The Woke Capitalism Thread (Get Woke, Go Broke)

UFC going Woke:

'Boycott UFC' Calls Soar After Mega-Sponsorship Deal With Bud Light​



The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Anheuser-Busch InBev NV have entered into a multiyear marketing agreement, making Bud Light the official beer of the mixed martial arts promotional organization. This sponsorship is UFC CEO Dana White & Co's biggest one yet and has already sparked boycott calls from UFC fans.
Anheuser-Busch wrote in a press release that the new multiyear marketing partnership will begin on Jan. 1. The brewer will become the "Official Beer Partner of UFC," and Bud Light will be plastered on broadcasts, signage across arenas, fight-week activities, social media channels, weigh-ins, press conference, and much much more.

UFC was in a previous sponsorship with Modelo, which has since become America's top-selling beer after Bud Light sales imploded following its disastrous 'woke' advertising with trans-TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney earlier this year. We noted days ago that the brewer reportedly 'bribed' distributors to keep their beer on the shelves.

Citibank data shows Bud Light sales continue to flounder:
Weekly US Nielsen data through to 7th October shows Bud Light volume/sales declines continued broadly in line with prior trends. Latest weekly volumes were down -29% (last 3-mth average -30%), with sales down -27% (-27%), while volume share was down -387bps and value -352bps (last three months -399bps and -354bps, respectively). There continues to be contagion to the wider ABInBev portfolio, with Budweiser, Busch, and Michelob still weak, while Coors, Miller, and Modelo (Constellation) continue to gain share. Our estimates and the stock price increasingly discount a base case where the current rates of volume decline in ABI’s US portfolio continue through Q1-24E. As we head into 2024, given likely COGS deflation, an ongoing focus on overheads containment, the risk to the management’s 4-8% mid-term EBITDA growth guidance appears to be skewed to the upside. We reiterate our preference for Beer stocks and Buy rating on ABInBev
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Clay Travis, the founder of sports media website OutKick, said Bud Light spent $100 million on the sponsorship:
Bud Light just spent $100 million on a UFC sponsorship deal to try and cancel out the chicks with dicks ad. No one is drinking Bud Light at any tailgate I've been to this fall. Brand is dead:
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"Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light were UFC's original beer sponsors more than 15 years," Dana White said in a press release.
He added: "I'm proud to announce we are back in business together. "
 
Jezebel.png

Jezebel Shutting Down, Parent Company G/O Media Laying Off 23 Staffers​

Merrill Brown exits company as editorial director

After more than 16 years, Jezebel, the sharp-edged feminist news and opinion website, is shutting down.

Originally launched in 2007 by Gawker Media, Jezebel — which carried the tagline “Sex. Celebrity. Politics. With Teeth” — is being shuttered by current owner G/O Media, after an unsuccessful attempt to sell the site. In addition, G/O Media editorial director Merrill Brown is leaving the company after less than a year as part of a company restructuring.

“As of this week we are making the very, very difficult decision to suspend publication of Jezebel,” G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller wrote in a memo to staff Thursday announcing the shutdown. “Few decisions over the course of my career have been as excruciating, and I want to make clear this is in NO WAY a reflection on the Jezebel editorial team.”

The shutdown of Jezebel and the G/O Media editorial restructuring will result in a layoff of 23 editorial staffers (including the Jezebel team), Spanfeller wrote in the memo, adding that “Over the longer term we will be adding new positions with updated or perhaps new goals in mind.”

“Unfortunately, our business model and the audiences we serve across our network did not align with Jezebel’s,” Spanfeller wrote in the memo. “And when that became clear, we undertook an expansive search for a new, perhaps better home that might ensure Jezebel a path forward. It became a personal mission of Lea Goldman [G/O Media deputy editorial director], who worked tirelessly on the project, talking with over two dozen potential buyers. It is a testament to Jezebel’s heritage and bonafides that so many players engaged us. Still, despite every effort, we could not find Jez a new home.”

