This is always what happens with boycott movements.

“Why boycott this and not that?”
“Why are you boycotting since it’s not going to matter anyway”
“Why do you denounce people who don’t want to boycott”

What can I tell you mate. Yes boycotts are hard. They’re hard to keep alive, they’re hard to spread, they’re hard to grasp in terms of their impact. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an impact.

Boycotting companies that do business with(in) Israel during an ongoing genocide means it becomes less and less profitable for them to keep doing that. It means we, as a people, can at least try to make a dent in Israel’s economy instead of standing on the sidelines and crying our hearts out while reading the news. (It’s not too late, stop drinking Coca-Cola and giving Disney your money: https://bdsmovement.net/Guide-to-BDS-Boycott)

We each have our most pressing fights. And it’s normal that we aren’t all able to boycott everything. We have to prioritize depending on who we are and what we do, and that’s okay. That’s how boycotts work by necessity.

*However*, there are some boycotts that are honestly impossible to ignore. Especially when that boycott movement is both well-known across the world (or even just among your social spheres) and easy to take part in. In which case, yeah, I’ll reserve the right to be loud if you intentionally look the other way and pretend you don’t see it.

For me, the boycott of X is one of those movements that’s impossible to ignore. Especially if you are a tech person. You know that the boycott exists, you know why it exists, yet you’re deciding to look the other way. That’s a political decision that you need to take responsibility for.

@nileane The "there's no ethical consumption" argument falls flat almost immediately because it assumes you have zero power. We all have power if we choose to use it.

We also can't deliberately isolate or limit ourselves with our choice. You can't exist, collaborate, protest, or organize without a smartphone. Apple has its flaws, but it's the right choice for so many reasons that text limits will stop me from getting into here.

Amazon is so ubiquitous and inexpensive that there are people that can't easily choose otherwise, maybe due to not having other easily accessible options. We can't dismiss them, but I applaud anyone that can cut Amazon out entirely.

This list of weak strawmen falls apart because it so quickly gets into things we can easily do without. Amazon Prime, Office, Linux, ChatGPT, Ruby, Google, Gmail, etc. Every one of those are choices we can make. And we can make them at the level we can permit within our lives and our morals. I won't judge someone for staying away from Amazon until Ghosts in the Shell streams or avoids YouTube until it's the only place to watch a video.

We all do what we can.

However, none of these things or decisions come close to the choice to be on X. Deliberately going to the Nazi platform to seek a wider audience isn't something you can explain away. It's completely avoidable and going there is a choice, one you make, and one that reflects your morals and character, especially after grandstanding about leaving.

We all have the ability to choose where and how we protest and the limits of such action, but the easiest of those choices is whether or not we deal with Nazis, which is fucking never.

@neatnik lol I should have just replied with that meme instead of this whole ass text