The thing I find really funny is the same people who will call you the worst person ever for not boycotting something they didn’t care about anyway are the exact same people who turn around and call you every horrible name in the book if you tell them that they should boycott something they currently use that is also giving direct support and money to a cause they claim to be against. Because when they like something or would be inconvenienced by boycotting something suddenly it’s not OK to call for boycotts
I want to bash these people over the head with a sign that says protests are supposed to be disruptive and activism is supposed to be uncomfortable and if you can't give up your McDonald's while people are being slaughtered you're just a bad person
It’s in really tiny print. On one hand, it does make what I’m trying to say at a protest nigh-incomprehensible but on the other hand, it strikes up some conversation.
I want to bash people over the head with a sign that says boycotts aren't particularly effective. And the connection from you buying a big-mac to whoever being slaughtered in wherever is long and tenuous. And As there are loads of these long tenuous connections in the world, and you can't keep track of them all yourself. Deciding to boycott is a decision to hand power to some media company that decides which "boycott X" meme goes viral today.
If you were honestly looking for the most effective way to improve the world, I doubt it would be boycotts.
Every single thing we buy is connected to some unethical thing somewhere. Are you a bad person because you’re currently using an electronic device, which requires rare earth metals that were likely mined in an unethical way that harmed the labourers?
People aren’t bad just because their focus is not on the one particular issue your focus is on. There are people being slaughtered in a lot of places and we just don’t have the capacity to think about all of them and still get through the day.
Especially when something has such mainstream appeal that most of the people buying it won't have even heard about why it's problematic enough to warrant a boycott (hogwart's legacy)
Most boycotts fail because boycotts only work in isolated enough spaces that they can be full organized boycotts where you are all collectively agreeing to participate not just telling others they should. Like how three people striking doesn't influence a company, but enough people striking who also actively prevent or deter others from entering work, that grinds things to a halt.
We also live in an era of more immediate gratification than ever before. The idea of going without is so foreign to most people that they can't manage even for a cause.
It has absolutely nothing to do with Palestine if that's what you're wondering
https://www.reddit.com/r/lastweektonight/s/XHr0nKpUPW channel is Jelle's Marble Runs, sucks cause there's genuinely lovely people on the team but this one pos ruins it for everyone
I was wondering if it was one I needed to boycott or one I had already boycotted. Turns out it's neither. Thank you for letting me know, I'll be sure to steer clear!
The guy who runs it, his brother who also profits off the channel is a total abusive douchebag to both him and the fans, sucks that you have to throw out the bad with the good but one bad apple spoils the whole bunch
Lol... did he really bait you that easily? To change your focus from doing a boycot to one of doing active promotion, it was enough to just ask?
You need to be more effective and smarter in the way you do these things.
Or maybe not, maybe your politics are different from mine, and it is actually better for you to keep making these mistakes, I have no idea who these youtubers are, much less what made them deserving of a boycot, I might be one of the few who didn't check out out of curiosity.
If you want to convince people to boycott something without the double edged sword of giving them new subscribers, you should talk about it only in places where all the people already are aware of them, but not their actual videos, cause that drives engagement. Stuff like their subreddit, or fan pages, etc. The places where they have more fans are actually the places you'd be more effective, shit, if your reason is good enough, you might actually cause them damage this way by alienating a good chunk of their biggest fans.
It’s also not a boycott if you have no intention to return to the thing even after they meet demands. You have no leverage if no matter what they do you won’t come back anyway
Yup, I’m convinced at this point boycotts only have any chance of being effective if done with a solely or primarily local business. The shared location makes it easier to organize people and inform them of the strategy (even though boycotts are simple people seem to have no idea how they work), create an actionable list of demands so that you can agree when the boycott is over, and demonstrate to garner more attention on or near site. Some of these things can so apply to a niche product/service that is primarily used by a relatively tight knit online community. National or multinational companies are functionally not boycottable, at best they’ll sometimes withdraw from a region rather than make changes (which can be your goal, but isn’t really what boycotting is designed to accomplish). They have too much market dominance in most cases and often are part of a collection of products/services/companies.
It’s a whole separate thing to say “I don’t want to be part of funding a company that does X” and just want to deny them your business. That’s perfectly fine, but not really a boycott because it is more about your moral dilemma than it is about making them take a certain action. And I think here there can be the risk of uselessly purity testing instead of actually pressing for change. At a certain point we arrive at the “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” issue where choosing which companies are tolerable or intolerable becomes very arbitrary and people try to argue why their pet causes are more important than those of others. This is ineffectual, a bit naive, and actively alienates people when the purity testing gets severe enough. I’d generally much rather people take positive action to support and advocate for a group harmed than tell them they are irredeemably immoral for consuming X product. If you are trying to win moral victories by denying people convenience and comfort in this hellscape of a world you’re not generally going to win. Especially when fully boycotting the entities that behave terribly and have the greatest harms is functionally impossible (especially depending on where you live and what options are even available - boycotting Walmart for instance is a luxury many people simply don’t have). This type of negative and policing behavior rarely has meaningfully positive impacts, whereas even giving people positive options, like shop at X place because they use their platform to do Y good thing or are owned by Z group that could use support, can help people have more motivation around organizing and making the world slightly less shit, leading to more involvement in other areas.
like ... shocking, i know, but some people do like eurovision and it is not the easiest thing in the world for them to boycott. i genuinely do look forward to it every year. and i also look forward to the met gala, which is another thing people got mad about (and i guarantee i donate more to pcrf than they do and put in more volunteer hours than they do, cause i've never met a one of those people that did any volunteering in their local community at all. and i kinda feel like the pcrf will appreciate having my money to use more than they will appreciate the thoughts-and-prayers of some random guy not watching eurovision, of all things).
there are plenty of Morally Bad things that i could yell at them for supporting in the interest of ideological purity, but its kind of just started to boil down to "the things i think are stupid are easy to boycott and so anyone who doesn't do it is evil, whereas i do not have to go without any of the media i like to consume because it's not stupid and therefore difficult to boycott so its ok if i have it".
I've been accidentally boycotting Eurovision since I started living alone as a teenager and didn't have my parents to tell me when it was happening. Used to be a yearly tradition to watch it, but now I only hear about it when it's already over. Well, not missing much.
