hbomberguy
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2019–2025
26:44 · 5.6M views · Feb 22, 2019
hbomberguy examines whether a product can be truly progressive, looking at brands that adopt social causes in their marketing, with the Gillette ad as a prompt. It argues the behavior is driven by profit, not politics.
Cited in threads on corporate politics, outrage and branding as an explanation of how companies use controversy and social stances for profit.
6 comments from Hacker News
Honestly think at this point I should recommend hbomberguy’s video on “Woke Brands”. this video I’ll appreciate his politics are way to the left of yours and he’s making this point for a left wing audience, but the TL;DR is: a lot of what you’re perceiving as politics here is literally the market economy acting to maximise profit. His perspective is that _left-wing_ people shouldn’t be conned into thinking this is about anything other than profit maximisation.
This sort of ties in nicely to the "WOKE BRANDS" video[1] that came out recently from H. Bomberguy. It's a bit lengthy but it goes into a very poignant discussion of the problematic underpinnings of brands adopting a particular aspect of a "personality", namely a hypocritical social conscience. [1] this video
That's such an incredibly sad world view and misunderstanding of the parasitic nature of capitalism playing both sides for maximum financial gain I'd recommend educating yourself further on the reality of what you're blaming "the left" for this video
> While your individual action may be of no consequence to Google, it still has a marginal impact. If we round off and assume Google has 2 billion customers, then your marginal impact is 0.00000005%. That doesn't do anything at all. > Google won't need to change their behavior until enough people leave This is based on the assumption that the only action one can and should take against Google is an individual disconnection from their services. This is pointless compared to meaningful changes through systemic means. I know HN has a lot of libertarian/rationalist economist types, but that ideological approach has been shown time and again to accomplish nothing, to the point where brands actively encourage "vote with your wallet" boycotts from conservatives because they are actually extemely profitable ( this video ). I'd also point out the libertarianism/rationalism is rooted in neoliberalism and the whole point of neoliberalism is to remove challenges to corporate power, so of course they would encourage actions that do nothing to really harm corporate power while feeling like you're doing something. It's the consumer activism equivalent of donating £5/month to charity to assuage your first-world guilt.
One huge problem with cancel culture is how mercurial it is. So we get to witness spectacles like an attempt to cancel Nike for selling products in Israel[1] or for hiring Colin Kaepernick[2] instead of for their ongoing record of labor abuses. And, in general, "cancelling" often seems to focus on topical, hot-button issues instead of deeper-rooted problems. The whole phenomenon is ripe for manipulation and viral marketing - leveraging short-term outrage to build brand identity[3]. One could argue it's the commodification and commercialization of "real" protest. It's less democracy and more idiocracy. [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] this video