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Being an Overly Political Jagweed? There’s an App for That!
Good news! Technology is now making it easier than ever for you to make every moment of your mundane existence a statement about your most deeply-held political beliefs. From the Washington Post:
If you’re a Republican, you might want to think twice before buying Lipton Iced Tea, and forget about Starbucks coffee. If you’re a Democrat, put down that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and throw away the cylinder of Quaker Oats in your pantry.
But knowing who to direct my solipsistic preening at is so hard! There has to be a better way!
These are the sorts of conclusions that BuyPartisan — a new smartphone app that The Post’s In the Loop featured last week — encourages you to make. After you scan the bar code on products with a phone camera, BuyPartisan accesses campaign finance data and offers a breakdown of the manufacturer’s political giving — examining contributions from its board of directors, its chief executive, its employees and its associated political action committees. The Quaker Oats Co., for example, scores an overall average of 78.5 percent Republican. Starbucks is 80.75 percent Democratic.
Yes, BuyPartisan — for when you need to be a self-righteous prick … in a hurry.
When I was a speechwriter in the Bush White House, I had a standard practice for superficial social interactions: I lied about what I did for a living — not because I didn’t want to take any of the president’s grief (that was unavoidable), but because I hated the idea of immediately introducing politics into a conversation with a perfect stranger. I’ve never thought it necessary to know how my waiter feels about gay marriage or what my plumber thinks about Iraq (I’m pretty sure he’d keep tactical nukes on the table). Best I can tell, their concern for my ideology only extends to hoping I’m enough of a fiscal conservative that my check clears (suckers). This is how we wed the adjective ‘polite’ to the noun ‘society.’
Here’s the thing: I give people money for goods or services that are worth more to me than the cash. I feel no duty to police what they do with that money thereafter because it’s their money — and because I’m not a psychopath who thinks that one commercial transaction gives me an equity stake in everything the recipient does from there on out. I hope for the same courtesy from anyone who’s paying me (this is my gentle attempt to get Ricochet to lay off of me about the macaw smuggling).
Are there limits to this principle? Sure. If Starbucks decides to open up a chain of boutique abortion clinics where you can get a skim chai latte and pick up the newest Joni Mitchell EP while you wait to snuff out the unborn child inside you, I can probably find another place to get a cup of coffee. But it’d take something on that scale. Short of that, I have neither the time nor inclination to police the supply chain of every transaction I make for sufficient skepticism of the administrative state.
Let’s stop pretending the trend of which BuyPartisan (someone deserves welts for that name) is the pathetic apotheosis is about ‘social consciousness.’ It’s not. It’s about narcissism. It’s about ensuring that even the most pedestrian aspects of daily life are yet another opportunity for you to billboard your manicured sense of morality. It’s about offering you a dozen opportunities a day to deliver sermonettes on whatever issue you became passionate about immediately after you heard it discussed on The View. It’s about giving a patina of respectability to supercilious scolds and buzzkills.
Develop an app that keeps me at arm’s length from those people. Then we can talk.
Published in General
Yinz are a buncha jagoffs n’at anyway.
both jagweed and jack wagon are new vocabulary I have learned on ricochet and appear to be CoC compliant.
(where’s that post on “What is ricochet good for” when you need it?)
I thought they were synonyms, but Urban Dictionary [CoC Warning.] does give some nuance:
it appears a jagweed is more actively selfish than a jack wagon, who is just a plain and simple loser.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jagweed
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jack+wagon
this entire post and all the comments made me LMROOL
[laugh my richochet off out loud]
thank you .
Actually, didn’t the CEO of starbucks specifically announce that he doesn’t want anyone opposed to gay marriage to start a franchise? I simply don’t have the energy or desire to go around boycotting anyone (I still go to Starbucks occasionally), but if a company is going to make a show about broadcasting its politics, I’m happy to go elsewhere when the choice is available.
Of course, those enormous pictures of Oprah Winfrey at Starbucks these days is plenty enough to keep me away.