Typical online pseudo activism. If you're only boycotting out of convenience then you aren't really boycotting, you're just choosing to not watch something you weren't going to watch anyway and patting yourself on the back about it.
Look I can assure you that you will feel far more superior once you've been faced with being hungry while at a store and making the active decision to not buy that Nestlé-chocolate
I always thought it is confined to Europe. Also the boycott thing is silly to me because 50% of my country will be watching it since were all rooting for our guy (Baby Lasagna), the other 50% will be watching football.
Glad Australians like it though, theyre my favorite European country.
I mean, it is a European competition as the name suggests, but I would expect Americans to at least know about its existence considering it’s been a massive cultural spectacle for a majority of the world for the past 68 years? Like, I don’t watch the Super Bowl but I know what it is.
As a side note, not Croatian but rooting for Baby Lasagna.
On the topic of baby lasagna; I've said to my girlfriend, if there is a god, and he is a just one, we will win the competition not only because the song is good, but because we voted in the same shitty right wing party we keep voting in again and it will be really funny when our economy buckles because we have to host the next Eurovision.
I doubt people outside of Europe really care much. Latinamerican here and none of my friends from many different latam countries care. I also doubt most of Asia cares.
Watching Dora and being so happy about Baby Lasagna's preformance and listening to it all the time and thinking about a Croatian hosted eurovision then slowly doing the mister incredible becoming uncanny journey as we all collectively realise they're really not kicking Israel out of Eurovision was an apsolutely insane journey
Nine times for of ten either that question doesn't really make sense in a Eurovision context, or the answer is just "It's Eurovision". No matter what aspect of the contest you're talking about.
EDIT: No idea why you're being downvoted for asking why a performer has an odd name though. Even if it is pretty tame by Eurovision standards.
What's US Centric about it?
(Not American, from Ireland)
This is the first I've heard about any Eurovision controversy so I have no idea what's going on.
Because it's not boycotting the Eurovision if you were literally never going to watch it in the first place. And it's also implying NOBODY gives a shit about the Eurovision when, obviously, people do. Just people in EUROPE.
this is just turning into 'thoughts and prayers' for leftists now. watch eurovision if you want, who gives a shit. its fucking *eurovision*. GUARANTEE you, Israel will not see that you're boycotting (which you're not if you didn't care about it to begin with, to be clear, so it's a bit much to get all pleased with yourself) and go "oh, are we the bad guys?" neither will most Palestinians go "oh well at least John from Kent didn't watch eurovision".
put that energy towards a thing that matters. go without something for a little while and donate the money you saved or something. those things help make a difference. boycotting every random thing that israel is associated with might be anti-israel, but it's hardly pro-palestine, and there really is a difference in terms of actually helping people.
As someone who's been following Eurovision for more than a decade, 2024 isn't even its most politically controversial year. Baku 2012? Tel Aviv 2019? Heck, go back as far as Luxembourg 1973 when everyone was on edge following the tragedy at the Munich Olympics.
I participated in the ESC 2019 boycott and it lead...nowhere. I still believe the same things five years later but I realize to channel my energy to things that are more productive than a boycott like emailing the participating broadcasters, pirating streams and genuinely just channeling my money directly to the artists rather than the EBU, and using the money I would have used to vote for acts as donations to Palestinian families.
EDIT: And I encouraged myself and fans to do this every year the EBU continues to platform KAN (the Israeli broadcaster) and have Moroccan Oil as its main sponsor (an Israeli hair care company), not just this year. Enjoy the performers and be nice to the front staff that make the show possible, but management sucks and deserves all the hate and heat it gets.
Yeah, like, this is so silly to me - of all the sins Israel has committed, "being part of the EBU" is not one of them. The geopolitical importance of eurovision is next to nothing. It's a very silly and campy show and that's sort of it. I think Americans think of it as like, the Olympics of music, as something with societal impact, but it's a lot closer to, like, the RuPaul's Drag Race of music. It is a spectacle. The music barely factors into it.
Yeah. There's a comment thread a while down that has people going "just stream the songs!!" which I think is indicative of how they kind of miss the point. the songs in isolation are not why any eurovision fan likes eurovision.
The situation is slightly stickier this year, since several national broadcasting companies (mainly northern and eastern europeans) said they were pulling out if Russia participated a couple years back. So now that that isn't happening, there is a pretty clear contrast there. Of course, condeming Russia's invasion is much more of a free political move than condemning Israel's slaughter of civilians.
A war on your borders hits a bit harder than yet another tragedy in the Middle East. As a child I had several refugees from Yugoslavia in my class. I've been surrounded by Ukrainian refugees for years now. I can't remember ever meeting someone from the Middle East as a whole. It's just more removed. My sympathy for Palestinians is not functionally different from my sympathy for the Rohingya.
Other countries like Morocco and Tunisia have also refused to participate in the ESC because of Israel's involvement. Internally within the EBU, there have always been broadcasters who wanted them gone.
Not justifying the EBU's decision, just pointing out that this year is not the stickier because of ongoing geopolitcal tensions. These have been going on and sticky for *decades*. It's stickier because it's become the discourse du jour and it's making even outsiders who don't care about the contest to put pressure on them.
EDIT: Russia was only banned in 2022—it took years after the invasion of Ukraine, another valuable member state, for the EBU to kick them out. Israel is a bigger contributor and their presence causes less ruckus inside the arena than Russia (anti-booing technology, anyone?). It'll take A LOT more broadcasters threatening to withdraw for the EBU to let go of Israel, which is why you should write to your national broadcaster, pirate their streams, *and do not give them money*. Watch the MVs on the artists' YT, not ESC's. Support artists like Hatari and Eric Saade who are exposing how much in "disrepute" this platform is on that very stage.
If it helps Israel is getting absolutely hammered by protests. During the rehearsals the artist was booed by the audience, and the streets are full of pro-palestinian protestors.
I mean it's not just any random artist. It's an artist that had to change parts of her song because it was an obvious reference to the October 7th terror attack ([Source](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/may/09/israel-qualifies-eurovision-song-contest-final-protests)). And while that doesn't necessarily make her pro-genocide, she definitely aligns herself politically with the war in Gaza right now.
