Spark attracted criticism recently after the company tweeted its support for a social media post made by transgender activist and young New Zealander of the year Shaneel Lal, calling for the banning and exclusion of ‘TERFS’ from Meta’s new Threads app.
The term TERF, Trans exclusionary radical feminist, was coined by trans activists and rainbow groups to refer, often in a derogatory manner and often in the context of promoting violence or social exclusion, to those who disagree with certain aspects of trans culture, or the actions of transexual public figures.
The troublesome nature of the term itself has already been written about by kiwi commentators, but little has been said on what the gender debate has to do with digital service providers in the first place.
The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. In fact, the possible correlations between the telecommunications industry and the views of trans activists on twitter, are so utterly non-existent that one baffles at what Spark were thinking getting involved at all.
But they did, and for some reason, plenty of NZ businesses do the same. They take the liberty of using their online platforms, usually followed by customers wanting to keep abreast of updates on the good/service they provide, to instead lecture the public about politics and social matters on which they have no authority or credibility whatsoever.
Usually, this is done to appease ‘woke’ employees and board members, who wish to encourage the kind of media and public coverage that such displays of patronising virtue signalling often illicit.
In reality, taking up a strong political stance on a contentious issue as a business in an industry as far removed from social controversy as telecommunications, is just about the worst idea a New Zealand CEO has had since Simon Henry decided to publicly weigh in on Nadia Lim’s cleavage.
In this instance though, it’d be fair to assume the problem is not actually the CEO. The problem is more likely to be the lanyard sporting, 20-something year old social media managers who are so keen to offer their opinions on anything from climate change to misogyny that they’re unable to refrain from doing the same on their company’s official accounts.
Our complete and utter lack of interest has never deterred them in the real world, so why would it stop them mouthing off online either? We the general public, in the midst of an election year have more than enough people and organisations lecturing us about politics. We don’t need our broadband providers chiming in as well.
And this goes for all businesses - large or small - throughout New Zealand. Let us not forget that those looking to ‘boycott’ the provider for their support of Shaneel Lal were quickly disappointed, finding that most other large internet providers, including One New Zealand and 2Degrees, had rushed to join the back-patting conga line of self-congratulatory virtue signalling snaking its way through the nation’s online trending lists.
The dispute last weekend was largely resolved following a clarification from Spark on their views, after internal correspondence within the company showed concern over complaints from a portion of their customer base.
Having to backtrack after taking a completely unnecessary political stance as a business is both embarrassing and easily avoidable. For future reference, Kiwi companies would do well to refer to this handy flow chart when deciding whether official comment from the company is required. The following is designed with special relevance to Spark:
Is the topic directly related to your ability to distribute or provide digital and/or telecommunications services? Comment is welcome.
Is the topic about anything else? Bugger off.
Ben Espiner produces the breakfast show on The Platform. He has a BA in Political Science and English Literature from Victoria University of Wellington. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. In fact, the possible correlations between the telecommunications industry and the views of trans activists on twitter, are so utterly non-existent that one baffles at what Spark were thinking getting involved at all.
But they did, and for some reason, plenty of NZ businesses do the same. They take the liberty of using their online platforms, usually followed by customers wanting to keep abreast of updates on the good/service they provide, to instead lecture the public about politics and social matters on which they have no authority or credibility whatsoever.
Usually, this is done to appease ‘woke’ employees and board members, who wish to encourage the kind of media and public coverage that such displays of patronising virtue signalling often illicit.
In reality, taking up a strong political stance on a contentious issue as a business in an industry as far removed from social controversy as telecommunications, is just about the worst idea a New Zealand CEO has had since Simon Henry decided to publicly weigh in on Nadia Lim’s cleavage.
In this instance though, it’d be fair to assume the problem is not actually the CEO. The problem is more likely to be the lanyard sporting, 20-something year old social media managers who are so keen to offer their opinions on anything from climate change to misogyny that they’re unable to refrain from doing the same on their company’s official accounts.
Our complete and utter lack of interest has never deterred them in the real world, so why would it stop them mouthing off online either? We the general public, in the midst of an election year have more than enough people and organisations lecturing us about politics. We don’t need our broadband providers chiming in as well.
And this goes for all businesses - large or small - throughout New Zealand. Let us not forget that those looking to ‘boycott’ the provider for their support of Shaneel Lal were quickly disappointed, finding that most other large internet providers, including One New Zealand and 2Degrees, had rushed to join the back-patting conga line of self-congratulatory virtue signalling snaking its way through the nation’s online trending lists.
The dispute last weekend was largely resolved following a clarification from Spark on their views, after internal correspondence within the company showed concern over complaints from a portion of their customer base.
Having to backtrack after taking a completely unnecessary political stance as a business is both embarrassing and easily avoidable. For future reference, Kiwi companies would do well to refer to this handy flow chart when deciding whether official comment from the company is required. The following is designed with special relevance to Spark:
Is the topic directly related to your ability to distribute or provide digital and/or telecommunications services? Comment is welcome.
Is the topic about anything else? Bugger off.
Ben Espiner produces the breakfast show on The Platform. He has a BA in Political Science and English Literature from Victoria University of Wellington. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
2 comments:
You are so right ben. Even at my work a maori prayer must be said to begin and end every meeting and we are not even a govt dept. You can see people all thinking how cringy this is, but no one says anything, as the worst label you can be given in a workplace is "racist." That is how all these wokesters have mananged to thrive. Even the CEO' s are scared of that and are scared of the wokesters.
It's all paid for by global corporatism which had another name incidentally Mussolini I think coined the term.
https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/opinion/musk-believes-esg-is-the-devil-and-hes-not-the-only-one/
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