Bud Light and the End of Rainbow Marketing, For Now

Hi!

Impressive carrying skills, right?

I got some Bud Lights for us.

So, I kept hearing about this thing called March Madness, and I thought we were all just having a hectic month, but it turns out it has something to do with sports.

And I'm not sure exactly which sport, but either way, it's a cause to celebrate.

This month I celebrated my day 365 of womanhood, and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever, a can with my face on it.

Check out my Instagram story to see how you can enjoy March Madness with Fud Light and maybe win some money too.

Love ya!

Cheers!

Go team!

Whatever team you love, I love too.

Okay.

Love ya.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity.

Happy holidays and happy new year, my friends.

Today it is just me.

It's a bit of a special episode about something that I'm sure you've heard about at some point over the last year, but from a point of view that is also deeply personal in ways which will become clearer as the episode goes on.

I was going to ask Dylan Mulvaney to join me today for this episode, and she is coming on this podcast.

We've spoken about it.

She's a friend of mine.

But not for today, not for this episode, for a couple reasons.

First of all, I would imagine that there is no one more tired of discussing the Bud Light boycott than Dylan Mulvaney, and I wouldn't really want to waste an hour talking to her with talking about something that she doesn't really want to talk about anymore.

Secondly, this is ultimately not a story about Dylan.

She is a key player, and she becomes the symbolic main character at the center of all of this, and her face will forever be connected to the way that people remember it.

But ultimately, it's not about her.

It's a story about corporate greed, about the manufacturing of political villains to motivate voters, about the influencer economy, and about representation politics.

I hope you enjoy it.

I love you, and I appreciate you.

And without further ado.

Earlier this year, Bud Light's new vice president of marketing, Alyssa Heinerscheid, had been wanting to take the brand in a more inclusive direction.

She felt like Bud Light was increasingly falling out of touch with younger, more progressive audiences.

Bud Light had also been in the decline for a bunch of years now, and she felt like the brand image was too stuck in this, you know, frat boy image.

So on April 1st, Dylan Mulvaney posted a video that she was sponsored by Bud Light to make.

Now, quick background, I'm sure if you're listening to this, you probably know who Dylan Mulvaney is, but if you don't, she is a TikTok star.

She gained over 10 million followers on TikTok and millions of followers on other platforms over the past couple years while documenting her transition.

She documented that in a very popular series called Days of Girlhood, which she's since stopped doing because of the backlash that we're going to get into in this episode.

But anyway, on April 1st, she posts this Instagram video in partnership with Bud Light.

It's a minute long.

It's promoting this $15,000 giveaway that Bud Light is doing in celebration of March Madness, like, you know, the college basketball tournament.

I don't know that much about it, but it's something to do with basketball.

And the tone of the video is extremely innocuous.

It's extremely apolitical.

She kind of has this, you know, satirical attitude about not knowing that much about sports or March madness.

And yeah, from the bat, you could...

interpret this as a strange casting choice, right?

Why would Bud Light cast Dylan Mulvaney, who self-admittedly doesn't know a whole lot about March Madness or basketball, to make this sponsored Instagram video about March Madness and about basketball?

But you could also find the self-awareness that Dylan has in the video, right?

She's saying, I don't know, it's sports or something.

You could find that self-awareness kind of endearing.

Dylan isn't pretending to know what March Madness is, and she's making light of it.

She's making light of the strange fact that she's been put into this position to market it.

In addition to the one-minute sponsored sponsored Instagram video post that was promoted by nobody except Dylan herself, the company didn't promote it, it wasn't pushed anywhere, it was just on Dylan's Instagram page.

Didn't even make her TikTok.

God, guys.

In addition to the video, Bud Light sent Dylan one can of beer with an illustration of her face on it, which was as a congratulation to her for having hit one year since the beginning of her transition.

Now, the way that this kind of narrative spun out, which I'm going to describe in a moment, you would have thought that Bud Light cans with Dylan Mulvaney's face on it were being sold everywhere.

You would have thought that you could have bought a Dylan Mulvaney beer in every vending machine, in every 7-Eleven, that there were no Bud Light cans being produced without her face on it.