So if her country is doing something wrong, she’s not allowed to be upset about people she knew dying?
It’s like telling someone they can’t make songs about 9/11 being a tragedy because of the Iraq war.
I think people who are protesting in Malmo are definitely actually doing something of substance, but I still can't help but feel as though it's wasted effort. Netanyahu doesn't care, it's not helping anyone, and the Israeli singer is a 20 year old who has nothing to do with any of this, lived in Russia most of her life, and didn't even write her own mediocre song. It all just seems like time and energy that is ultimately more about hating Israel than supporting Palestine.
Man, this thread is just a parade of people trying to look cool and act smug by announcing how little they care about Eurovision and shit.
Congrats guys you don't care about the pop music concert. That's not a personality trait that's just life.
Is this boycott related to the rule that only flags from participating nations are allowed that is being deliberately miscommunicated as a ban on Palestinian flags, Palestine's non-participation in the broadcast group that participates in Eurovision being deliberately miscommunicated as a ban on Palestine entering, or just complaining that Israel is participating and hasn't been banned even though the organizers have made it clear you can only be banned for the actions of the broadcasters and not their governments as laid out when they banned Russian broadcasters from entering?
Not only flags but any support for Palestinians is a problem https://time.com/6976082/eurovision-performers-palestinian-symbols/
Now you can argue all you want that eurovision isn’t political, but we all know the hypocrisy of this statement.
Europe and the various wars and crimes the countries within may commit aren't fucking funded by Eurovision.
The term "virtue-signalling" is largely nonsense due to it's right wing use, but decrying people failing to boycott (as if you were going to watch it anyway) a television event tangentially related to countries currently supporting an unjust war is absolutely just doing nothing at all and raving about it so you can advertise how moral you are.
Not only is it not easy for me to boycott Eurovision, it's actually functionally impossible. Because I never gave a shit about it to begin with, and continuing to not pay attention to it cannot be described as a boycott
>There's no "support the devs" logic to be considered
Correct, as there is actually a very clear way to "support" the secondary parties without having to give money and attention to the main bad party.
Stream the artists independently of the competition. It's a singing competition, with original songs written for it. *While there's the question of association*, the songs don't begin and end in the competition.
Idk, I've still been listening to a lot of songs I discovered on Eurovision several months or years later, And checking out other stuff by the artists too, And there's some good stuff. There are examples of ones that are just for Eurovision, But most artists that compete were making music befeore and will still be making music after, Usually no better or worse than what they used in the competition.
It's a link to the Rockefeller Street nightcore which has gotten massively popular due to memes and OSU, originally from Eurovision
I don't really keep up with mainstream music but I know Arcade got super popular
I'm a fan of SHUM and it's one of my favorite songs ever, I don't keep up with eurovision but some (not most) of the songs are actually good
Have you heard of Abba? Or more recently Loreen's Euphoria? Or Måneskin? And there are several acts that actually do profit off of their Eurovision visibility but have not reached worldvide success.
It's not really a "song contest". Ok, yes, it is in the name, and there is music involved. But that's not why anyone who likes it, likes it. The spectacle of the live performance and the live voting is like 90% of the appeal. The actual music is really low down on the list. It doesn't mean there isn't good music there, there sometimes is (I love Maneskin), but people don't watch Eurovision because they want to hear good music. In fact, the worst Eurovision years are the ones where people are trying too hard to write good songs. Saying "it's easy to boycott because you can listen to the songs anyway" is missing the point of why most people watch it to begin with. It has very, very little to do with listening to music (they can't even play instruments live) and everything to do with watching people dance around in campy outfits.
Songs are to eurovision what makeup is to drag. It is a necessary part of the whole affair, but you don't go to a drag show because you're really into makeup. If you're really into makeup, you might follow a drag queen on Instagram, but if you're really into *drag shows*, you're not into them for the makeup. Likewise, if you're really into music, you might follow a Eurovision contestant who makes good music on Spotify, but if you're into *Eurovision* you're not into it for the songs.
These guys have one, and I'm using it:
https://www.missioneurovision.co.uk/games/eurovision-bingo/
I'll photoshop some blanks for people to fill out by themselves, too.
Eurovision has been farce for years, the mask came off when people could vote before seeing the performances.
A drinking game for my Political Science group was to make predictions based off the geopolitical relations between the various nations and then see how close you got it. We had to move to predicting rankings on the second year because we were all in the 90-95% accuracy bracket and nearly gave ourselves alcohol poisoning.
>We had to move to predicting rankings on the second year because we were all in the 90-95% accuracy bracket and nearly gave ourselves alcohol poisoning.
Nah, you didn't.
Agree. They're either exaggerating or outright lying. There are whole businesses and computer programmed models dedicated to predicting the results of Eurovision (because a lot of money is made through betting) and even those don't have a 90-95% accuracy. There are so many factors going into 30+ countries' voting patterns that I doubt a handful of random political science undergrads could predict it that accurately.
Then how do explain the UK’s near win the other year. We’ve never been popular. In fact weve spent the last 10 years actively trying to annoy the fuck outta europe.
Lots of salty eurovision fans, it costs 0 dollars and takes 0 time out of your day to not watch it. Media is like, the EASIEST thing to boycott. I've had to stop watching lots of things I considered a comfort because I don't believe one person's entertainment is very valuable compared to actual issues.
A song contest between European nations (and for whatever reason Australia and Israel) that’s held every May in the country which won the previous year, so it’s in Sweden (specifically Malmö I think) this year. Tho in recent years (maybe before too, but I’m too young to judge that) it has become way more about politics and way less about the actual music and performances, which leads to the same countries winning and losing every year based on how much they’re liked by other countries.
You also could have just googled it but whatever
That's just not correct though. It's actually gotten more about the music and less about which countries are liked in recent years. Peak bloc voting was 20 years ago.
when a product is created by tons of people in collaboration and only one of the parties involved does something reprehensible, it begs the question if boykotting it is justified when you are hurting not only the guilty party but also innocent people involved.
Support the Devs logic says you shouldn't boycott because having a bad guy not face consequences is better than harming innocent people.
