• darthelmet@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    I’m finding this funny/interesting. Because normally I think consumption boycotts don’t really work that well as a strategy since it takes a lot of people not buying the thing to affect big companies and big companies tend to have so many products people need that it can be hard for a lot of people to completely avoid them.

    But Tesla is in a uniquely terrible position for withstanding such a boycott. They sell one big ticket product market substitutes and its success depends almost entirely on its brand. They’re status symbols. They’re virtue signals for climate consciousness. (without you know, actually supporting real solutions like mass transit) And before people noticed how much of a shitbag Musk was, they were associated with his cool Tony Stark tech persona.

    Then Musk put himself into a position where anyone who was able to ignore his nonsense before definitely couldn’t now. So this company that was almost entirely dependent on people liking Musk enough to think the cars were cool now loses most of that market appeal.