Get Woke, Go Broke: Gillette's Second Ad with Pandering Redemption Arc tries to Disallow YouTube Comments and Impressions, Fails

Remember the polarizing Gillette ad, 'We Believe the Best Men Can Be', released a couple of months ago? Looking at those ratios, it's clear that most of the vocal part of the internet, at least, male and female alike, found the ad very problematic. Toxic, even. As always, the best (worst?) content is always in the comments section -- it currently sits at 29.5 million views, with 418,608 comments, the easy majority of which are very derisive, with 1.4 million 'Dislikes' to 776 thousand 'Likes', a ratio of almost 2:1 negative. On top of this, many people are alleging that many of the YouTube comments have been deleted and dislikes significantly reduced, as well, suggesting the ratios for Gillette's ad are far worse, in reality (many commenters and articles noted they were as much as 10:1 negative).

Depending on their core political beliefs, you could fairly accurately determine a person's opinion of the ad, with some seeing the ad as a rare example of corporate social awareness and responsibility, a right-and-proper 'woke' calling-out of western men being outright guilty of, or at least complicit in, rampant 'toxic masculinity'. Others saw it as just another example of off-the-rails, dishonest feminist misandry and oversimplified or entirely inaccurate hyper-generalizations of western male culture, all while insulting their customers and pandering to third-wave (what I refer to as 'vulgar' as opposed to 'classical') feminist ideologues. While I initially found the ad to be a mixed bag, at best, I could definitely appreciate the arguments as to why it was interpreted as particularly misandrist, by so many. 

Regardless of one's thoughts on the ad, it's safe to say it was a huge marketing blunder, and I'm not going to delve deeply into that, here -- it has been done well enough, elsewhere, already.

Today, Gillette released a new ad, titled 'Every Hero Sweats'. While still playing it safe so as to not undermine their infamous previous ad or irritate the virtue-signaling hordes of Leftists, they seem to be running to the opposite side of the spectrum in an all-too-transparent attempt to placate 'those' who could be 'the only ones' irritated by the whole ordeal -- blonde, white conservatives, 'obviously'! The ad even satisfies that old conservative trope of military 'hero' worship, putting it right in the title of the ad. It all seems a bit too contrived, misses the sticking-point entirely, and, also, is probably too little too late. Unfortunately for them, any potential good faith in the corporate executives and marketing teams at Gillette likely evaporated into thin air when they drew that line in the sand with their first ad.

I expect they realize this, because as one can plainly see -- they've disabled any method of directly commenting on the video. No comments, likes, or dislikes are allowed. In their reach for absolution, they have, once again, firmly placed themselves behind the line they've already drawn, just now utilizing the tool of censorship to try to shield themselves from the fallout of their short-sightedness. 

Luckily, the time of politically biased content censorship is on its way to being over.

Enter, Dissenter

Gab, which opened up for registration in 2017, is one of a handful of 'free speech' social networking sites. Other alternatives include Minds and Diaspora, with these sites offering alternatives to the increasingly censoring (undeniably and heavily towards a Leftist bias), all-consuming sites like Twitter and Facebook. Being any social networking site dedicated against censorship amidst much larger competitors which are regularly censoring or banning anywhere from inconvenient personalities (such as Sargon of Akkad, Gavin McGinnis, Candace Owens, et al)) to some genuinely nasty people, you are likely to attract more than your fair share of the latter. As such, Gab and other alternatives do have a much higher rate of some hateful individuals, but as Thomas Jefferson once said, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it." 

Such a system still works on these sites because you're free to follow, unfollow, and mute who you so please, with speech you don't like being minimized from your feed. Who and what you see is all under your control, and a top-down authority doesn't moralistically impose themselves upon you or supposedly 'for you'. 

In any case, I'm of the view that sunlight is the best disinfectant -- and this is where it gets good. 

All too often, the bandwagoning mob is little more than a sock-in-the-wind,
 or, for SJWs in particular, a virtue-signaling race-to-the-bottom.

Over the years, various meta social review systems for websites have cropped up, allowing for unified systems of website annotation. Third Voice was one that caused a bit of havoc over two decades ago, other examples over the years being Stickis and Reframe It. As someone who stays relatively in-the-know regarding innovative hardware and software development, I never heard about them, previously. This is probably because there hasn't been a real, widespread need for them -- until now. The culture of censorship in meatspace as well as online space has gone a bit off-the-rails, with the most vocal and active Progressives and SJWs seemingly leaving the once bedrock American value behind, abandoning it to libertarians, conservatives and the increasingly rare breed of centrist liberals. In addition to the sudden need of of anti-censorship tools, Gab has become one of the more, uh, infamous social network alternatives out there and has enjoyed quite a bit of press, on that front. 