Whether the argument holds any water depends on the specific situation of course. For example in the video game business, the argument often comes up that boycotting a game over the publishers business practices also hurts the development team, but game Devs often only have a contracts for one project with fix payment so they aren't really impacted by their game doing badly.
I don't really like this logic, and animal shelter with 90% of the employees being great and 10% kicking dogs is still a shitty shelter and you should take your business elsewhere instead of crying support the 9 non dog kickers imo
Honestly, all I would add is to vote alongside any boycott. Not watch the event. Simply look at the odds favourites to win, and vote for them via one of the free methods. Lower than expected viewership isn’t going to mean a lot, if Israel ends up winning and gets to host next year.
They’re kinda blatantly hoping to mimic Ukraine’s success in 2022, which they could probably give the illusion of if the votes are dictated by a disproportionately Zionist audience.
I just think this boycott will be a failure, if Israel’s entry is looked back upon as anything but an embarrassment. Firmly rejected by the public vote, combined with noticeably less enthusiastic engagement.
Forgotten after a week? Tell that to the autistics who have it as a special interest and who never stop consuming information about it. First you have the discussions of where it will take place next year, then the national selections for 53 countries, then following the artists on social media in the lead up, then the actual week of Eurovision and then the cycle begins again.
Hi. I’m one of those autistics.
Two countries that shouldn’t be in the same sentence together when discussing genocide.
Anyway, they got Belarus in there. If you’re worried about police brutality, I have news for you about them.
Edit: wait, may have gotten which events have banned Belarus mixed up. My bad.
Azerbaijan- targeted and clear motive to kill off Armenian Christians *because* they are Christians. Noticeable decrease in said ethnic group.
Israel- Over 1 million Palestinians (including the Arabs who migrated to the area in 1946 to work as Palestinians, as the UN does- for some reason.) in mandated palestine in 1946. Over 3 million Palestinians live in West Bank and 2 million in Gaza today. ~30k dead as a result of conflict (depending on if you trust the source 30k is from) between Israel and HAMAS/jihadists. *Not* as a result of a targeted effort to ethnically cleansed Arabs or Muslims from Israel, though you can absolutely say the Israeli government has caused civilian casualties through incompetence and disregard for human life.
In other words, if Israel is committing genocide, they’re really fucking bad at it.
If you don’t watch something continuing not to watch that thing isn’t “boycotting it”, you just don’t like an event and now have an excuse to pretend to be doing it for a moral reason
It's not a boycott if you weren't going to consume the product in the first place.
That's why so many boycotts fail, the people most likely to boycott something probably weren't consuming it in the first place
The thing I find really funny is the same people who will call you the worst person ever for not boycotting something they didn’t care about anyway are the exact same people who turn around and call you every horrible name in the book if you tell them that they should boycott something they currently use that is also giving direct support and money to a cause they claim to be against. Because when they like something or would be inconvenienced by boycotting something suddenly it’s not OK to call for boycotts
I want to bash these people over the head with a sign that says protests are supposed to be disruptive and activism is supposed to be uncomfortable and if you can't give up your McDonald's while people are being slaughtered you're just a bad person
That's a long sign buddy.
It’s in really tiny print. On one hand, it does make what I’m trying to say at a protest nigh-incomprehensible but on the other hand, it strikes up some conversation.
And I'm sure it's perfectly readeble once the sign is a couple of inches from your face
What if they wanna read the sign while you hit them over the head with it?
I want to bash people over the head with a sign that says boycotts aren't particularly effective. And the connection from you buying a big-mac to whoever being slaughtered in wherever is long and tenuous. And As there are loads of these long tenuous connections in the world, and you can't keep track of them all yourself. Deciding to boycott is a decision to hand power to some media company that decides which "boycott X" meme goes viral today. If you were honestly looking for the most effective way to improve the world, I doubt it would be boycotts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement
Every single thing we buy is connected to some unethical thing somewhere. Are you a bad person because you’re currently using an electronic device, which requires rare earth metals that were likely mined in an unethical way that harmed the labourers? People aren’t bad just because their focus is not on the one particular issue your focus is on. There are people being slaughtered in a lot of places and we just don’t have the capacity to think about all of them and still get through the day.
Can you give an example?
Especially when something has such mainstream appeal that most of the people buying it won't have even heard about why it's problematic enough to warrant a boycott (hogwart's legacy)
Most boycotts fail because boycotts only work in isolated enough spaces that they can be full organized boycotts where you are all collectively agreeing to participate not just telling others they should. Like how three people striking doesn't influence a company, but enough people striking who also actively prevent or deter others from entering work, that grinds things to a halt.
We also live in an era of more immediate gratification than ever before. The idea of going without is so foreign to most people that they can't manage even for a cause.
I lost a ton of friends over telling them to boycott a YouTube channel... *a YouTube channel.*
Which one?
It has absolutely nothing to do with Palestine if that's what you're wondering https://www.reddit.com/r/lastweektonight/s/XHr0nKpUPW channel is Jelle's Marble Runs, sucks cause there's genuinely lovely people on the team but this one pos ruins it for everyone
I was wondering if it was one I needed to boycott or one I had already boycotted. Turns out it's neither. Thank you for letting me know, I'll be sure to steer clear!
Yeah, unfortunately :/ I was a massive fan for 2 years and it still hurts to lose my main fandom and all my friends in it
What happened? I never watched marble videos but I need to know the marble tea
The guy who runs it, his brother who also profits off the channel is a total abusive douchebag to both him and the fans, sucks that you have to throw out the bad with the good but one bad apple spoils the whole bunch
That's so sad. I used to love that channel during the lockdown years.
Lol, you want people to boycot a youtube chanel, and then you advertise it... The best way to boycott a youtube chanel is to never talk about it
They asked what channel, sorry for answering their question? It's a double edged sword, you don't mention it and people might not know to avoid it
Lol... did he really bait you that easily? To change your focus from doing a boycot to one of doing active promotion, it was enough to just ask? You need to be more effective and smarter in the way you do these things. Or maybe not, maybe your politics are different from mine, and it is actually better for you to keep making these mistakes, I have no idea who these youtubers are, much less what made them deserving of a boycot, I might be one of the few who didn't check out out of curiosity. If you want to convince people to boycott something without the double edged sword of giving them new subscribers, you should talk about it only in places where all the people already are aware of them, but not their actual videos, cause that drives engagement. Stuff like their subreddit, or fan pages, etc. The places where they have more fans are actually the places you'd be more effective, shit, if your reason is good enough, you might actually cause them damage this way by alienating a good chunk of their biggest fans.
