After yesterday's resurgence of Occupy Wall Street, I am all revved up for citizen-initiated activities aimed at fighting back against the chaos unleashed by unfettered consumer capitalism.
That is why the #notbuyingit campaign started by missrepresentation.org interested me - it is an example of coordination of consumer spending, or not spending, in order to instigate change. Affect profits - get action.
"Thousands of people worldwide are participating in #notbuyingit! If you see a product or ad that misrepresents or degrades women, use Twitter to post a description or upload a picture of the offensive item. Use the hashtag #notbuyingit so that we can all follow along!" from: #notbuyingitThe website links to a Pintrest page showing examples of misrepresentations in media and advertising that are being called out by citizen watchdogs. The awareness campaign encourages people to stop buying anything made by these, or any other, corporations or businesses profiting from making the world a messed up mass of sexism and misogyny.
When groups of people coordinate and take aim at specific targets, the business community pays attention. Lost profits have a way of doing that.
A boycott is an effective way to raise awareness, and get the attention of the powerful. The #notbuyingit campaign is one such way to become informed, take a stand and make a difference.
Let's call out the perps that slag and/or exploit women in the name of making a buck. Let's show them that we do not support them by keeping our money in our pockets.
It is time to Occupy The Media and Advertising. It is time, as Adbusters says, to "eradicate the commercial virus infecting our culture... and break up the corporate media monopolies."
Together, we can take action and create the changes we wish to see.
I'm #notbuyingit. I'm not buying anything.
Would re-posting offensive advertisements not be perpetuating the media's influence and only helping their cause?
ReplyDeleteI for one, will not be participating.
I can certainly understand your distaste in reposting offending material, which only highlights the importance of getting rid of this crap. It is offensive, and has to be eliminated.
DeleteHowever, ignoring exploitive media and advertising only encourages the people who think that it is ok. We have to know what and who we are up against so we can educate them as to why what they are doing is detrimental to all of society.
Thankfully, you do not have to repost any offensive material. Messages outing the offenders can be made without images.
Thank you for commenting. You bring up an important point as we do not want to aid the abusers in any way.
I may be the only person who is not on Twitter or Pinerest, but glad to see that this horrendous problem is being brought to the forefront. I recently cancelled all (but one) of my magazine subscriptions because of the bombardment of ads that are objectionable.
ReplyDeleteMiss Marla - you rock.
DeleteWe have a Twitter account that we use every once in a while. It was good on Monday to follow OWS happenings as they were occurring, but it is not something that I would miss. No Pintrest account, or FB.
Most magazines seem like they are 80% advertising, and probably half of that is offensive or insulting in some way. Why pay for that?
I was able to get all the magazines for free, but still said "Enough". The only one I kept was Grit, nothing offensive there!
Delete