Why internet boycotts don’t work

much negativity to their brand?

What the story of “Velma” and Nike have in common is that a tidal wave of negative attention didn’t harm them. Rather, it bolstered their brand and pushed their product into the popular consciousness. Despite the horrible reviews, “Velma” received a steady flow of hatewatchers, which made it the fourthmost watched show at the time of its release. It is now being renewed for a second season. And in the days following Nike’s ad, their revenue increased dramatically in contrast to the Dow Jones industrial average, which had fallen precipitously that week.

Whether by accident or on purpose, the phenomenon of negative attention leading to success is increasingly common. The reason why is because the phrase “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” has taken on a new life in the information age. Internet algorithms are structured so that exciting anger is much more likely to be seen than comparatively boring content that doesn’t enrage you. Now, bad publicity is the best kind of publicity.

what was the result? We don’t have access to an alternate universe in which trans advocates collectively decided to do something else with their time, but I’d be willing to bet that the inadvertent free advertising helped the game much more than any faithful boycotters might’ve hurt it.

And more importantly, think about what a failed boycott looks like to someone not invested in the topic at hand. Now that the dust has settled, trans advocates look weak, and transphobia looks powerful— even if the vast majority of people who bought the game did so with no political goal. Bystanders have been trained by this incident to point and laugh at trans people for trying and failing to attack a stupid video game.

Milo Vetter Staff Writer

On Jan. 12, the TV show “Velma” was released on HBO Max to almost universally negative reviews. The show currently stands at a 41% critic score and a 7% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which really says something about who gets to be called a “critic.” Basically everyone interested in TV shows took a turn making fun of it. Nearly every aspect about the show is horrible—the disregard to the source material, the mediocre animation, the unlikable characters and the awful writing.

Years earlier, something similar happened to Nike, the shoe company. In September 2018, Nike released a commercial featuring the anti-racist activist and football player Colin Kaepernick, whose famous kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality sparked discussions about the political role of sports players. When this commercial came out, conservatives got so angry that they tried to boycott Nike for, uh, collaborating with someone who thinks that racism is a problem. Putting aside the questionable motives of the boycotters, here’s the kicker: Nike’s advertising department knew beyond all reasonable doubt that this would happen. So why did they purposely incite so

Cocky or confident?

Enya Eettickal Staff Writer

As a member of the mock trial team here at Case Western Reserve University, I spend much of my time—namely weekends—with some very big personalities from all over the country. A significant part of these activities comes down to being judged on presence and presentation, even though this is insanely subjective. However, there are traceable patterns of what qualities are well received—judges tend to love people who are credible, pleasant and notably attentive. But one polarizing trait that most competitors have is confidence. At least, everyone will say it’s confidence. But it’s hard to understand why it is polarizing. Why is it that some audiences react positively to confidence in performers, but others may be averse?

The answer, in my mind, is that there’s a difference between the types of confidence people have. Specifically, there’s a difference between being confident and being cocky. Even at first glance, both words have different connotations, and it can be hard to discern the difference even with practice. At what point does confidence become cockiness? How do you temper cockiness? There are a few questions to examine here. That is why it is important to explore why cockiness is undesirable in comparison to confidence.

In this case, defining these terms is part of the solution. Confidence and cockiness are both characteristics that result from a strong sense of self and often help with decisionmaking. Their big difference lies in the mindsets associated with them and understanding of those around them.

Confidence is rooted in the idea that you are proficient at certain tasks or great at merely existing. Confidence is the textbook characteristic everyone is told to build. Cockiness has those same qualities, but added is the aspect of thinking that one is more proficient than the people around them, and that’s where the split in work ethic comes as well. People who are confident in their abilities have an awareness of why and how they are good at what they do. They understand the work they’ve had to put in to get to where they are, and are willing to sustain that work and effort to maintain their abilities. Cocky people don’t have that. Even if they were once confident and worked to get themselves to a certain skill level or image, they lose sight of who they were and become wrapped up in who they

This is all good if you’re a company seeking to make your product popular, but what if you’re trying to do the opposite? This phenomenon makes a potential boycott extremely difficult to pull off, because for every person you convince not to buy a product online, there are 10 more people who are hearing about the product for the first time because you’re loudly convincing someone not to get it.

This exact thing just happened last week with the controversial release of a game called “Hogwarts Legacy,” which, as the name implies, takes place within the “Harry Potter” world. Upon its announcement, some trans rights advocates called for a boycott of the game due to its direct financial ties to J.K. Rowling—the thought leader of a widespread hate movement against trans people. This sentiment against the game was fairly well known, but now are instead. As a result, they convince themselves that they are inherently superior to others, not accounting for any privileges they may have or changes that occurred over time.

The problems that stem from cockiness are pretty self-explanatory. Cocky people are bound to overestimate their abilities. When they assume they are skilled or superior inherently, they forget the importance of working to develop or retain abilities. But despite what they assume, practice and work are still necessary to maintain their skills. So when they abandon developing that skill with their unfounded assumption about innate talent, they’re prone to being humbled quickly. Reality checks may come at the time they least expect it.

Beyond that, there’s also the issue of cocky people simply being unlikeable. This goes back to my anecdote about performers. Cockiness is relatively easy to identify, and while it may be hard to spot the difference between confident and cocky people at first glance, cocky people are easy to identify once you spend any time with them. It’s most noticeable in how they treat others— whether that be body language that conveys disgust or condescending manners of speaking. No one wants to be patronized and treated poorly, or watch others around them being regarded similarly.

A reality we need to grapple with is the fact that boycotts organized on the internet simply don’t work. If you examine famous successful boycotts throughout history—such as the Montgomery bus boycott or the Delano grape strike and boycott—they were generally local, specific and didn’t involve the internet. More importantly, they were backed up by a central organization, like an activist group or labor union. In short, not all boycotts are useless, but ones that start online certainly are.

This, however, does not take you off the hook for unethical consumption on a personal level. The act of avoiding consumption of unethical products is still a moral virtue— though not a moral necessity. Convincing someone to not consume a product on an interpersonal level is still a good thing. You just have to be careful about advocating for largescale boycotts online, because you have no way of knowing if you’ll do more harm than good. Being in the digital age means that we have to be wary of the effects that our internet speech has and doubly suspicious of any calls to make something irrelevant and unpopular by talking about it passionately in the middle of the public square.

The unfortunate part of all this is that cocky people often don’t know they are cocky. They don’t understand what part of their personality is turning people away from them. And because a lack of self-awareness is a fundamental part of being cocky, it’s difficult for them to identify it. However, the silver lining is that the difference between cocky and confident isn’t a huge one—therefore, the work that someone needs to evolve from cocky to confident is minimal.

Once someone has identified, accepted and decided to temper their cockiness, which they may be more inclined to do if they get humbled, they probably can. Developing selfawareness and rededicating time to working hard is often enough to put them in a position where others will positively receive their strong sense of self.

However, while it’s possible to fix the problem of cockiness, there’s no guarantee that someone will change. Being in a situation where cocky people are actively having their behavior checked expedites the experience—but there are no guarantees even then. All you can do is hope that the social response will be a good wake-up call.