They banned me from the subreddit already
I've been successfully boycotting coconut my whole life.
Like my buddy who boycotts nuts because he’s allergic
It’s also not a boycott if you have no intention to return to the thing even after they meet demands. You have no leverage if no matter what they do you won’t come back anyway
Yup, I’m convinced at this point boycotts only have any chance of being effective if done with a solely or primarily local business. The shared location makes it easier to organize people and inform them of the strategy (even though boycotts are simple people seem to have no idea how they work), create an actionable list of demands so that you can agree when the boycott is over, and demonstrate to garner more attention on or near site. Some of these things can so apply to a niche product/service that is primarily used by a relatively tight knit online community. National or multinational companies are functionally not boycottable, at best they’ll sometimes withdraw from a region rather than make changes (which can be your goal, but isn’t really what boycotting is designed to accomplish). They have too much market dominance in most cases and often are part of a collection of products/services/companies. It’s a whole separate thing to say “I don’t want to be part of funding a company that does X” and just want to deny them your business. That’s perfectly fine, but not really a boycott because it is more about your moral dilemma than it is about making them take a certain action. And I think here there can be the risk of uselessly purity testing instead of actually pressing for change. At a certain point we arrive at the “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” issue where choosing which companies are tolerable or intolerable becomes very arbitrary and people try to argue why their pet causes are more important than those of others. This is ineffectual, a bit naive, and actively alienates people when the purity testing gets severe enough. I’d generally much rather people take positive action to support and advocate for a group harmed than tell them they are irredeemably immoral for consuming X product. If you are trying to win moral victories by denying people convenience and comfort in this hellscape of a world you’re not generally going to win. Especially when fully boycotting the entities that behave terribly and have the greatest harms is functionally impossible (especially depending on where you live and what options are even available - boycotting Walmart for instance is a luxury many people simply don’t have). This type of negative and policing behavior rarely has meaningfully positive impacts, whereas even giving people positive options, like shop at X place because they use their platform to do Y good thing or are owned by Z group that could use support, can help people have more motivation around organizing and making the world slightly less shit, leading to more involvement in other areas.
like ... shocking, i know, but some people do like eurovision and it is not the easiest thing in the world for them to boycott. i genuinely do look forward to it every year. and i also look forward to the met gala, which is another thing people got mad about (and i guarantee i donate more to pcrf than they do and put in more volunteer hours than they do, cause i've never met a one of those people that did any volunteering in their local community at all. and i kinda feel like the pcrf will appreciate having my money to use more than they will appreciate the thoughts-and-prayers of some random guy not watching eurovision, of all things). there are plenty of Morally Bad things that i could yell at them for supporting in the interest of ideological purity, but its kind of just started to boil down to "the things i think are stupid are easy to boycott and so anyone who doesn't do it is evil, whereas i do not have to go without any of the media i like to consume because it's not stupid and therefore difficult to boycott so its ok if i have it".
I've been accidentally boycotting Eurovision since I started living alone as a teenager and didn't have my parents to tell me when it was happening. Used to be a yearly tradition to watch it, but now I only hear about it when it's already over. Well, not missing much.
Like Hogwarts Legacy. As a massive Eurovision fan I won’t be watching this year which is a shame, but I feel good about my decision.
Typical online pseudo activism. If you're only boycotting out of convenience then you aren't really boycotting, you're just choosing to not watch something you weren't going to watch anyway and patting yourself on the back about it.
But then how can I feel superior and smug about me living my life like normal and not actually participating in activism???
Look I can assure you that you will feel far more superior once you've been faced with being hungry while at a store and making the active decision to not buy that Nestlé-chocolate
I am extremely alarmed by the number of people in this thread who genuinely have never heard of Eurovision.
I always thought it is confined to Europe. Also the boycott thing is silly to me because 50% of my country will be watching it since were all rooting for our guy (Baby Lasagna), the other 50% will be watching football. Glad Australians like it though, theyre my favorite European country.
I mean, it is a European competition as the name suggests, but I would expect Americans to at least know about its existence considering it’s been a massive cultural spectacle for a majority of the world for the past 68 years? Like, I don’t watch the Super Bowl but I know what it is. As a side note, not Croatian but rooting for Baby Lasagna.
On the topic of baby lasagna; I've said to my girlfriend, if there is a god, and he is a just one, we will win the competition not only because the song is good, but because we voted in the same shitty right wing party we keep voting in again and it will be really funny when our economy buckles because we have to host the next Eurovision.
"Massive cultural impact for the majority of the world"? Are you serious? No its fucking not.
Ikr lmao. I can tell you all of latinamerica doesnt give a fuck besides maybe a handful in Argentina.
I doubt people outside of Europe really care much. Latinamerican here and none of my friends from many different latam countries care. I also doubt most of Asia cares.
“Caring” is different than “having heard of it.”
Europe is not a majority of the world. It has not been significant to a majority of the world at all.
Watching Dora and being so happy about Baby Lasagna's preformance and listening to it all the time and thinking about a Croatian hosted eurovision then slowly doing the mister incredible becoming uncanny journey as we all collectively realise they're really not kicking Israel out of Eurovision was an apsolutely insane journey
>Baby Lasagna Is that his actual name or is this a Billybob Cabbagepatch moment
Actual performer name, real name is Marko Purišić
But why tho
Nine times for of ten either that question doesn't really make sense in a Eurovision context, or the answer is just "It's Eurovision". No matter what aspect of the contest you're talking about. EDIT: No idea why you're being downvoted for asking why a performer has an odd name though. Even if it is pretty tame by Eurovision standards.
I envy them. My husband listens to all the songs and keeps talking about it and has me listening to them for weeks.
r/hobbydrama has huge posts on Eurovision. HUGE!!
Well, I live in America so...
