Cassandra, Political Crack

Question Everything

 

You probably saw on Monday that M&Ms announced a big shift in their advertising strategy:

In case you’re not familiar with how M&Ms are polarizing, I’ll let Tucker Carlson fill you in:

and

I was really struck by his saying “intentionally repulsive”. Evidently not only did Tucker find the earlier version of Ms. Green attractive, but he took the redesign of her character into a form he could no longer jerk off to as a personal insult from her. Wingers are weird, man.

Most of the rest of the world reacted with a shrug, and maybe some disappointment that M&Ms would cave to right wing nonsense. Mainstream media took the news at face value and published it. I have 2 questions about it:  (1) why did the whole redesign of the female M&Ms bother him so much, and (2) why did M&Ms do this?

First, the redesign of the female characters was a response to the concerns and requests of actual women who asked that the female M&Ms be less stereotypical and insulting. But American women are supposed to beaten down and demoralized now that Roe has been overturned and they’re not supposed to be demanding change, even if it’s just from a candy company, so the right wing is back on the outrage circuit.

Second, after an election where it was clear that American voters weren’t interested in MAGA, why would M&Ms give into the worst people? It makes no sense from a financial viewpoint, either. First, the company just introduced a new character—the purple candy—in September 2022 and now it’s going to be jettisoned after a few months? I doubt it.

In addition, the company puts out all kinds of merchandise with the characters on it that sells well at the various M&Ms stores around the world. The company would have to redo all of that and get it out for sale in only a few weeks. New merchandise and a new spokesperson take more than a few weeks to crowd test. None of this makes sense.

What does make sense as an explanation? That this is part of M&Ms’ Super Bowl ad buy. It’s the only logical explanation, and I look forward to be proven right in a couple of weeks.

More importantly, this is another example of entities misleading us for a desired emotional result. You have to question everything—the gaslighting didn’t stop after the last election. In fact, the narrative for the 2024 election is already being created by the same bad actors who lied to us about polling at the end of October:

Remember the awful Emerson polls at the end of last October? Well, they’re back. The crosstabs of this poll are just wrong:

Whether it’s about candy or polling, critical thinking matters.

Here’s a song about questions:

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