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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   28434 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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One thing that is important to keep in mind is that there was a little cottage industry in the academic literature that strained to try to prove that diversity initiatives were actually supported by a simple business case, that increasing diversity would increase performance and increase profits. There were plenty of lit spats about such claims. But some folks still believe genericized versions of it.

The kind of funny thing is that a lot of those same people are the ones who are now saying that these companies are cutting such programs now just to make more money. If one truly believes that DEI programs increase performance/profits, then they should believe that cutting DEI programs decreases performance/profits. Thus undercutting at least one of their two rationales.

One would think that some set of these large companies who adopted such programs ≅4yrs ago would have seen their performance indicators and profits taking off. They'd be saying, "We can't cut this; it would cost us too much money." Instead, I think the much more likely interpretation is the one that is supported by the current claims, not the former claims - lots of companies adopted these programs in the wake of George Floyd; some were just trying to play the PR game, others may have legitimately believed the predictions of increased performance/profits. ≅4yrs later, they've seen that the magical increased performance/profit simply hasn't materialized, the political pressure is decreased, and they now, indeed, want to save some money.

One thing that is important to keep in mind is that there was a little cottage industry in the academic literature that strained to try to prove that diversity initiatives were actually supported by a simple business case, that increasing diversity would increase performance and increase profits. There were plenty of lit spats about such claims. But some folks still believe genericized versions of it.

As goes the possibly apocryphal quote, "a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

The kind of funny thing is that a lot of those same people are the ones who are now saying that these companies are cutting such programs now just to make more money. If one truly believes that DEI programs increase performance/profits, then they should believe that cutting DEI programs decreases performance/profits.

Schrodinger's Profitability. Companies embrace DEI because having more women and non-Asian minorities obviously increases your company's human capital and thus will render it more profitable; companies cut DEI because they're filled with racist and misogynistic sociopaths who care only about the bottom-line.

I think a lot of these companies were being told by big consulting firms like McKinsey that these strategies would open new markets and bring them a lot of money, and the companies genuinely believed them. They started cooling off on DEI and the Modern Audience when the promised returns never materialized.

Usually this comes up in discussions of management consulting firms making a guest appearance to recommend layoffs—but stereotypically, management consulting firms like McKinsey/BCG/Bain ("MBB") are used by the managers of industry companies not for their novel insights nor research.

The stereotypical role of management consulting firms is to Read the Room and make suggestions for things company management already wanted to do, and to lend an air of credibility and serve as a scapegoat for the consequences of any decisions that are made. It's not like management consulting firms have any specialized knowledge or brilliant insight that would make industry management go "ohh... squeeze the costs and juice the revenue, why didn't I think of that?" drake_lil_yachty.gif

Sometimes young consultants will tell you this as well. After a few years (or even months) in management consulting their cynicism is sufficient that, regardless of the (lack of) inherent value-add of their research and analyses, they see it as a good career path for those with just Excel and PowerPoint monkeying skills and are broadly smart, with great compensation and exit opportunities (and investment banking was too hard to get into and/or too many hours). "It ain't much, but it's honest work." Well, mostly honest.

And even when not serving as water-carrier for industry management, the research of management consulting firms is usually basic and pandering as fuck. For example, "Return-to-office mandates: Women, minorities hardest hit".

Industry management typically have decades of experience (at least intermittently) interacting with management consulting firms, and many have oftentimes done a stint in MBB themselves, so they should be red-pilled as to the "thought leadership" of management consulting firms.

This is not to say that management consulting firms are worthless, so to speak. Being a lubricant for corporate decision-making can be value-add in and of itself, even if you're unable to deliver ground-breaking insights.

As these companies continue to move away from DEI, and if it becomes increasingly apparent to the general public that it didn't work, how will the vocal proponents, like Mark Cuban, attempt to shift the narrative to avoid admitting they were wrong? The most surprising outcome is someone like him admitting fault, or that he was mistaken. My guess is that it will be some combination of "It wasn't properly implemented." or "It works perfectly fine where I invested." or "People didn't give it the chance it deserved."

Whatever the case, I suspect the Mea Culpas will be few and far between, and the deflections will be many. These people are masters of self-preservation.

Look at what happened after COVID: influential people who get things wrong don't admit they were wrong. They instead avoid the whole subject, act confused when you bring it up, and pivot to the next serious person thing.

That is --- unless the law. I imagine that thousands of white male tech workers will have good cases for suing FAANG companies for a decade of bigotry.

Indeed, I suspect that this is the real reason for the pivot. A Harris appointed AG wouldn't allow such cases to go forward but a Trump appointec one...

