Capitalism and social change

How do you know someone isn't a football fan?

Wait until the Super Bowl, they'll fucking tell you.

Seriously, people, there's a lot of reasons to dislike the NFL in general and specific teams in particular, and those are worth discussing, but why in hell do you feel the need to announce to the world that you don't care about the sport on the day the biggest event of the year for it takes place? It's like if I spent the entirety of Sand Diego Comic-Con telling the world that I don't like cons, no one wants to see that and it is annoying, let people enjoy the things they like.

I only watched a little over half the game, turning it off when I got home and I felt like the Falcons had it in the bag, which turns out to have been a remarkably poor decision in hindsight, Tom Brady is apparently a wizard who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads for the ability to throw a ball real good. His ongoing friendship with the great orange leader is further evidence of this. But I am not actually going to say anymore about the game itself.

I want to talk about advertising, the advertising in the game today seemed subdued compared to the usual fare of outrageous commercialism, oh that stuff was there too, but several companies chose to be a bit more topical.

Lumber 84, a company I had never even heard of before today, posted the first part of their story of a mother and daughter making the hard journey to America, the second part of the ad was cut from the broadcast as it included a giant wall. It was a weird combination of beautiful and disturbing imagery and while the general consensus seems to be that it is a celebration specifically of legal immigration, it seemed to me more of a statement about the difficulties faced by any immigrant than anything, that wall though.

Airbnb gave us a slideshow of faces of different nationalities, races, and cultures with the message of acceptance, it was much shorter than the above ad, and there wasn't any room for misinterpretation there, as both Latinx features and Islamic religious garb were prominently featured.

Budweiser, of all companies, gave us an ad telling us the story of one of their founders as he immigrated to America, with specific attention payed to him getting shit for being different, and being told he didn't belong here, as he went on to found perhaps the most successful beer company in the world, albeit a crappy one.

Coke ran an ad that they had originally done last summer, with America the Beautiful being sung in a number of different languages. It makes it's point simply and beautifully. Really all of these ads do.

That point is they really, and I mean really, want your money.

That really is all there is to it, I mean sure there are probably some in the management or ownership chains in these companies that truly believe in pushing for social change, but the reality is that we wouldn't have seen these ads if The Toddler wasn't president, and if the reaction to his policies wasn't as massively widespread as it has been. These companies are not pushing change, they are reacting to it, they believe that the ideas they are talking about will continue to be talked about for at least a couple financial quarters if not more, and they want to get in the public consciousness as being supporters while they can.

While these companies are not our friend, they are a good barometer of how things may be going, remember these folks are all national, or worldwide, corporations and they paid for airtime on a screen that shows the world over, they don't believe they are pandering to a narrow demographic here, they decided that the risk of losing people who oppose their views outweighs the possible gains, and they would only do that if their own internal information sources make them think it is worth doing. Everywhere in the country, not just the liberal enclaves.

This is a good sign, we should be paying attention to what the major consumer companies are doing and how they are talking, remember they are much more beholden to us than things like the energy sector, if they are pandering to ideas we find palatable, it is because they think they can make more money off of us than they would if they went the other direction.

It is unwise to rely on them for goodwill or anything though, they are useful indicators of how they feel the economy might turn for them, nothing more, they cannot and should not be considered allies, but it's nice to see for the moment.