As such, it's been gaining more attention and seems to have effectively leveraged this with the release of their new 'Dissenter' platform, which functions as either an integrated browser extension (EDIT: that link has been taken down, but you can still download it here) or a website you can visit, making it a comment hub for the entire internet. Whether it's a Tweet you're restricted from accessing, a blog post, a New York Times article, or a YouTube video -- you now have a unified space built on the value of free speech to easily read and, this part is important -- directly post comments, respond to comment threads, and like or dislike other comments in relation to the specific content in question. 

Below, you'll find a decent video providing a quick review and tutorial as to how it works.

In terms of how Dissenter looks and is working out with the example of Gillette's Pandering Redemption Arc, I downloaded the Google Chrome extension, signed in to Dissenter (which uses your Gab login credentials), and gave it a shot. You can find a couple of cropped print screens with Dissenter being used on both of Gillette's ads, below.

Seeing the Dissenter comment threads piling up on the new Gillette ad with the fragility of the
'Comments are disabled for this video.' statement just makes the sweet that much sweeter.

Users are piling even more Dissenter comments on the first ad, as well. Apparently, the
418,608 bread-and-butter YouTube comments could use some extra Dissenter dressing.

Further, any recently active and popular Dissenter threads are also displayed along the top of the extension once it's clicked on, like the marquee ribbon you typically find at the bottom of news and business channels. If you start a new conversation on a piece of content, and that piece of content gets increasingly active participation on Dissenter, it could slide across the top of the extension along with on the main website. Folks can click on it, directly, and go from there.

One YouTube video I gave this a try on was the fantastic Egard Watches ad, below, which was a very direct rebut to the Gillette ad released just a couple of days later. 

With 3.7 million views and a Like to Dislike ratio of over 63:1, who 

the hell are these 6500 who 'Disliked' this? Hrmmm, I wonder...

We are now in the era of 'woke' corporate ads from household name companies like Gillette, targeting men -- their own primary customers -- for ideological conceptions of 'toxic masculinity'. We have a decades-long media norm of portraying men as the doofus dad / husband trope in popular culture. If men -- husbands and fathers, especially -- are to be perceived as either evil, complicitly so, or ignorant, stupid, and incompetent -- is it any wonder that we're seeing a modern 'crisis of masculinity' in whatever form it's being expressed and interpreted?

If we allow ideologues to effectively shame and belittle mens' essence of being, and, implicitly, fatherhood, for a generation, should we be surprised that there is such a crisis? Instead of being silenced, or worse, kowtowing to such attacks from the usual suspects -- the ability to challenge and express our contempt for any of these ideological narratives freely and without censorship is like mana from the gods. While platforms like Gab, Minds, and Diaspora are important in-and-of-themselves, the time is ripe for something like Dissenter to really be what directly challenges these narratives going forward.

The new Gillette ad absolutely sold me on something, but it wasn't razors -- it was Dissenter. Here's to Gillette and any other censors selling as many people as possible on the potential power of such a platform.


UPDATE (03/04/2019)... Check out a couple other perfect examples of Dissenter users directly commenting on comment-prohibited content by the censors! 

First up, we have 'Captain Marvel' on Rotten Tomatoes, where the ratigns have been deleted. Certainly no conflict of interest going on, here, considering that Disney now owns both 'Rotten Tomatoes', itself, along with the 'Marvel Cinematic Universe'. Glorious.

Captain Marvel (2019) -- Rotten Tomatoes
Dissenter.com Discussion Tracker of the Captain Marvel Page (over 2000 comments)


Next, David Gilbert of VICE News writes up a highly dishonest piece on Dissenter and, naturally, disallows all commenting ability on his article. Of course, there's a crucial difference between saying "a social network used by the far-right" and "a far-right social network". Dissenter users proceed to pounce on the piece in a torrent of debunking and righteous indignation.

Users of far-right social network Gab can now comment on the entire internet -- VICE
Dissenter.com Discussion Tracker of the VICE article (over 2000 comments)

Looking forward to what the future holds regarding the battle between the wannabe censors and their now impotent attempts at direct censorship.