Laura Bassett quit as Jezebel’s editor-in-chief in August 2023, writing in a post on X/Twitter, “I have reluctantly resigned from Jezebel, because the company that owned us refused to treat my staff with basic human decency.” On Thursday, Bassett said in a post on X, “I’m obviously boiling and have too much to say on this subject. But for now I’ll just say my heart is with the entire Jez staff who just got laid off, including incredible abortion reporters at a time when the beat couldn’t be more relevant to national politics. Please hire them.”

Lauren Tousignant, who had been serving as Jezebel’s interim EIC, wrote in a tweet about the site’s shutdown, “Will have more to say soon, but for now, I am just so pissed and so sad, but mostly I’m so pissed.”

WGA East members at Jezebel, in a statement on the company’s shutdown of the site, said, “We are devastated though hardly surprised at G/O Media and Jim Spanfeller’s inability to run our website and their cruel decision to shutter it…. The closure of Jezebel also underscores fundamental flaws in the ad-supported media model where concerns about ‘brand safety’ limit monetizing content about the biggest, most important stories of the day — stories that create huge traffic because people read and share them. A well-run company would have moved away from an advertising model, but instead they are shuttering the brand entirely because of their strategic and commercial ineptitude.”

In his memo, Spanfeller praised Jezebel’s recent editorial coverage and said the team has “continue[d] to do great work in difficult times.” He specifically called out “Their urgent, breakthrough coverage of reproductive rights in this post-Roe era, as well as other key issues core to modern women, affirmed the brand’s storied legacy as the website that changed women’s media forever.”

With Brown’s exit, the top editors of G/O Media’s publications will “report into an office of editorial oversight,” with more details to come about what that is “in the coming days,” Spanfeller wrote.

In 2019, Spanfeller and private-equity firm Great Hill Partners acquired Gizmodo Media Group (previously part of Gawker Media) and The Onion from Univision. New York-based G/O Media’s brands include Gizmodo, The Onion, The A.V. Club, Deadspin, Jalopnik, Kotaku, The Root and Quartz (which it acquired last year).

Spanfeller, the former CEO of Forbes.com, owns a minority stake in G/O Media. In his memo Thursday, he cited “economic headwinds” affecting G/O Media’s financial health.

“The U.S. economy is expanding but the usual increase in marketing dollars that goes along with these types of numbers have not materialized,” Spanfeller wrote. “While we are not enjoying robust financial success currently, we are also not facing as dire a picture as many of our digital media brethren… The best we can hope to do here is to try new things in new ways with as much forethought as possible and to be as willing to accept when we miss the mark as we are to celebrate when we hit it.”
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The counter to the Bud Light sales collapse is that BL is just one of 100 Anheuser-Busch brands and their stock is doing fine, it is unremarkably in the mid range of where it's been for the past 5 years, see below. Note the boycott began in April 2023.

Boycotting BL does nothing if people just switch their preferences to other AB brands. But because people are retarded, they just get caught up in the "boycott BL" mania.
 

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Woke and Fake

Sports Illustrated Freaks Out, Deletes Evidence Of AI-Generated Journalists Writing AI-Generated Articles​


Sports Illustrated has been busted using AI-generated journalists to 'write' AI-generated articles, and then freaked out and deleted the evidence after one of their webdevs dropped the dime on them.



According to an in-depth investigative report by Futurism;

There was nothing in Drew Ortiz's author biography at Sports Illustrated to suggest that he was anything other than human.
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"Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature," it read. "Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn't out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents' farm."
The only problem? Outside of Sports Illustrated, Drew Ortiz doesn't seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history. And even more strangely, his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots, where he's described as "neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes."
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It wasn't just 'Drew Ortiz' either... The outlet used multiple AI-generated 'journalists,' according to a person involved in the creation of the content who asked to remain anonymous.

"There's a lot," said the source. "I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist."

