and this is just the awful actions of one man but there are other people involved, good people, good actors. Likewise, I strongly suspect that almost every movie ever made had at least one person involved with it who did bad things. While I accept people might not want to let corporates get away with a lot of shit, Disney now owns all of Marvel, all of Star Wars and it’s gonna take a lot more than what they’ve so far done WRT Drumpf to make me give those up.
I am dropping Paramount Plus but that’s more because it’s largely pointless.
Anyway, not that I’ve ever watched him, but Kimmel’s back isn’t he?
I think @NotSid has a point about Armin especially as he seems to have an almost pathological support for Israel despite their apparent attempts to wipe out Gaza and the people who live or once lived there.
UK Atheist
The reason Kimmel is back is because money talks and bullshit walks. Disney lost about $4B in market value and had large-scale cancellations to their streaming services just on the cusp of a planned rate increase announcement, widespread employee angst and anger and morale issues, and for some execs, I suspect even a dim awareness that what they were doing was morally weak and futile capitulation to the demands of a regime that will never be satisfied.
Even the local stations have now reversed their decisions because of similar pressures, even though they are run by orgs like Sinclair that are in the tank for Trumpism on a scale similar to Fox News. Ultimately the fact that they are run by oligarchs who can’t stand the idea of passing up the revenue won out over their desire to suckle the Orange Anus in hopes of money and influence down the road.
So it’s all about targeted economic pressure which is a huge tool in our world of oligarchs. If I had subscribed to any of their swill, even if I like it, I would happily trade access to that for living in a freer, more just and equitable society for myself and others.
But of course you have to see the massive scope of the threat clearly, to make that calculus and do the tradeoff. Thankfully a large enough number of people were able to.
As Kimmel himself said it is not so much about him or his show as it is about the freedom for shows like his to exist. Comedians are always among the first creatives that authoritarians go after to consolidate power. There’s a reason for that. We need to have their backs.
Isn’t that just the nature of capitalism? Of globalism? Of which the USofA is probably the greatest expounder what with its insurance based health system. I mean I’m not a fan (and mostly grateful I’m British despite being rather worried about the Farage’s of this world) but there’s precious little I can do about shit like that so…
UK Atheist
You raise some interesting issues.
Our health insurance system is bonkers, and has been for a long time. We’re unique in the developed world–all the other western nations have a more rational system than ours. Ours is mostly a for-profit system, were there’s a huge incentive for companies like United Healthcare and Cigna to deny as many claims as possible to keep their profits up, even if the treatments associated with those claims are medically necessary.
Another reason we don’t have a universal single-payer system is because a large number of people in this country don’t want a single cent of their tax dollars going to people they feel don’t deserve it. They’d rather put up with the crappy system we have now than create a system that helps people they dislike, like the poor and minorities. They equate a single-payer system with “socialism”, which they consider a great evil. I put socialism in quotes because the vast majority of these people have no idea what socialism really is. They just "know’ it’s bad because Fox News and other conservative propaganda outlets told them so.
As for Disney and Paramount, as Mordant said, it’s all about the money. Look how quickly Disney caved to consumer pressure and put Kimmel back on the air. Ditto for Sinclair and Nexstar.
This is one area (perhaps the only one) where we the people can affect actual change in the era of Trump. We need to punish companies and organizations that bend the knee to Trump by impacting their bottom lines. It worked with Disney, and it can work again.
The ultimate weapon would be a general strike that shuts down the economy. That, if it went on long enough, would result in big business putting enormous pressure on the Trump regime to back down. A general strike probably won’t happen unless things get really desperate because too many Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck and have little to no savings and thus would not be able to sustain such a strike long enough for it to be effective. Labor strikes directed at specific industries in the past worked because the workers were backed up by a union that helped them financially during the strike. That wouldn’t be the case for a general strike.
For some given value of desperate, yes. It could involve sufficiently alarming abuses of power as much as everyone being in breadlines, for example. But yeah, it will probably take breadlines.
At any rate, the strategizing I have read is that targeted boycotts – not necessariliy endless, either – are very effective, as the Kimmel situation demonstrated, especially when combined with effective social media campaigns, in-person protests, and other forms of social pressure. BUT, a national, general strike is something that could easily backfire and embolden the regime if it fizzles, so we must hold our powder until the right moment and then make it devastating. What constitutes the “right moment” is some combination of regime weakness / vulnerability, public (out)rage, and probably businesses feeling economic pain nearly as much as individuals. I don’t know who makes that call; it’s not like there’s a central strike organizing body. But presumably it will seem clear to enough people to call the strike, or … something.
Unfortunately, another thing working against the idea is the sheer enormity of the US. I know this argument gets used to “explain” why we can’t have all sorts of nice things like universal single-payer healthcare, but this may be a case where it would actually apply. It seems like it would be far easier to pull off a general strike in, say, the Netherlands or even France than in the US.
One thing is sure, we live in interesting times.