5 Comments

Try out Savanaah Marco LaVulva or Lady Miki Charlemagne: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/12/drag-queens-and-tiktokers-queer-fijian-influencers-challenging-traditional-notions-of-masculinity

Interesting the Guardian article starts with homophobia and then doesn’t mention any.

The Dylan Mul-vain-ey stuff seems like harmless fun. It’s more the TikTok like-junkies, corporate sponsors and great resetters who are suspect.

I was wondering (I’m a bit out of touch) if the ad campaign is a play on words - Bud Light as in male-friend-light-on-testosterone or ‘Bud, lighten up’.

It’s a commercial decision possibly partly based on the idea men piloting a barbecue can take a joke against themselves.

I’d guess 80% of Dylan’s fans are heterosexual women. If Anheuser-Busch had put the stuff in bottles and served it with a little rainbow umbrella their fortune would be made. Oh yeah.

Expand full comment
author

The issue is a lot more simple than many are making it out to be, IMHO. Trans issues are seen by conservatives as an attack on the family and an attempt to indoctrinate their children into a very harmful ideology. Whether you agree on that is not material, that's how conservatives see it.

Bud Light is mostly consumed by conservatives... and they aren't bigots either. Bud Light has put out rainbow cans and done all kinds of promotions in gay bars. I've seen them. None of that has ever been a problem. But when they partnered with Mulvaney and then that video leaked of that horrible VP who said that BL drinkers are "fratty and out of touch" and she dumped all over the old marketing like trucks and the "real men of genius" adds that people liked... they felt like BL was telling them they didn't care about their patronage and didn't want their business.

We live in a time where conservatives constantly feel under attack. Again... true or not is not the point... they feel like they are. It's shoe companies and HR people making them go into "white people suck" meetings. Their churches and faith are attacked. They are constantly called bigots. They are called privileged by ivory tower millionaires while they work their asses off on construction sites and in factories.

So now, a company that they thought appreciated them has made VERY clear that not only do they no appreciate them, they actually hate them... and BL drinkers react by throwing them the finger and saying "pass me a Coors".

It's that simple. Dylan is a sideshow. Nobody actually cares about him. What they care about is a company that they send money to, using that money to tell them to go f* themselves. Looked at through that lens, the reaction should have been predictible if not completely understandable.

Expand full comment
Apr 11, 2023Liked by Virgil

This is the most disconnected I’ve ever seen a corporate brand be from its customers. It’s doubly hilarious to think of all of the behind the scenes scrambling the old heads we’re doing after they climbed out of their Scrooge McDuck style money pools and fatly harrumphed their way to the old rotary phones their butlers were holding, only to learn they couldn’t fire anyone because the Title VII lawsuit waiting to happen is a white woman whose sin was promoting transes to the entire US population of diesel mechanics, frat bros and power linemen.

Expand full comment
author

I mean... you've got to want to be a fly on the wall when she gets called in to answer for this.

"So... you didn't see how taking a trans activist and making it the face of our company might be a little controversial?"

"I didn't make a trans activist the face of our company. I just stuck one on a few cans of our product because I hate America and men and think I'm better than you. BTW, what is Bud Light, anyway? I've never seen it before."

"Who hired you? I need to make sure I fire them too"

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
author

Thanks! I'm back!

Expand full comment