ha! it thinks its people!
stop tweeting like you have a soul!
…What’s up with these corporations trying to tweet like people?
Sorry to drop a stinker on the fun! If I were in a more scholarly mood, I’d trace a correlative line of research from the history of corporate personhood to the Supreme court ruling of Citizens United vs. FEC to Wendy’s Twitter beef branding strategy and really break down how we’ve arrived at this ghastly cultural moment of corporate minstrelsy. I’d probably talk about how the eroded boundaries between being a person and being a corporation reflect the utterly decimated boundaries between the billionaire class and the political class and how all of it is so interwoven that it made Trump, like, Thanos-levels of inevitable.
…But I don’t really wanna do none of that, tbh.
All I wanted to do this weekend, was bump this new GNX, go for a drive or a walk or a train ride, bop blissfully and be inspired to work on my own music. was it too much to ask to hop online and bants with my niggas in peace? I wasn’t tryna face the endless manufacture of brand-strategic bullshit that’d activate my grumpy grinch mode a month too early. Yet here come McDonald’s and co. tryna act like mandem.
It’s been weird for a while, tbh. The BRAT Summer wave that companies were nut-riding made me wanna do a staring contest with a greek gorgon. These corporations feel so compelled to somersault onto cultural bandwagons. Pulling their sassy little clap-backs at each another. Multinational clout-chasing. more-time their CEO’s and executives are probably hoarding wealth as the bulk of their employees tread water beneath the breadline. Work of the berserkest persuasion, especially when its at the expense of Black culture. Trying to be in on the joke so bad but all their posts end up like the obnoxious chortle that made Dave Chappelle wrap his show and pilgrimage to Africa. All to strip-mine the sweet, sweet engagement to further zombify some consumers. I beg you focus on compensating workers fairly. I beg you work on cutting your environmental emissions so we don’t all suffocate. I beg you perform ethical business practices at every level of abstraction. I beg you stop handing out burgers to genociders. Perhaps then you can start tweeting like you got a soul.
…But I guess, i’m the architect of my own annoyance. I should’ve just listened to bro:
Reading this I realised I found the way Elon Musk tweets annoying in a similar way to how I find all these corporations annoying— I don’t know if it’s even about them not being humans to me; as Elon Musk is indeed a human.
It’s just that they go “hey, I’m just like you!” And I think “no, you’re not. You are the richest man in the world, or a disembodied entity which maximises shareholder value.” It’s a bit uncomfortable either way
the personification of corporations has been a huge contributor towards social media becoming a shell of its former self. i’ve been off socials for most of this year and the few times i’ve been tempted to look back i see a ton of shit like this and happily shut it back off.