I called BS on the whole 'cancel culture makes you think twice' argument until I saw a friend nearly lose his business over a 5 year old tweet

A guy I went to high school with runs a local landscaping crew in Phoenix, and someone dug up a dumb joke he posted back in 2019 about HOA rules sounding like communist propaganda. The next week he lost three contracts worth about $4,200 total, and that's when I realized how fast this stuff can hit real people's wallets, not just celebrities. Has anyone else watched this happen to someone you actually know?

2 comments

2 Comments

price.tara11d ago

Actually the guy should have known better than to put political stuff on his business account in the first place. Social media is public and jokes about communism are going to turn off a lot of normal customers who just want their lawn mowed. That $4,200 loss is a hard lesson but maybe it taught him to keep personal opinions separate from his work. Companies lose customers all the time for bad customer service or shoddy work, so why is getting dropped for bad takes any different? People have the right to spend their money where they feel comfortable and that includes avoiding businesses that make dumb political jokes.

clairem4711d ago

Oh wow, so you're saying it's totally fine for customers to punish a guy for a joke that wasn't even aimed at them? Where do you draw the line between a business owner's right to be dumb online and people overreacting?