If you are the brand, you will be boycotted

As a lot of readers know, Adland has been covering Gamergate and Atheism+ for a while now, and by "Adland" I mean Dabitch because none of the other contributors, myself included have any skin in the game. But from a cultural standpoint, and from a branding standpoint, the rise of the blocklists on twitter have reached such a height of absurdity they say as much about technology gone awry as they do the ever changing direction a self-centered figurehead can have on its adoring population. We'll start with the former.
While my Kidsleepy Twitter handle is not on any blocklists that I can find, despite any potential guilt-by-association by the people who follow me. However, my personal twitter handle is on a blocklist, despite not once ever mentioning any so-called trigger subject and despite having a small number of twitter friends who by and large work in advertising and therefore don't even know Gamergate and Atheism+ exist. Sorry to burst your bubble but the majority of people in advertising hadn't heard of it before Adland started writing about it. (I can even go a step further in substantiating this because At the end of 2014 and into June of 2015 because I switched accounts, I was working on a video game account. No one I knew had even heard of it.
I digress. My point is, I hardly ever use my personal twitter account, and when I do it's usually to DM twitter friends. And yet Arthur Chu and Randi Harper, also has me on a block list. Until recently, I didn't know who either one of those two people were.
Which leads me to point two.
In my opinion Blocklists have become the new bragging rights among an ever growing of socially backward whose vision of reality is so distorted they conflate the number of people they've blocked with the number of followers they have as being one and the same achievement. But what good is blocking someone who has done nothing to you? Why lean into some app that is so poorly written it condemns a wide swath of people whether they're "guilty" of anything or not? The only fail safe on a lot of these blocklists is to beg forgiveness to the person who runs the blocklist so they'll unblock you? In other words if I can ever hope to engage with Arthur Chu or Wil Wheaton for that matter, I have to plead my case? Why would I want to do this?
As far as I know, Wil Wheaton's beef with the people on Twitter is that he's tired of them quoting something from his Star Trek: Next Generation days. In other words he's over people saying "Shut up Wesley" or something, which kind of feels akin to the one hit wonder who is griping that the song that made him so much money and made him a star is suddenly beneath him and that the fans who still remember a phrase from a show that first aired in 1987 so STFU now. He's obviously entitled to feel that way. That just seems like a bridge too far. Either that or he its his subtweets about haters and stupid people or something. I have no idea. Perhaps that verified account doesn't have a mute botton? Perhaps that's effort? Also, for someone who, according to his Wikipedia has been a supporter of the EFF since 2002, isn't creating a blocklist anathema to the EFF's ethos? The whole thing seems strange, especially for an actor. I guess because I assume actors must have some sort of thick skin to make it in Hollywood.
Then again, to quote title of another show that first aired in 1987: It's a different world.

Adland® is supported by your donations alone. You can help us out by buying us a Ko-Fi coffee.
Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
comment_node_story
Files must be less than 1 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg gif png wav avi mpeg mpg mov rm flv wmv 3gp mp4 m4v.