Update: we apparently hurt the feelings of BuyPartisan’s cofounder, Alex Brant-Zawadski:
He’s not crying, guys! He’s just got something in his eye!
Brant-Zawadski (who would’ve guessed the developer of such an app would have a hyphen in his name?), it should be noted, has a “Hemp for Victory” avatar and a lengthy portfolio of pieces at the Huffington Post, because of course. He’s also the kind of person who publicly displays his SAT score in his LinkedIn profile—which is the kind of thing that makes you think Dante’s imagination wasn’t vivid enough.
This is really Frank Soto’s troll account, right? The stereotypes can’t be that on the nose.
I don’t know what makes Reese’s Republican, but I’m glad it is. I just had my weekly cup with my lunch. …From my cold dead hands…
We better keep THAT a secret or crazy-lib-types will have us Reese-less.
Horrifying.
Yo-
I haven’t laughed so hard since I heard Rush call Sandra Fluck a slut and I nearly crashed my car. Waddaya call a Vegan-Fruiten who boycotts oil based products?
A hungry nudist.
Think about it.
Peter Robinson actually raised his voice on the latest podcast and Troy has just used the “p” word in print.
I can dig it.
Don’t tell the Dime…He might blush. :-)
Oh, come on. I bet Dime has heard that word more than any of us.
Yes, Casey, but has he *seen it in pixels* ? (Under Troy’s byline, no less…)
If Dime is looking at the pixels under Troy’s byline, I don’t want to know about it.
So that’s how you keep the chocolate from melting on your hands….genius!
Great!
I hate to say it troy, but this is where we are now. Conservatives don’t get to exist in america, at least not publicly. The left organizes and boycotts everything over anything, and its kind of effective; effective enough to get people fired, or make people nervous.
Trying to negotiate a peace settlement while the bombers are laying waste to your industrial centers is called surrender, and it is consciously choosing nonexistence.
Hear, hear! Troy, you’re a man after my own heart.
I remember a story in the WSJ a few years ago about a lefty who boycotted everything he objected to on political or environmental grounds, including everything made from animals (meat, leather) or oil (gasoline, plastic) and a bunch more, including crops grown with synthetic fertilizer, as well as any product sold by companies with conservative leanings.
He walked around in clothes made from some kind of burlap, shoes made out of cardboard, and a belt of hemp rope. His diet consisted of just a few sorts of locally grown vegetables. Fish was out because of the cruelty of how it is killed. He didn’t eat sugar, or artificial sweeteners, or dairy, or grains. He might not have been willing to use electricity.
I seem to remember he made an exception for reading books, even though he objected to the environmental damage done by the paper mills.
I presume he is now dead.
Terrific post, Troy!
I especially love your comments about Alex Brant-Zawadski and the paucity of Dante’s imagination! What a yuk.
But just one question: how come *I* get censored when I refer to the President’s counselor as “that frustrated Jarrett b****?”
First: now we just need metrics on the breakdown of users of this app. Like a previous poster, I’d wager eye-watering amounts of money it skews better than 70% left-wing.
Second: regarding keeping away from such people, Troy, you’re part of the Ricocachet, like it or not. If anyone can co-found the Antisocial Network, it’s you (you’re welcome). :-)
Or at least wishes he was.
Love it. Love it. Love it.
Hey, wait a minute.
Good thing that Ricochet comments don’t display the com mentor’s browser type.
We’d have to pillory the Firefox users.
Just curious, what browser do you recommend? Between IE, Firefox, and Chrome, there’s not an ideal choice to be had.
Various and sundry have suggested Pale Moon. It seems to work fairly well for me.
The main page says it’s Firefox-based, so that doesn’t solve the problem for someone who chooses browsers based on politics, as Dick identified in his original comment.
Firefox based, but not Mozilla.
this is hands down the funniest thing I’ve seen all week.
Yup. I avoid Ben and Jerry’s because they are so sanctimonious about shoving their pretentious nature-worshipping mantra down my throat along with the ice cream.