The Pro-Trans Activists Buying Up Ad Space Across Right-Wing Media

jeffw@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 169 points –
The Pro-Trans Activists Buying Up Ad Space Across Right-Wing Media
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They’re still just providing extra revenue to media groups who will use their money to promote the opposite view.

They'll be getting that revenue regardless. At least this might do some good.

That's a good way of looking at it.

That's not necessarily true. The thing about TV ads in particular, is there are only so many ad minutes to sell in an hour. More ad bidders = higher prices for those ad minutes. As advertisers leave a platform, the remaining advertisers have more power to negotiate lower prices for ad buys.

Hopefully this isn't like the Facebook election interference where fake people took extremist positions on either side and pushed it in the face of the people most likely to be offended by it...

Why? Is what they were missing from being a tolerant human a little advertising?

There's a significant amount of people that have never met a trans person (or at least a trans person that didn't pass), so it's just foreign and scary to them. Think of it like a horror movie (to be clear, I'm not comparing trans people to horror movie creatures): the movie is more suspenseful and scary if we're only able to see the creature from the shadows for a decent chunk of the first act. When a horror movie shows the the creature right away, the horror has to come from somewhere else. I think the idea is to take away the fear by presenting trans people to transphobes without endangering trans people.

I understand this but the immediate harm done by financially supporting right-wing media outlets (in my opinion) is a lot worse than the chance of some users of those outlets having a change of heart after seeing an ad.

I'm reminded of John Oliver's Catheter Cowboy.

I wonder if that guy's even still alive?

I wonder if they were inspired by the "He gets us" ads from the Jesus freaks. As an attempt to flip the script. But I doubt either campaign is doing much that they set out to do.

I want trans people to feel and be safe. I don’t think this is gonna change minds with Fox’s audience. Call me unconvinced, though I really hope I’m wrong. I hate the right.