Are boycotts the ultimate form of passive aggression?

Your question interested me, @LostInParadise, because it made me think about how people boycotted before the age of Internet and it made me think about the history of successful boycotts in the world. I’m not really sure I get how it is passive aggressive to boycott though.

Why would you do it for no reason or a specious reson? One would want to use the power for good. It is not passive aggressive. It is acting by how you spend your dollars.

Randomly selecting companies to boycott definitely sounds like Occupy Wall Street. There is no point to it. I think you give the Occupy movement more power than they have. Or should I say had. If you want people to join into your protest, you need a point. Something to protest for or against. Even then Most boycotts fail.

I don’t understand what question you are actually asking. Are you just trying to raise awareness?

I don’t understand the point of randomly selecting any company for a boycott?

If you’re going to bother with a boycott, no small feat of education and coordination, you’re going to do it for a reason.

Such arbitrary use of the boycott is irresponsible and I don’t believe even OWS or today’s Anonymous would be so idiotic to attempt such an unfocused stunt. It would be the economic equivalent to a small inner-city terrorist bombing, harming indiscriminately on the street level while the sources of the problems coldly gaze down upon the carnage from the safe haven of their corporate aeries. And it would just piss everybody else off, eventually destroying the credibility and popular support of any group that repeatedly used this as a tactic. What an imbecilic, juvenile idea.

Contrary to @Jaxk‘s assertions, OWS would not randomly select somebody to boycott; that is something ultra-Conservatives do. Most boycotts are specifically targeted for a reason, and even then it is recognized that it is merely a symbolic gesture that will have little effect on profits. Conservatives seem far more random, though that may be because they are far more sensitive. Granted, I supposed that in the minds of some, supporting equal rights for the LGBT crowd is a more valid reason to boycott than exploitation of workers, price-gouging, monopolistic practices, and other such behavior. In other words, their boycotts of Pepsi, Starbucks, the Girl Scouts, Oreos, UPS, Amazon, Nike, Google, Cheerios, and a loooong list of other companies makes more sense than OWS simply because they are not Liberals.

Anyways, it’s rare for boycotts to be effective as it’s rare for any of them to gain enough backing to send the message effectively. The boycotts I mentioned above are good examples. There are not enough rabidly Christian Conservatives who care for their boycotts to be effective; most simply do not opposed gay rights strongly enough to give up their lattes, cookies, shoes, and online shopping.

Accordingly, most boycotts are passive-aggressive things since the only thing the boycotters group can do is hold their breath until their face turns blue. A 0.0003% dip in profits for a day won’t get anybody’s attention.

However, those that cause widespread moral outrage can be effective, and actually active. A boycott can give a voice to those who are not rich enough to buy a few dozen Senators. Admit it, in American-style Capitalism, lobbyists speak louder than consumers! But it has to be done right. It has to be a message with broad appeal.

I think that boycotts are inherently aggressive. You have to actually stop buying their product or service and let them know why you stopped. Stopping without communicating your reasons would be passive-aggressive but it would be ineffective because the company needs to know your complaints and you have to get people with similar feelings to join the boycott.

The organizers of a boycott have to state their reasons. The followers don’t have to do anything other than not buy from the boycotted company. If that is not passive aggression then I don’t know what is.

Just because boycotts have not been successful in the past does not mean they could not be successful in the future. Not buying is the secret weapon of the disempowered citizen that strikes at the very heart of capitalism. Your vote may not count for squat but your dollar is almighty.

Many boycotts do work. The lettuce and grape boycotts in California in the 1970s under the leadership of Cesar Chavez were very successful in getting migrant workers better wages and living conditions.

Boycotts do work, but Americans wouldn’t know that because their press underreports them. Here is a long list of successful boycotts from 1986 to 2009. Here are descriptions of successful boycotts since 2010.

Thanks for that. This is a civics lesson that everyone should be taught.

@Ron_C @LostInParadise Exactly so. What sort of message does it send when you stop buying a good/service without saying why? A company won’t stop doing whatever it was that prompted the boycott if they don’t know why they are being boycotted in the first place.

Of course, it also doesn’t do much good if the boycotting group is too small to really be worth noticing. I mean, offending left-handed albino midget lesbian eskimoes won’t really hurt your market share too much compared to offending, say, all women, or all Asian-Americans. OWS got results partly because they were a rather large movement and partly because they managed to get public attention. WBC manages to get attention, but they are a small group that manages to unite people against them, so if they boycott something, it won’t work that well.

@Espiritus_Corvus Very informative!

Having a sound reason for boycotting, telling the company you are doing it and why, and spreading the word about it is the point of boycotting. That doesn’t seem passive, to me, though it doesn’t require physical effort. If the company is left to wonder why their revenue is falling, they don’t know what to address in order to stop it. What good would that do anyone?

WBC?

@Jeruba Westboro Baptist Church, the group that pickets funerals and does other unsavory things. They are most noted for their extremist stance on homosexuality, insisting that every bad thing that happens is God’s punishment for us tolerating gay people. Recently, one of their sites (GodHatesFags.com) was hacked by Anonymous (though apparently it’s back up and running now), and groups such as the Anti-defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center list them as a hate group. Overall, a nasty bunch of people.

I consider what the Westboro group does as picketing, I don’t consider their actions boycotting.

@bkcunningham Yes, but you missed my point. Suppose that they did decide to boycott, say, JCPenney for “supporting and promoting the gay lifestyle”. How well would that work out? My guess is “not very”. It wouldn’t put a real dent in profits because there are few radical anti-gays, and from a PR standpoint, it may actually backfire… not that public opinion of the WBC is all that great anyways.

Ah. I know of the group, all right. Despicable. I don’t spend enough time thinking about it, though, to know it by its initials.

No, self defense is not aggression. It’s a means to deal with aggression. Like aggressive greedy corporate managers exploiting workers.