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No, but that's because I've worked on a team that has crafted these statements before (and then we emailed them out as the CEO). Our statements would get passed
by chomp 6y ago
No, but that's because I've worked on a team that has crafted these statements before (and then we emailed them out as the CEO). Our statements would get passed around in a Google doc to about 5 different people who would distill it down to platitudes that ended up sounding right, but soulless.
With a social media team, no one is going to stick their necks out and take a strong stance because it'll never get approved. Also you are speaking as a corporation which is a collection of people, so you wind up hitting the lowest common denominator of stances on social issues. But you have to do something because your competitors are doing something. Also, your employees may be asking for you to put out a statement on an issue. So these things get born.
At the end of the day you should just remember that corporations are not people, even when it looks like a single person is talking. I'll stop there before I start going on a tangent.
Also for what it's worth, I thought DoorDash's response was fairly decent because there was substance to it. But I do agree that you can't take their statements in a vacuum and it's easy to see that it's just platitudes based on their crummy employment and business model.
- awillen 6y agoOkay, but then I guess my question is what's the point? If everybody knows it's a soulless statement, why make it at all? It just doesn't seem like this contributes anything to the discourse at all. I would actually respect a company like Apple putting out a statement that just says, "We're almost entire white guys, so we're not really qualified to say anything meaningful here. We support this movement and are making a donation of $X to Y charity, and beyond that we're going to be quiet and listen."