There are a lot things (DEI programs among them) that are deeply unpopular and in some cases blantanly illegal based on a plain reading of the law that only persist because they are fashionable amongst the priestly class. The priestly class looks after its own, which is how Alvin Bragg is able to talk on national TV about how his office absolutely considers a potential defendants' political leanings and racial identity when deciding which cases to pursue without getting charged under title 18 section 241.

Indeed, one of the old Trump admin's final policies was to try to pursue discrimination complaints against anti-white discrimination.

That is --- unless the law. I imagine that thousands of white male tech workers will have good cases for suing FAANG companies for a decade of bigotry.

No. The rule is you don't have standing to sue unless you can demonstrate "but-for" discrimination. That is, you have to demonstrate that you, personally, would have been hired if it weren't for the discriminatory practice. This is a very high bar and the courts tend to require it before discovery. Both right-leaning and lefty courts apply this to discrimination against white males. Lefty courts are in effect far laxer when it comes to discrimination against minorities and women, and often the EEOC will help there as well.

"It wasn't working just because companies were doing it cynically for profit."

I wouldn't call Mark Cuban a true believer, but someone that panders to them. To the true believers their worldview implicitly or explicitly imagine capitalism as tainting ideals or progress as soon as it comes in contact with them, so it's easy to dismiss any negative result. It's not a proof through competition that their idea doesn't work, it's proof number 473935 that capitalism needs to go because it gets in the way of their ideas.

  1. Bunch of companies eliminate DEI

  2. Inevitably, some executive or employee will say or do something boneheaded, costing the company money

  3. Attribute that boneheadedness to the elimination of DEI

  4. Watch that anecdote spread like wildfire through media

I'm sure there will be infinite variations on "true communism DEI has never been tried".

Or, no one ever believed those claims. They were merely there as part of the toolkit to silence those opposed to the program.

There’s three types of people here. It’s like my hobby horse of black people in Medieval England. There’s the people who knowingly lie or obfuscate the truth. Then there’s the people who believe those people because they are “experts “. The vast majority are the latter. There’s also some who know it’s not true but pretend to because it’s fashionable or expedient. This is Zuck. There’s no way he didn’t know it was nonsense but he went along with it when he had to but now that he can get rid of it he will.

It’s like my hobby horse of black people in Medieval England

Were you the one who had a planned effortpost on that at some point?

Not me. I haven’t posted here in a long time. I lurked for like a year because my Mac crashed and I forgot my username/password. I actually have been accumulating scholarly articles and peer reviewed articles about this though because I wanted to make a substack to deboonk this once and for all but I haven’t had time. I also bought two of the most cited books about this and have been reading them, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get to finish this. It’s a huge undertaking. My only motivation is my absolute hatred that people are allowed to lie about this with impunity.

I, for one, hope you find the time to do a write-up and post or link it here.

Did he really have to, though? What would have happened to him if he had said no to DEI? This isn't a rhetorical question on my part, by the way.

Discrimination lawsuits against Meta? They could have been fought.

Loss of woke employees? Not that significant for a company that people in general want to work for as much as they want to work for Meta.

Government interference of some kind? Not sure about this one. I can imagine the government forcing companies to add surveillance or censorship, since we have seen both happen, but I don't know if the government would bother to enforce DEI programs.

Angry investors? Also not sure about this one. How many would have cared?

I haven't watched the quite lengthy Rogan Zuck interview, so maybe someone could fill me in.

An advertising boycott. It's no joke, I can't find the link, but I remember posting here that Elon lost 80% of advertising revenue on Twitter. He possibly made up for it by corresponding 80% emoyment cuts, and the shift to paid subscriptions, but the company's finances are now private, so we don't know.

This was also a very tangible threat for Zuckerberg, not a hypothetical. I remember seeing the "No Clicks For Hate" campaign, which was specifically targeted at Facebook, pop up in various places in the tech sector.

Interesting. I feel a bit silly for having missed that obvious factor.

That does bring up the question, though... why wouldn't an advertising boycott be a similar problem for Meta nowadays? Has culture really shifted that much in the last few years?

Boycotts require lots and lots of buy in from the rank and file, as both gun control and pro-life movements have discovered, so you can’t just deploy them Willy-nilly. You can use them effectively against companies that take major stands on current thing, you can use them against companies with easily available alternatives, and in both cases you need a big true believer base.

