Watching the drama around kagi unfold and it has me wondering how much you take into consideration a creator’s view on things like homophobia, sexism, racism, etc. when deciding to use a product. I think most of us have a bar somewhere (I would imagine very few on this website would ever consider registering on an altright platform), so where is that bar for you? What about art? Have you boycotted JKR or dropped your opinion about Picasso because they’re transphobic and misogynistic respectively? Is it about the general vibe of a product or piece of media, or are you more discerning? What goes into this decision and why?
The only thing that’s changed about artists and people in power is that we now know a lot more about their beliefs and personal lives than we used to. One thing that hasn’t changed is that everybody has skeletons in their closet and is the hero in their own story.
As such, and given that I don’t seek out salacious details about people I’ll never meet, so long as their irrelevant-to-the-content/product personal views don’t filter into what they produce, I tend to be unaware of anything else about them.
There are of course exceptions, with Musk being at the top of the list. But as I’m not in an income bracket that would let me avail myself of any of his products, it’s still largely irrelevant.
And the further back you go in someone’s history to find dirt, the more likely they’ve changed. I’d hate to be judged now by some of my early columns in college when I was in my edgy atheist libertarian raver phase, so I’m inclined to give others a pass on adolescent musings.
With more recent stuff, as people let more of their personality into their crafted public personas, it’s not all that difficult to deduce whether their worldview is going to be offensive. But commerce overall is not about whether I’d enjoy grabbing a beer with someone so much as whether their product fulfills a need.
I hate the history thing. People still go after Brendan Eich for donating $1000 to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign in 2008. Prop 8 passed with 52.24% of the vote, over 7-million California voters probably including many that people still like (thanks secret ballot). It was thrown out by courts, nothing to do with people being moral.
That’s not to say he’s a good guy I agree with, he’s said and done other things much more recently that I don’t agree with, like his stance on COVID, but Prop 8 is always the number one thing people mention.
Edit: even later on in this thread. People should boycott anything made in California if that one donation is such a painful thing.