Consumer Culture
Solidarity to Retail and Service Workers
The Pop Culture Cold Brew is a collection of pop culture adjacency news that’s sincerely piqued our interest with frivolous diversions during these wildly unprecedented times— only without the celebrity worship culture. The Cold Brew also comes with a side of candor in critique pieces on pop culture and societal mores. This week we dive into the overly friendly brands and how they’re not our assumed besties. Get into it below.
Working ten years in the retail and customer service industry has helped thicken my skin and simultaneously despise the holiday season for a few years, despite once being a Christmas person. This may sound dramatic, but people tend to be at their worst towards those who work in the service industry, not just from an observational perspective— from actually working those back-to-back and open-to-close shifts that range from 8-13+ hours. Whoever created the slogan, “the customer is always right,” deserves a harsh slap in the face with reality, figuratively. Despite being the assumed ‘most wonderful time of the year,’ customers act like entitled and overgrown children throwing tantrums when they don’t get their way. Any person with retail or hospitality experience has myriad horror stories of customer interactions; I have many that still haunt me. Then there’s the constant humanization of corporations, which hasn’t helped.
Establishments and corporations adopting modern or guerilla ways to network their marketing reach aren’t new. Still, the over-familiarization of brands and their tentacles is because their only goal is profits. The collective humanity of corporations and institutions has been revealing for most as social media managers tend to comb through platforms for engagement opportunities. Faceless yet recognizable brands go to great lengths to maintain the public’s good graces by anticipating the customer’s needs because word of mouth and positive treatment weld a friendly relationship between consumer and customer. Making it easy to forget that some very up-to-date intern and marketing teams are most likely behind the dynamic online personality and not the multi-million entities they are.
In 2013 Denny’s set Tumblr ablaze by capitalizing on quirk with trending topics, engaging with humor, and digital community interaction. Around 2016, many corporations followed Wendy’s route on Twitter by finding a personality to make them more relatable and humane. Like most brands, their over-friendliness came back around as the company, unfortunately, shared a Pepe the frog meme in 2017 as the world someway gained hate-filled Nazis. Adopting human-like personas and actively engaging online with followers or even haters was a new social media norm. Arby’s embraces its geek prowess with harmless feeds, as is Disney Twitter with its nostalgia conveniently hiding its worldwide conglomerate assets. Seemingly meaningless, there’s plenty of lighthearted banter, compliments, complaints, and even roasting by socially online brands that have become an avid part of online existence.
Directly accessing the public’s trust with familiarity with personable social media feeds that aim for engagement since it helps cultivate online virality. Justifiable concerns or valid criticisms of brands are taken personally by users online, apparently and personally affected by a difference of opinion engaging with marketing tactics. The pure outrage of seeing a multinational conglomerate like Target being looted during a social and revolutionary uprising angered the public with misdirected rage. Disagreeing with a company’s activity or practices aren’t personal attacks as they’re faceless establishments with powerful lawyers and ironclad insurance policies. Brand loyalty doesn’t do much for us besides loyalty cards, endless marketing emails, and texts from brands needing to overextend themselves until we’re at Black Mirror levels. So if I feel like calling out Nestlé for reselling water, stating how I feel about Shake Shack’s crinkle cheese fries (which remind me of school cafeteria days), or saying that Martin Scorsese is forever right about cinema, I will. If Timberly’s second cousin’s niece gets personally bothered by my online opinion because she thinks In-n-Out is better or some coward hiding behind a dark Mario meme disagreeing by dm’ing me (probably about Marvel/Scorsese), “fuck you,” that’s humiliatingly on them. While no one is better than anyone, we are collectively better than simping for corporations online.
Similar to showing sympathy for a company or brand online is mortifying for all— as CEO corporations expect love for their pandering attempts at relatability and the consumer for defending corporate America. Conversational advertising adds an emotional connection between brands and consumers, which blurs the line. Still, they’re also a choice to follow— Letterboxd and Mubi are chosen favorites I agreeably like seeing among others. At the same time, I have most Film Updates muted— call me old fashioned, but there’s something about reading about film news through Variety and Deadline, but I digress. When engaging corporate brands online, it’s crucial to remember that they shouldn’t move into humanizing first-person and stick to a collective corporate voice.
Most brands and business entities can’t or don’t value their employees, yet we’re expected to love them like valued family. Except that’s reserved for the actual complex humans in my life that empower and push me to be better, even when arduous or frustrating— therefore, this Thanksgiving and any other day at the table, there’s no set space for some brand or entity to think otherwise.
Pop culture moments are inevitable whether we engage; celebrity speculation is a full-fledged spectator sport to us, regular folks, with mindless pop culture nonsense— escapism is well-deserved. Here’s the pop culture round-up we can’t get away from— or enough of, seemingly.
Letitia Wright rightfully calls out THR and Scott Feinberg for his report on how “personal baggage” will affect this year’s Oscars. Wright is the only woman against the likes of men of alleged abuse like Brad Pitt, Roman Polanski, and Woody Allen. She doesn’t deserve to be on this list. Her anti-vaxx stance, while ignorant and harmful, shouldn’t be listed with established actors like Mel Gibson, that hide behind expensive PR firms and lawyers. Feinberg has a history of online horrible “hot takes” and misogynoir, but screenshots exist, and a little Twitter digging is easy.
Julia Fox puts on clown shoes with her latest reveal by taking a page from the Kardashian playbook and inserting herself in the news when there is none. Being a self-generating gossip stunt queen is clever marketing, but defending your decision to date a historically antisemitic misogynist by claiming to take the heat— rather vile harassment— away from Kim Kardashian. Ignoring his violent rhetoric with “slavery was a choice” during their whirlwind courtship but rewriting history and saying he hadn’t done anything “out there” yet isn’t women supporting women; it’s commodifying a moment.
Simu Liu got the Marvel baton to defend the conglomerate over diversity— when the MCU began incorporating a more diverse cast years ago. Except calling Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese is embarrassingly wrong and was proven at every turn online. Please don’t disrespect my Italian short king— even as someone anti-Monarchy, put some respect on Scorsese’s name.
returning to bong joon ho's best director speech for no reason in particularIf the only gatekeepers to movie stardom came from Tarantino and Scorsese, I would never have had the opportunity to lead a $400 million plus movie. I am in awe of their filmmaking genius. They are transcendent auteurs. But they don't get to point their nose at me or anyone.Simu Liu @SimuLiu
CACKLING. Somewhere the Swifties are screaming; meanwhile, everyone else is Jaboukie.
As we approach the holidays, this is your annoying but much-needed reminder to be gentle and patient with yourself. Being around family can be overwhelming or isolating, but one thing is certain— there’s no such thing as a “perfect family.” Cherishing the shared time and space with loved ones is often commercialized to achieve some facade in keeping with the Joneses. For us, it was more like the Lopez, Garcías, and Rodríguez’s— even now, for whatever reason, there’s been a boiling over of one-upping each other among my tías. Assumably living life for others must be exhausting, similar to the idea of having a “perfect family” since it isn’t a reality for many. Family isn’t always the one you’re born into. Often, they’re divine beings we find along our journeys that become essential to our everyday life, and that’s what being an actual family unit is about.
Con Amor,
Naomi x