Want To Avoid Woke Products? There’s an App for That.

It’s hard to be a conservative these days. And I’m not talking about trying to survive the latest policies, laws, orders, and decrees of the Biden administration or your local school board or the depredations of rioters or protestors. I’m talking about boycotts. We love boycotting things, don’t we? And with the recent events surrounding Nike, Oil of Olay, and Bud Light, it’s getting hard to keep track of what we aren’t supposed to buy. Fortunately for me, I’ve been boycotting Bud Light for the past 30 years, so beer isn’t an issue for me. (And for the record, neither is Oil of Olay.)

I just have to compete with all of the new arrivals in my state for my favorite IPA. But to that end, there was plenty of Bud Light in the coolers this weekend. However, Utah is not a state known for its aggressive consumption of alcohol, so my local grocery store may not be the best barometer of how the battle is going. Be that as it may, a trip to the supermarket could possibly turn into an aggravating scavenger hunt to find products that don’t lean left. I’m sure there’s a list somewhere, but updating the thing must be a 24-hour job, and I don’t want to hit the “refresh button” every time I need to pick up a loaf of bread and a carton of milk. No one has time for that.

But, even as AI is getting ready to consign all of us to the ash heap of history, technology still offers some benefits to conservatives, and I don’t mean your Parler app. And so, Consumer Research to the rescue! The organization has the perfect app for the conservative on the go who wants to avoid accidentally buying a box of potentially progressive taquitos or something. It will let you know when another company has “gone woke.” Well, technically, it isn’t an app. It’s a service that will send you a message when a company makes the move to improve its ESG rating and tank its sales.

I visited the site where you can sign up to receive “Woke Alerts.” By doing so, you will be the first to know when the inevitable happens and your favorite brand, company, or team goes sour. There’s even a “Report” button so you can pass the word should you encounter a woke product, service, or entity in its natural habitat. At first blush, the site lists the usual suspects: Black Rock, Bud Light, Jack Daniels, and Silicon Valley Bank. But if you page down, you will find a variety of articles that could be useful for understanding how the woke mindset works and just how far it has permeated the market. Here’s a set of bullet points from its WNBA page:

WILL WOKE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL GET CALLED ON FOUL? [sic]

• WNBA power forward Breanna Stewart tweeted on January 22 that she wants to negotiate “a deal that helps subsidize charter travel for the entire WNBA.”
• WNBA team The Seattle Storm announced in September 2022 that it had become a signatory to The Climate Pledge, which is aimed at achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2040.
• Flying teams on private jets would produce significantly more emissions per passenger than flying on a commercial airliner.

You are probably thinking that you don’t need another alert popping up on your phone, tablet, or laptop. Neither do I. On the other hand, you still have personal purchasing power — for the moment. So why not make informed choices while you still have choices? After all, the day may come when woke beer is the only beer on the shelves.