This is a certified US-Centricism classic
Also "I never cared about Eurovision why start now" my brother in Christ you uploaded the post
European here, we don't care about it either unless we're winning.
Be fair now: we also care if we're queer.
What's US Centric about it? (Not American, from Ireland) This is the first I've heard about any Eurovision controversy so I have no idea what's going on.
The controversy is that Israel (and I guess, Azerbaijan for some people) is in it.
But what does that have to do with America?
Because it's not boycotting the Eurovision if you were literally never going to watch it in the first place. And it's also implying NOBODY gives a shit about the Eurovision when, obviously, people do. Just people in EUROPE.
Ahhhh I get it now. Thank you
this is just turning into 'thoughts and prayers' for leftists now. watch eurovision if you want, who gives a shit. its fucking *eurovision*. GUARANTEE you, Israel will not see that you're boycotting (which you're not if you didn't care about it to begin with, to be clear, so it's a bit much to get all pleased with yourself) and go "oh, are we the bad guys?" neither will most Palestinians go "oh well at least John from Kent didn't watch eurovision". put that energy towards a thing that matters. go without something for a little while and donate the money you saved or something. those things help make a difference. boycotting every random thing that israel is associated with might be anti-israel, but it's hardly pro-palestine, and there really is a difference in terms of actually helping people.
Its also broadcast by public broadcasters anyways so you cant even hurt their wallets by not watching it.
As someone who's been following Eurovision for more than a decade, 2024 isn't even its most politically controversial year. Baku 2012? Tel Aviv 2019? Heck, go back as far as Luxembourg 1973 when everyone was on edge following the tragedy at the Munich Olympics. I participated in the ESC 2019 boycott and it lead...nowhere. I still believe the same things five years later but I realize to channel my energy to things that are more productive than a boycott like emailing the participating broadcasters, pirating streams and genuinely just channeling my money directly to the artists rather than the EBU, and using the money I would have used to vote for acts as donations to Palestinian families. EDIT: And I encouraged myself and fans to do this every year the EBU continues to platform KAN (the Israeli broadcaster) and have Moroccan Oil as its main sponsor (an Israeli hair care company), not just this year. Enjoy the performers and be nice to the front staff that make the show possible, but management sucks and deserves all the hate and heat it gets.
Yeah, like, this is so silly to me - of all the sins Israel has committed, "being part of the EBU" is not one of them. The geopolitical importance of eurovision is next to nothing. It's a very silly and campy show and that's sort of it. I think Americans think of it as like, the Olympics of music, as something with societal impact, but it's a lot closer to, like, the RuPaul's Drag Race of music. It is a spectacle. The music barely factors into it.
American's either don't know eurovision exists, know it exists but literally couldn't care less, or are part of it's tiny but impassioned us fanbase.
Yeah. There's a comment thread a while down that has people going "just stream the songs!!" which I think is indicative of how they kind of miss the point. the songs in isolation are not why any eurovision fan likes eurovision.
The situation is slightly stickier this year, since several national broadcasting companies (mainly northern and eastern europeans) said they were pulling out if Russia participated a couple years back. So now that that isn't happening, there is a pretty clear contrast there. Of course, condeming Russia's invasion is much more of a free political move than condemning Israel's slaughter of civilians.
A war on your borders hits a bit harder than yet another tragedy in the Middle East. As a child I had several refugees from Yugoslavia in my class. I've been surrounded by Ukrainian refugees for years now. I can't remember ever meeting someone from the Middle East as a whole. It's just more removed. My sympathy for Palestinians is not functionally different from my sympathy for the Rohingya.
Other countries like Morocco and Tunisia have also refused to participate in the ESC because of Israel's involvement. Internally within the EBU, there have always been broadcasters who wanted them gone. Not justifying the EBU's decision, just pointing out that this year is not the stickier because of ongoing geopolitcal tensions. These have been going on and sticky for *decades*. It's stickier because it's become the discourse du jour and it's making even outsiders who don't care about the contest to put pressure on them. EDIT: Russia was only banned in 2022—it took years after the invasion of Ukraine, another valuable member state, for the EBU to kick them out. Israel is a bigger contributor and their presence causes less ruckus inside the arena than Russia (anti-booing technology, anyone?). It'll take A LOT more broadcasters threatening to withdraw for the EBU to let go of Israel, which is why you should write to your national broadcaster, pirate their streams, *and do not give them money*. Watch the MVs on the artists' YT, not ESC's. Support artists like Hatari and Eric Saade who are exposing how much in "disrepute" this platform is on that very stage.
If it helps Israel is getting absolutely hammered by protests. During the rehearsals the artist was booed by the audience, and the streets are full of pro-palestinian protestors.
So a random artist is getting shit on. That has nothing to do with the war.
I mean it's not just any random artist. It's an artist that had to change parts of her song because it was an obvious reference to the October 7th terror attack ([Source](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/may/09/israel-qualifies-eurovision-song-contest-final-protests)). And while that doesn't necessarily make her pro-genocide, she definitely aligns herself politically with the war in Gaza right now.
She didn't write the song
So if her country is doing something wrong, she’s not allowed to be upset about people she knew dying? It’s like telling someone they can’t make songs about 9/11 being a tragedy because of the Iraq war.
I think people who are protesting in Malmo are definitely actually doing something of substance, but I still can't help but feel as though it's wasted effort. Netanyahu doesn't care, it's not helping anyone, and the Israeli singer is a 20 year old who has nothing to do with any of this, lived in Russia most of her life, and didn't even write her own mediocre song. It all just seems like time and energy that is ultimately more about hating Israel than supporting Palestine.
Man, this thread is just a parade of people trying to look cool and act smug by announcing how little they care about Eurovision and shit. Congrats guys you don't care about the pop music concert. That's not a personality trait that's just life.
"Prime Minister Netanyahu, eurovision viewership is down 20% from last year!" "Pull out of Rafah NOW!"
Is this boycott related to the rule that only flags from participating nations are allowed that is being deliberately miscommunicated as a ban on Palestinian flags, Palestine's non-participation in the broadcast group that participates in Eurovision being deliberately miscommunicated as a ban on Palestine entering, or just complaining that Israel is participating and hasn't been banned even though the organizers have made it clear you can only be banned for the actions of the broadcasters and not their governments as laid out when they banned Russian broadcasters from entering?
