Before we begin today I wanted to let you know that for nearly ten years I worked for a teleconferencing company named Conference Plus. I was there when Arkadin bought them out. I was gone before NTT bought them out. In my time there, as a conference operator and a tech support rep, I have dealt with a lot of extraordinarily rich people. I find it odd that we (meaning, Americans) worship the ground they walk on because almost all of them didn't have any common sense. Which is a polite way of saying they're fucking idiots. But they're smart about one thing. One very important thing.
Rich people love to spend other people's money. The golden rule is, never spend your own. Make someone else pay for things.
This lesson is important to the topic we're about to discuss. And yes, this is old news. I have a stockpile of GF ideas that are on the old side, but goddammit, I'm going to get to them all because even if they are outdated, they're interesting to me. I make it a habit of never--NEVER--writing about something that doesn't interest me.
A while back Dana White was on Theo Von's podcast in which they talked about RFK Jr's presidential run. This was back when Kennedy was still a Democrat. Von had RFK Jr on, and the comedian's advertisers demanded that the episode be taken down. White asked why, and Von didn't seem to have an answer. However, he did supply White with the name of one sponsor: Peleton. White's response: "Peleton sells stationary bikes, and they've got a problem with Robert Fucking Kennedy. Fuck you, Peleton."
He then went to throw all UFC's Peleton bikes in the trash. He said, "This is America. You can fucking have whoever you want on your podcast. You can do whatever the fuck you want to do."
Hold that thought. Around the same time Elon Musk, the Boy Who Would Be Crap, was being interviewed live onstage at some event or other, and he was asked about the advertising boycott at Ex. He'd made some anti-Semitic comments, so his advertisers essentially pulled out of the deal. Even he admits it was a stupid thing to do, but the boycott had an odd effect on him: not only did it enrage him, it also made him do one of those stupid things you do when you're called out for being stupid and don't want to admit it: he made himself into the victim. He initially said, "I hope they stop. Don't advertise. If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear?" And then he admitted that the boycott would destroy Ex. "It's going to kill the company. That is what everybody on Earth will know. We'll be gone, and it will be because of the advertiser boycott."
My hatred of advertising is well documented in these GF columns. At best I think they're annoying. At worst they are evil attempts at mind control. And there is a small part of me that likes both White and Musk just a little for their reactions. But advertising is a necessary evil.
As much as I hate advertising and advertisers, they pay for a lot of shit. These fuckers are never broke. They never scramble for money. Because all that money they're pumping into advertising should probably be put to better use, like paying their employees well. I seriously have no idea why McDonald's still advertises. Is there a single goddam American roaming the country who *doesn't* know about McDonald's? But they pay for things. TV shows, movies, music, just about every form of entertainment is paid for by advertisers. If they thought sponsoring books would help, I'm sure they'd be all over that.
But White is wrong. Because the advertisers *do* pay for everything, they actually *can* tell you who you can or can't have on the podcast they are paying for. You can have anyone you want on. You can do whatever you want to do. But you can't do those things and still expect to be sponsored by Peleton.
All that social media you enjoy? From Facebook to Ex to Instagram to even goddam MySpace, the reason you don't pay for anything is because the advertisers are paying for it. Each time you post something, it's because an advertiser allowed you to do so.
Let's get back to Musk. When I heard him tell his advertisers to go fuck himself, I desperately hoped the rest of the advertisers would also jump ship. I eagerly awaited the self-destruction of Ex mostly because he bought it so he could look like a free speech warrior. He's not. The only person who should have free speech, according to Musk, is Musk himself. Everyone else can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. I wanted to see the ego he'd pumped up with his ridiculous purchase of Twitter deflate like a hot air balloon dropping from the sky. Because I knew that without advertisers, he'd be forced to dip into his own money, and that breaks the golden rule as stated above. So in my head it turned into a question of how he'd lose: would he embrace his self-proclaimed victimhood and let Ex die naturally, or would he pump billions of his own money into something so broken that it can't be fixed? I expected the former but hoped for the latter.
Because you would think that advertisers, who are used to ruling the roost as those who pay for everything, would band together and squash Elon Musk and Dana White (and probably Theo Von, too) like bugs and then move on to the next thing. But that didn't happen.
What happened instead was what I like to call the Lindell Effect. Meaning, a morally bankrupt advertiser would take up the slack left by the others until other likeminded advertisers can join and therefore make Ex profitable. Goddammit.
Holy fuck, I never thought I'd be on the side of the advertisers. We're mortal enemies. But I guess there are some people worse than advertisers.
If you want to look at it another way, it comes back to journalism. It usually comes back to journalism. Who is the real person with power at a newspaper? Certainly not the journalist. The writer always gets the short end of the stick. And it's not the editor. It's not the publisher either, although you're closer. It's advertisers. An advertiser will pull their life-sustaining ads from a newspaper if they see reporting that they don't like, even if it is solid journalism. Who do you think gets fired in a case like that? Not the publisher or editor, I'll tell you that. But regardless, the newspapers know not to fuck with the advertisers. Then again, they're on life support right now, anyway. They can't afford to lose a single advertiser. I wonder if I'll live long enough to see a world with no physical newspapers . . .
