So your favorite company did something ethically wrong and you want to start a boycott. Congratulations! A lot of people are under the impression that “boycotting” has to involve crazy radical actions like not giving the company any more of your money or not shopping there even when they have cool new stuff you want. Those people are wrong, and you would never be able to stick to an actual boycott for more than three hours anyway. Here is how you can look progressive on social media while doing nothing in real life.
Talk about how bad the company is
The first and only step to boycotting a company is—you guessed it—telling everyone it’s bad. A lot of people claim actions speak louder than words, but those people have clearly never berated their family for ordering from Starbucks before helping themselves to one of their four classic breakfast sandwiches (ordered off of Doordash of course). While you are not making a difference in the world, you are emotionally wearing down your parents, which feels—and tastes—ten times better.
Look up a list of bad companies and boycott the ones you already don’t go to
Fuck you and your business practices, Sodastream. Just for that, we will not be ordering any more countertop seltzer makers. That’s right, we’re completely done with grapefruit flavored sparkling water flavoring drops. You’ll get your hands on our money once you divest from genocide, or once you start making the flavoring drops in better flavors like cherry or lemon-lime, which we have kindly suggested to you in the “Contact Us” form on more than one occasion.
Police Teenage TikTokers about shopping from the company
Why take action yourself when you can kick the burden to TikTok teens who have recently come into internet fame and fear losing public approval more than death itself? The future is in the hands of our generation, and by our generation, we mean internet personas teetering on the edge of cancellation. There is nothing like commenting “Congratulations on funding Bezos’ sweatshop” and watching the apology video roll in while bumping your Amazon music-powered 100ft LED light strips.
Comment vague threats on the company’s Instagram page (which you still follow)
“Hey Papa John’s. You better sleep with one eye open.” Do we even remember what they did wrong? No, but that’s not what’s important here. The important thing is that everyone knows you are willing to do anything it takes to send the company a message—anything but stop hosting your birthday parties there.
Stop going there. Unless you really want to
Of course you are technically allowed to stop buying from the company during your boycott, but we realize there are circumstances that make this step almost impossible—for instance, if they have literally anything you want or even if you’re just tired or bored. Fuck it, maybe go there even more than you did before your boycott. After all, something about the forbiddenness makes Chevron gas even more appealing. Remember you’ve already made a bunch of people you know dread hanging out with you, which was the main objective here.
Only buy from them when there’s a sale
If you insist on doing something, just shop during sale time we guess. Buying something 30% off feels almost like your shoplifting, which puts you in the ranks of all your favorite civic disobedience heroes. You’ll be able to walk out of the store with your head held high knowing that, while you didn’t actually manage to hold to the political positions you aggressively preach, you did get a bunch of new stuff. And at the end of the day, while other people have their moral belief systems to cling to, you have a bunch of fucking stuff. Who’s the real winner here? Last I checked, moral belief systems can’t sync pulsating color-changing lights up to the bass of your music.