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No. Poking the hornet's nest is an effective and sometimes necessary part of activism. The whole reason we've heard of these guys is because they poked those co
by feoren 2y ago
No. Poking the hornet's nest is an effective and sometimes necessary part of activism. The whole reason we've heard of these guys is because they poked those companies. That's why they used their real logos. Using fake logos makes no sense there, and if they had done that, neither of us would have heard this story.
It's a bit like the argument "sure, Black Lives Matter, but do they have to be kneeling during a football game?" Protests are fine, as long as they never inconvenience anyone, are never loud or obnoxious, are never seen nor heard nor felt. Well, then, they're not protests, they're LARPing.
I get the feeling that in practice, those "uh... reasons" will turn out to be blatant. As in: one is obviously an attempt to scam and defraud people, and the other is an obvious parody. And obviousness matters: the crux is whether it's likely to deceive a "reasonable person" or not. You can like or hate that criteria, but that's been consistent since trademarks were invented.
- neilv 2y ago* It's OK to fabricate about a company doing some ridiculous thing, because it's activism, and they are getting attention to their cause. * It's not OK to fabricate about some politician doing some ridiculous thing, because that's lying, to manipulate? How is the latter case not also activism, and getting attention to their cause?
- feoren 2y agoI told you what the line is: would a "reasonable person" be fooled or not? It has nothing to do with companies vs. politicians. You are using the word "fabricate" to cover a huge range of different things. Like "oh, so it's OK to kill your fears, but it's not OK to kill a politician!? Hypocrite much?" ... no? You've only made it sound hypocritical because you used the same word for both.
- neilv 2y agoI should've spelled it out, but I used politician for a couple reasons. One of the reasons is that whether a reasonable person would think that was actually true is no longer relevant. Look at the batpoop behavior of some very prominent politicians -- you can't distinguish that from parody. And look at the level of critical thinking we're seeing, with huge numbers of people believing things we think a reasonable person would consider improbable or seek confirmation. In this environment, I assert that the defense of "a reasonable person would realize this is parody" is no longer true.