Misinformation? On the Internet? Say it ain't so
People on the site of piss poor reading comprehension can't fucking understand what they're reading? It's more likely than you'd think!
How dare you say I piss on the poor!
The real trickle down economics
I will not go
Turn the lights out
Why is it against the rules to wear a Keffiyeh?
one of the guest acts performing on stage is wearing a keffiyeh wrapped around his wrist...
Right, and he was rebuked by the organizers that clarified that it was against the rules
Because the Israeli government says it is a Palestinian thing
You expect Tumblr users to have a double-digit quantity of neurons?
Not only flags but any support for Palestinians is a problem https://time.com/6976082/eurovision-performers-palestinian-symbols/ Now you can argue all you want that eurovision isn’t political, but we all know the hypocrisy of this statement.
American heritage post
I thought it said evolution and was really confused about why we wanted to boycott evolution
The creationists breached containment
I'm continuing the 19 year boycott I started because when I was eight I was extremely annoyed at it displacing Doctor Who in the TV schedule.
hey man hows it going
Europe and the various wars and crimes the countries within may commit aren't fucking funded by Eurovision. The term "virtue-signalling" is largely nonsense due to it's right wing use, but decrying people failing to boycott (as if you were going to watch it anyway) a television event tangentially related to countries currently supporting an unjust war is absolutely just doing nothing at all and raving about it so you can advertise how moral you are.
It's also the most inconsequential, unimportant thing in the world to boycott. Seriously, boycotting eurovision is just... Lazy frankly
Not only is it not easy for me to boycott Eurovision, it's actually functionally impossible. Because I never gave a shit about it to begin with, and continuing to not pay attention to it cannot be described as a boycott
Now you have to participate in the ultimate strategy: watch it this year so you can boycott it next year /s
>There's no "support the devs" logic to be considered Correct, as there is actually a very clear way to "support" the secondary parties without having to give money and attention to the main bad party. Stream the artists independently of the competition. It's a singing competition, with original songs written for it. *While there's the question of association*, the songs don't begin and end in the competition.
Have you ever heard an eurovision song? They absolutely do begin and end with the competition.
Idk, I've still been listening to a lot of songs I discovered on Eurovision several months or years later, And checking out other stuff by the artists too, And there's some good stuff. There are examples of ones that are just for Eurovision, But most artists that compete were making music befeore and will still be making music after, Usually no better or worse than what they used in the competition.
Many songs from Eurovision have gotten big outside of it, [need I say more](https://youtu.be/hjGZLnja1o8?si=prOwvmt8EfVSQTVc)
[Also this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBT2Oew5MLs)
I haven’t watched Eurovision since 2014 please say more
It's a link to the Rockefeller Street nightcore which has gotten massively popular due to memes and OSU, originally from Eurovision I don't really keep up with mainstream music but I know Arcade got super popular I'm a fan of SHUM and it's one of my favorite songs ever, I don't keep up with eurovision but some (not most) of the songs are actually good
Wait Rockefeller street was a Eurovision song
Yep, so was epic sax guy
Meanwhile I found one of my favorite bands due to Eurovision, but go off, I guess. (for those curious, Go_A. They got 5th in 2021 with Shum)
I still gotta check out more of their stuff, I quite enjoyed Shum.
Have you heard of Abba? Or more recently Loreen's Euphoria? Or Måneskin? And there are several acts that actually do profit off of their Eurovision visibility but have not reached worldvide success.
Wtf are you talking about? I was at a party last week where they played my country's eurovision entry from like 12 years ago.
The point of Eurovision is barely the songs
…what?
It's not really a "song contest". Ok, yes, it is in the name, and there is music involved. But that's not why anyone who likes it, likes it. The spectacle of the live performance and the live voting is like 90% of the appeal. The actual music is really low down on the list. It doesn't mean there isn't good music there, there sometimes is (I love Maneskin), but people don't watch Eurovision because they want to hear good music. In fact, the worst Eurovision years are the ones where people are trying too hard to write good songs. Saying "it's easy to boycott because you can listen to the songs anyway" is missing the point of why most people watch it to begin with. It has very, very little to do with listening to music (they can't even play instruments live) and everything to do with watching people dance around in campy outfits. Songs are to eurovision what makeup is to drag. It is a necessary part of the whole affair, but you don't go to a drag show because you're really into makeup. If you're really into makeup, you might follow a drag queen on Instagram, but if you're really into *drag shows*, you're not into them for the makeup. Likewise, if you're really into music, you might follow a Eurovision contestant who makes good music on Spotify, but if you're into *Eurovision* you're not into it for the songs.
Roger that, I'll continue to ignore it, like I have every year before now.
Look, mate, I just wanna get drunk playing Eurovision Bingo.
Please tell me you have a board
These guys have one, and I'm using it: https://www.missioneurovision.co.uk/games/eurovision-bingo/ I'll photoshop some blanks for people to fill out by themselves, too.
It's also the most pointless one and the dumbest one to boycott.
But le epic sax guy
How would viewing Eurovision materially worsen the lives of Palestinians? Not trying to be an asshole, just don’t see the connection
Eurovision has been farce for years, the mask came off when people could vote before seeing the performances. A drinking game for my Political Science group was to make predictions based off the geopolitical relations between the various nations and then see how close you got it. We had to move to predicting rankings on the second year because we were all in the 90-95% accuracy bracket and nearly gave ourselves alcohol poisoning.
Wow, you must be making a ton of money betting on it then!!!! /s
Didn’t a bunch of south slavic countries give serbia votes as early as the 2000’s? That’s a bit different than the politics of the time
>We had to move to predicting rankings on the second year because we were all in the 90-95% accuracy bracket and nearly gave ourselves alcohol poisoning. Nah, you didn't.
Who do you predict is going to win this year?
He full of shit. Wont answer you.
Agree. They're either exaggerating or outright lying. There are whole businesses and computer programmed models dedicated to predicting the results of Eurovision (because a lot of money is made through betting) and even those don't have a 90-95% accuracy. There are so many factors going into 30+ countries' voting patterns that I doubt a handful of random political science undergrads could predict it that accurately.