Calling the boycott bluff is economically rational and Zuckerberg is smart enough to know it. There just isn’t a good alternative to meta- TikTok is about to be banned, Twitter has an even stronger reputation for far-right, and it’s no longer the current thing. Advertisers have learned this- especially after the bud light boycott(which is a great example of the conditions for a successful boycott- there’s a big true believer base which thinks transgenders are mentally ill perverts, they drank bud light and there were lots of easy alternatives, and trans was a big current thing). Contrast with the boycotts of Starbucks or home depot.

Advertising boycotts are a bit different, you don't need to convince consumers, you need to convince marketing departments. Who are staffed entirely with people who already want to believe Facebook is being hateful, and who are profoundly inside filter bubbles making them believe everyone agrees with them (if they weren't advertising wouldn't look like it currently does).

Zuck can call the bluff now (and couldn't before) because of the election. Marketing departments that try pushing their companies into the "woke" side of the culture war will probably be overruled by CEOs who have now recieved a very strong signal as to where the population stands with regards to this.

Elon Musk already took a lot of the available heat. It's an even tougher sell now than it was a few years ago for an advertiser to burn their own revenues to deliberately antagonize both Facebook and the incoming President of the United States out of sheer ideological bloody-mindedness. Doing it now, when you've already seen that the last tech billionaire who faced a boycott like that did not cave in like he was supposed to and instead joined the other team whole-heartedly and is now poised to enact whatever revenge he has in mind using whatever influence he's curried over the last election, would not be a safe investment.

I can't say I understand what happened. I also don't think the actual culture could change so fast, but it feels like some rubber band snapped the moment Trump won.

It reminds me of one of the 1989 revolutions (am I thinking of Hungary?). The dictator was getting worried at the people's lack of enthusiasm and bleak countenance, so decided to hold a huge rally in the capital. The people got there, noticed that everyone else looked as miserable as they felt, and someone finally grumbled out loud. So it went from people cowed into submission to overthrowing the government fairly quickly and without coordination, because the culture had been quietly changing but everyone was so afraid to admit it that it took something big and public for everyone to realize it was safe to complain all at once.

It's kinda felt like it's been heading that way since 2014 or so. The Woke wave grew strong, scared people into compliance, but the more people got canceled, the more damage they did, and the more all that damage demonstrably failed in achieving their stated goals, the more people quietly slinked (slank?) off to the "I swear I'm liberal; it's just that the rest of the left went crazy!" hoarde. The media and SJWs' hold on the narrative™ grew increasingly obviously wispy, and then the election was everyone's signal that it was finally safe to breathe. Elon Musk's buying Twitter, the backfiring of the Hogwarts Legacy boycott, the utter destruction of culturual juggernauts like Star Wars and Marvel, and the Biden administration's utter failure to bring back even Obama era levels of seeming stability, probably all had a lot to do with it, but the election was the most public sign of all, with very straightforward numbers and everything. The Cancel mobs have always been a loud minority, but now everyone knows it to be so.

(slank?)

*slunk

You're thinking of Romania, one of the last communist overthrows. Ceausescu's(?) speech is actually on youtube, minus his execution.

Hilariously the triggering incident was apparently the government prosecuting a priest for "hate speech"

It reminds me of one of the 1989 revolutions (am I thinking of Hungary?). The dictator was getting worried at the people's lack of enthusiasm and bleak countenance, so decided to hold a huge rally in the capital.

You’re thinking of the end of the Ceauşescu regime in Romania.

The advertiser boycott depended on threatening the advertisers, not Twitter. And running even one successful boycott is a high bar to clear.

At the end of the day it doesn’t take a very big shift in culture against woke for boycotts to stop being a credible threat.

The line of reasoning seemed to work on Boomercons.

"Diversity is just good business. After all, I read it in BusinessWeek."

Boomercons still place a lot of trust in the media and academia, having come of age in an era when those wells were less poisoned than today.

Notably, whites over 65 were the only sizeable demographic that shifted from (R)->(D) during the last election. The geriatrics who run much of our country can still be reached with the old hamfisted propaganda methods.

Older people often have assets. Assets did pretty great between 2021-2024. So maybe they weren’t as harmed as others by inflation etc.

Yeah. I also think the Democrats have a great bargain for older whites:

  1. You get: Comfort and prosperity until you die

  2. We get: Destruction of your culture

It's the same method that can be used to effectively defang a union. You grandfather in the older members who then lose any incentive to fight for the benefits of the younger members.

I don't think it was about silencing, more like a sales pitch to a clueless Boomer exec, that sounds just plausible enough they might buy it. Same thing as "this $mediaArtifact needs a more diverse cast, so we can appeal to a wider audience"

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