"At the bottom [of the page] there would be a photo of a person and some fake description of them like, 'oh, John lives in Houston, Texas. He loves yard games and hanging out with his dog, Sam.' Stuff like that," the said, adding "It's just crazy."

'Alien' AI writing

A second whistleblower involved in the creation of the AI content told Futurism that it's not just the headshots - entire articles were churned out using AI as well.

In one instance of Ortiz's writing described by Futurism as 'alien,' the article warns that volleyball "can be a little tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with."

What?

"The content is absolutely AI-generated," said the second source, adding "no matter how much they say that it's not."

After Futurism reached out to Sports Illustrated publisher, The Arena Group, all of the AI authors mysteriously disappeared.

Damage control

Arena, after initially ghosting Futurism's inquiries, blamed a 3rd party contractor.

Today, an article was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles. According to our initial investigation, this is not accurate. The articles in question were product reviews and were licensed content from an external, third-party company, AdVon Commerce. A number of AdVon's e-commerce articles ran on certain Arena websites. We continually monitor our partners and were in the midst of a review when these allegations were raised. AdVon has assured us that all of the articles in question were written and edited by humans. According to AdVon, their writers, editors, and researchers create and curate content and follow a policy that involves using both counter-plagiarism and counter-AI software on all content. However, we have learned that AdVon had writers use a pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy — actions we don't condone — and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership.
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As Futurism notes, however, "It sounds like The Arena Group's investigation pretty much just involved asking AdVon whether the content was AI-generated, and taking them at their word when they said it wasn't. Our sources familiar with the creation of the content disagree."

The statement also never addresses the core allegation of our story: that Sports Illustrated published content from nonexistent writers with AI-generated headshots. The implication seems to be that AdVon invented fake writers, assigned them fake biographies and AI-generated headshots, and then stopped right there, only publishing content written by old-fashioned humans. Maybe that's true, but we doubt it.
Regardless, the AI content marks a staggering fall from grace for Sports Illustrated, which in past decades won numerous National Magazine Awards for its sports journalism and published work by literary giants ranging from William Faulkner to John Updike.
But now that it's under the management of The Arena Group, parts of the magazine seem to have devolved into a Potemkin Village in which phony writers are cooked up out of thin air, outfitted with equally bogus biographies and expertise to win readers' trust, and used to pump out AI-generated buying guides that are monetized by affiliate links to products that provide a financial kickback when readers click them.
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Hilariously, after Sports Illustrated scrubbed 'Drew Ortiz' from the site entirely, his profile picture redirected to another AI generated bio - of one "Sora Tanaka."

There's no evidence of Sora outside this profile, but 'her' picture is for sale on the same AI headshot marketplace as Ortiz!





Tanaka too eventually disappeared, replaced by another profile with no headshot at all - which was then deleted too.

Other Arena Group outlets doing it too?

The rabbit hole goes even deeper, according to Futurism, which also reports that similar AI-generated authors and articles have been found on The Street.

Take TheStreet, a financial publication cofounded by Jim Cramer in 1996 that The Arena Group bought for $16.5 million in 2019. Like at Sports Illustrated, we found authors at TheStreet with highly specific biographies detailing seemingly flesh-and-blood humans with specific areas of expertise — but with profile photos traceable to that same AI face website. And like at Sports Illustrated, these fake writers are periodically wiped from existence and their articles reattributed to new names, with no disclosure about the use of AI.
Sometimes TheStreet's efforts to remove the fake writers can be sloppy. On its review section's title page, for instance, the site still proudly flaunts the expertise of AI-generated contributors who have since been deleted, linking to writer profiles it describes as ranging "from stay-at-home dads to computer and information analysts." This team, the site continues, "is comprised of a well-rounded group of people who bring varying backgrounds and experiences to the table." -Futurism
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Read the rest here...

Meanwhile, shares of Arena plunged 21% on Tuesday.