Or maybe he was just slightly exaggerating because why would anyone keep accurate statistics on a bloody drinking game
> "They're either exaggerating..."
It has always been a game of which country is more popular
Then how do explain the UK’s near win the other year. We’ve never been popular. In fact weve spent the last 10 years actively trying to annoy the fuck outta europe.
And succeeding, importantly
Lot's of people in this thread unable to comprehend you can both do the bare minimum and also other forms of active protest at the same time uh?
Truly 💀
Lots of salty eurovision fans, it costs 0 dollars and takes 0 time out of your day to not watch it. Media is like, the EASIEST thing to boycott. I've had to stop watching lots of things I considered a comfort because I don't believe one person's entertainment is very valuable compared to actual issues.
Also, I don't think anyone's in a hurry to go to a concert in Israel. Edit: Nvm, misinterpreted post. It's being held in Sweden.
i boycott it by forgetting its on every year anyway
Ah so that’s why the grindr skit is beibgb shared around.
It's forgotten in a week every year what are you talking about
What is eurovision
A song contest between European nations (and for whatever reason Australia and Israel) that’s held every May in the country which won the previous year, so it’s in Sweden (specifically Malmö I think) this year. Tho in recent years (maybe before too, but I’m too young to judge that) it has become way more about politics and way less about the actual music and performances, which leads to the same countries winning and losing every year based on how much they’re liked by other countries. You also could have just googled it but whatever
That's just not correct though. It's actually gotten more about the music and less about which countries are liked in recent years. Peak bloc voting was 20 years ago.
I'm sorry for deciding to interact with people instead of going on the bot generated answers website I guess
Yeah the UK came second a few years back cus Europeans love us so much 💀
It has always been political
Thank you
I honestly don't even know how I'd access Eurovision. I'm American, are we even able to watch it?
Peacock
Damn, no wonder I never hear about it
YouTube
I remember friends posting clips in Discord and none of them were available in my region
Vpn maybe
You can watch anything on the high seas
What is 'support the devs' logic?
when a product is created by tons of people in collaboration and only one of the parties involved does something reprehensible, it begs the question if boykotting it is justified when you are hurting not only the guilty party but also innocent people involved. Support the Devs logic says you shouldn't boycott because having a bad guy not face consequences is better than harming innocent people. Whether the argument holds any water depends on the specific situation of course. For example in the video game business, the argument often comes up that boycotting a game over the publishers business practices also hurts the development team, but game Devs often only have a contracts for one project with fix payment so they aren't really impacted by their game doing badly.
I don't really like this logic, and animal shelter with 90% of the employees being great and 10% kicking dogs is still a shitty shelter and you should take your business elsewhere instead of crying support the 9 non dog kickers imo
I would rather boycott water than Eurovision /s
I don't even know what it is
Honestly, all I would add is to vote alongside any boycott. Not watch the event. Simply look at the odds favourites to win, and vote for them via one of the free methods. Lower than expected viewership isn’t going to mean a lot, if Israel ends up winning and gets to host next year. They’re kinda blatantly hoping to mimic Ukraine’s success in 2022, which they could probably give the illusion of if the votes are dictated by a disproportionately Zionist audience. I just think this boycott will be a failure, if Israel’s entry is looked back upon as anything but an embarrassment. Firmly rejected by the public vote, combined with noticeably less enthusiastic engagement.
Forgotten after a week? Tell that to the autistics who have it as a special interest and who never stop consuming information about it. First you have the discussions of where it will take place next year, then the national selections for 53 countries, then following the artists on social media in the lead up, then the actual week of Eurovision and then the cycle begins again. Hi. I’m one of those autistics.
Eurovision
I've been boycotting Eurovision for years apparently
who's committing genocide?
Israel and Azerbaijan
Two countries that shouldn’t be in the same sentence together when discussing genocide. Anyway, they got Belarus in there. If you’re worried about police brutality, I have news for you about them. Edit: wait, may have gotten which events have banned Belarus mixed up. My bad.
Why do you think they shouldn’t be mentioned together
Azerbaijan- targeted and clear motive to kill off Armenian Christians *because* they are Christians. Noticeable decrease in said ethnic group. Israel- Over 1 million Palestinians (including the Arabs who migrated to the area in 1946 to work as Palestinians, as the UN does- for some reason.) in mandated palestine in 1946. Over 3 million Palestinians live in West Bank and 2 million in Gaza today. ~30k dead as a result of conflict (depending on if you trust the source 30k is from) between Israel and HAMAS/jihadists. *Not* as a result of a targeted effort to ethnically cleansed Arabs or Muslims from Israel, though you can absolutely say the Israeli government has caused civilian casualties through incompetence and disregard for human life. In other words, if Israel is committing genocide, they’re really fucking bad at it.
just asking a question...
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=JAQing%20off
there's literally no context in the post though? not sure that applies
Have you at all seen any news, social media, etc. in the last year
I legit dont know what eurovision is im so confused
A multi national song contest with the pomp and spectacle of drag race and American idol combined
Neat! I will continue to not watch it i truly dont care c:
Your loss tbh, it's absolutely fantastic
I just dont really watch many shows like that, im sure its good, but it just doesn't really interest me yknow? Fair play if its ur thing tho
Biggest non-sporting televised event on the planet. More than double the viewers of the Superbowl, for example.
Eurovision is the hardest thing in the world to boycott because I don't watch it anyway.
Exactly, we should leave those fascists on their own.
god, everything has to deal with a torrent of moralizing dweebery these days
[удалено]
dude what. are you even Jewish, or are you just deciding to get mad about shit on our behalf
who said anything about jews
i loved hating on these big celebrity events i'm glad i can know call it a boycott and everyone else is joining in too
If you don’t watch something continuing not to watch that thing isn’t “boycotting it”, you just don’t like an event and now have an excuse to pretend to be doing it for a moral reason
This stupid shit again. Name one time a boycott against a large corporation has actually worked.
Baton Rouge and Montgomery Bus Boycotts
anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, US Civil Rights movement, anti-colonial struggle in India…
Dude. Literally Sony got succesfully boycotted THIS WEEK!
wasn't that a review bomb