A cohort of far right morons got a little too cocky after turning Bud Light into a pilsner non grata among American conservatives through an unhinged boycott over the company sending one (1) customized can of beer to trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. As stupid as that boycott was, it did actually manage to hurt the beer’s sales. Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro imagined that Barbie would be similarly hurt with audiences by its progressive themes, confidently predicting a huge second weekend drop. That didn’t happen, and Greta Gerwig’s comedy has now made over a billion dollars. Facts don’t care about your feelings, Shapiro.
Meanwhile, over on Steam, Baldur’s Gate 3 is enjoying one of the biggest launches in the history of the platform, with 814,666 concurrents at its peak. That number puts it in rarified air, alongside Cyberpunk 2077, Hogwarts Legacy, and Elden Ring. Larian co-founder Swen Vincke joked that he would be staying away from the company’s IT team for a while following the huge surge of players, saying he “told them they should expect like 100k or so at max.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 is progressive in a lot of ways, including its trans-inclusive character creator which allows players to pair any genitals with any voice, and select from male, female, and non-binary gender options. It’s similarly open-minded about sexuality, with some male players expressing frustration that they can’t prevent their male companions from hitting on them. Apparently, it’s also possible to form a throuple with two of your companions. All of this would make Shapiro and his ilk seethe… and yet it’s one of the biggest games of the year.
So, what’s the difference? Why did conservative outrage actually manage to hurt Bud Light, but have no negative effects on Barbie or Baldur’s Gate 3? As much as "go woke, go broke" has become common wisdom among right-wingers, shows of progressivism are only damaging in cases where the product's base skews conservative and where there are plentiful other options.
Let's take Bud Light as an example. Though the light beer became a staple of gay bars in the '70s because other companies refused to serve the LGBTQ+ community, it has primarily been marketed as a working class beer for rural White conservatives. They weren't the only demographic to drink Bud Light, but it was aggressively marketed to them. So, when Bud Light worked with a trans woman, conservative pundits pounced on it as evidence that the company was out of touch with its audience. Those pundits fed the frenzy about Bud Light, and so did rightwing celebrities like Kid Rock who posted a video where he shot a case of Bud Light with an assault rifle. Other videos showed the results of the hate campaign out in the wild, with one person posting a video of a man destroying cases of beer at a grocery store.
The Bud Light controversy was also able to gain steam because all of it was so easily digestible and uncomplicated. Mulvaney's initial video was short and contained all the information bigots needed to know to be upset: Bud Light sent her a can with her face on it and it was a gift in celebration of a full year of her being out as trans. Transphobes got all the information they needed extremely quickly and pundits could pass the information along just as easily. Bigots had their marching orders.
But, movies and games are fundamentally different. Barbie is progressive in many ways — it presents the patriarchy as something that hurts both men and women, and the cast includes a trans woman — but movies are bigger and more complicated than sponcon. They need to be interpreted. That means that Ben Shapiro can argue that the movie is man-hating, but now that it’s a massive hit, right wing influencers can just as easily argue that it’s secretly conservative. It doesn’t matter if the text as a whole supports it; they can cherry-pick bits and pieces to support the argument. Conservative pundits don’t want to attack things that are clearly successful, and given that Baldur’s Gate 3 is enjoying such massive numbers, that rules it out, too.
It takes the right wing movement fully mobilizing against something for it to make any dent at all. And, even then, there has to be significant overlap between the product's audience and the audience for right wing punditry. Right wingers could easily decide to boycott Theater Camp, the LGBTQ+ inclusive comedy currently in theaters that shows young children at a camp with queer staff. But for that to happen, there would have to be a significant overlap in the audience, and there just isn't. There’s plenty of overlap between conservatives and PC gamers, but trying to convince an audience to hate something that they clearly like is a losing battle. Could conservatives put a dent in Baldur’s Gate 3’s sales? Maybe. But they would have to wage all out war against something that gamers have already shown they love.
If the controversy started in the gaming community, right wingers could exploit it, but trying to impose it from the outside doesn’t work. Boycotting Bud Light, a beer that tastes like several other light beers on the market that are available at the same bars, is a lot easier than boycotting a game like Baldur’s Gate 3, which is being received as a once in a generation RPG. Gamers live for that shit.
The success of the Bud Light boycott is more a success of picking an easy target. When people really want to play or watch something, there aren’t enough Ben Shapiro videos in the world to stop them.