 

Get Woke, Go Broke: Mass Layoffs At Sports Illustrated After Publisher Loses License​



Sports Illustrated rights holder Arena Group has had its license to publish the magazine revoked by Authentic Brands Group after inability to make $3.75 million quarterly payment at the end of 2023. In other words, the publisher likely isn't bringing in enough profit to maintain the brand. Under contract, Arena Group is required to pay another $45 million to ABG because of the loss of the license. As a result, Sports Illustrated has been forced to layoff their entire staff while discussions are underway to salvage the arrangement.

In a statement, Sports Illustrated Union and The NewsGuild of New York vowed to “fight for every one of our colleagues.” But how could this have happened? One of the oldest and best known names in sports commentary is now essentially defunct.

The signs were all there.

The shutdown takes place only thee years after the company committed to major layoffs in 2020 back when they were run by Maven, shaving $27 million from their costs compared to 2018. Apparently, this wasn't enough and ownership was acquired by Arena Group. In November of 2023, SI was caught using fake journalists and AI generated content, further indicating that they were on the verge of going broke.

The true cause will be conveniently ignored by the corporate media, but the woes of Sports Illustrated began directly after they tied the publication to woke messaging. For example, the magazine began parading plus-sized (fat positivity) models in their sponsored runway shows and swimsuit additions in 2017. For a publication that is supposed to be focused on athletic excellence, the idea of fat positivity is an obvious anathema for their core readership. People who are incapable of athleticism in most arenas should not be used as representatives of the sporting world (or the pinnacle of beauty, for that matter).



The company then latched onto the feminist “equal pay” movement for women's sports, arguing that female athletes and clubs should be offered pay equal to male sports. The movement completely ignored the key factors of audience interest; male athletes tend to make more money because far more people are interested in watching men's sports.

Sports Illustrated also began featuring transgender women (men dressed as women) in their women's swimsuit editions, perpetuating the gender fluid ideology. This led to a conservative boycott of the magazine in 2023, and now, here they are, out of business.



The carnage falling upon woke companies in the past couple years has been relentless. Numerous Big Tech and entertainment platforms are suffering a string of layoffs and budget cuts and no one in the mainstream wants to acknowledge that the wokification of the corporate world is a primary contributor to their downfall.

The bottom line? The vast majority of American consumers do not want woke content and will not pay for it. Furthermore, the people that do want this kind of content are usually activists with no money to spend.

Despite this reality, companies continue to embrace far-left ideology and promote it through their products and marketing to their own detriment. This explains why the political left has been so hostile to free markets and the notion of catering to consumers – In a free market people can always walk away from woke businesses. It doesn't matter how much they saturate media with propaganda, all people have to do is not open their wallets.

In a socialist or ESG-based world, such companies would be fully supported by governments and tax dollars. In other words, you would be forced to pay for the transgender swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, whether you want to or not. For now, thankfully, “Get Woke, Go Broke” is still a rule that widely applies.
 
Nordwand said:
The Body Shop, who recently ditched their range of mens products, and went "unisex", have called in the administrators:

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A few shops have already closed and now the shutting up shop begins in earnest, with another 75 shops to go over the next few weeks. If any survive, I'll be surprised:


Even now, I doubt if anyone is reflecting on the wisdom of effectively banning men from the store.
 
One thing the with planes failing narrative, how do we know this isn't engineered, much like the food distribution plants being destroyed? It seems like this would fall into the WEF narrative to deter flying and reduce carbon footprints by instilling some fear. I believe they want to stop all flying and meat consumption by 2050 if memory serves.
 
TheLoneReader said:
One thing the with planes failing narrative, how do we know this isn't engineered, much like the food distribution plants being destroyed? It seems like this would fall into the WEF narrative to deter flying and reduce carbon footprints by instilling some fear. I believe they want to stop all flying and meat consumption by 2050 if memory serves.
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Only problem I have with this is why would Boeing get on board and hurt their profits to cooperate with the WEF? The meat I can see because of big ag. Is there some back room deal where they’ll be taken care of as air traffic decreases? This hurts the vanguard and black rock puppet masters.
 
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