The implied threat was… that they wouldn’t buy from those companies anymore? While I guess that’s slightly worse than just casually notifying a company of bad behavior, it’s not much worse. The whole point of this kind of criticism is to exhort behavior change so I’m not really convinced it’s misleading… and I think that’s Popehat’s point.
No, the implied threat is that the brands name will be conspicuously dragged through the mud using every tool they have in the national media.
Brands don’t care if a small group of activists boycott their product. They are terrified of being featured negatively.
But at this point you’re just off in the weeds. This is all well-known tactics. Believe it or not tactics I don’t have much issue with. It just isn’t merely “criticism”. It’s an active and devastating campaign aimed to do as much harm as possible to bludgeon their adversary into the ground. It’s meant to inflict maximum damage to the recipient to induce fear in anyone who might consider following their example.
But hey, I guess if they call it “criticism” then we can’t criticize them for doing it. Otherwise we’re just being hypocritical.