You would have thought that she was on every Bud Light billboard, right?

Every single right-wing media person who goes on to describe this partnership between Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light in total outrage, made it sound like Dylan Mulvaney was the face of the brand.

That was never the case.

I need you to have the foundational knowledge that the extent of the partnership between Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light was one sponsored Instagram video that lived on Dylan Mulvaney's Instagram page and one singular can of beer.

A single can of beer, which doesn't even exist anymore.

Here's Dylan.

Funny story.

I had the can around around my house, but then I realized, wait, I need to protect this can.

So I hid it somewhere, and now I can't find it because I hid it so well.

But when I do find it, I feel like it needs to go in a museum, preferably behind bulletproof glass.

Immediately after Dylan posts this 60-second Instagram video and a story of the one beer can, Fox News begins reporting on Dylan Mulvini and the Bud Light collaboration around the clock.

Suddenly, everything, even beer cans, are celebrating and promoting transgenderism.

Bud Light has just released a commemorative can celebrating a man who dresses up like a woman.

Sales of Bud Light have dropped even more following its controversial partnership with trans activists.

Bud Light has yet to really acknowledge what they did.

They'll put out patriotic ads, they'll try to sweep it under the rug, but until they explicitly address what they did, this hemorrhaging is not going to stop.

They haven't directly said that this is a problem.

they had a sponsorship with dylan mulbaney in the first place nor have they apologized to their consumers for it i i think that the bud light brand for many people out there has become so toxic that guys guys know right that if you get a bud light right now and you're holding a bud light your buddies let's say you're out golfing let's say like i said you're out at a social event your buddy's gonna walk up and be like oh you're a big bud light guy huh and you're gonna get made fun of a little bit in a way that you wouldn't if you drink coors Light and Miller Light.

And Fox News, along with other major players in the conservative media ecosystem, like the Daily Wire, The Daily Caller, Breitbart News, they turn this

Instagram sponsorship, which should have never fucking mattered to anyone, into a total frenzy that trickles down to the viewers of that media and everybody starts to go absolutely berserk.

What beer are we gonna drink on Fox July?

What beer?

Anything but Bud bud light probably maybe a heineken light no bud light say no say no to bud light say no to bud say no to bud light no bud light

light

people are filming themselves shooting cans of bud light with guns

kid rock films a video of himself shooting a bunch of cases of bud light uh say something to all you and be as clear and concise as possible.

Bud Light and f Anheuser-Busch.

Have a terrific day.

Travis Tritt, a country singer, pulled Bud Light from his upcoming tour events.

Restaurants around the country whose owners espouse conservative values started making headlines for the decision to stop serving Bud Light at their restaurants.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of Arkansas, releases her own beer koozies that resemble Bud Light cans, but instead of Bud Light, it says real woman, along with pictures of her and other right-wing female politicians.

Like, first of all, look, no offense to Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Well, you know what?

Actually, full offense to Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Who wants to stare at a picture of her while they're drinking a beer?

The far-right senators Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn opened a federal investigation into Anheuser-Busch.

That's

the parent company of Bud Light.

They open a federal investigation into Dylan's Instagram video, claiming that because Dylan calls her main series on TikTok Days of Girlhood, which by the way, isn't mentioned in the Bud Light advertisement video, but they say that because her main series is called Days of Girlhood, that could potentially mean that Dylan was inadvertently advertising beer to children.

This is where our tax dollars were going, guys.

I guess it wouldn't be a real trans hysteria moment if we didn't invoke some like gay pedophilia panic from the 1970s, right?

That's kind of.

We have to hit the points.

Between April and June, sales of Bud Light plummet more than 10%, and by July, they've plummeted by 26%.

Two Bud Light executives were fired in the wake of the now nationally broadcasted Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light boycott.

Seth Weathers, this conservative businessman, launches a brand called Conservative Dad's Ultra Right Beer and started advertising it via Fox News as an alternative to Bud Light's quote-unquote woke beer.

America's been drinking beer from a company that doesn't even know which restroom to use.

That's why I created Conservative Dad's Ultra Right 100% woke-free beer.

As conservatives, we're constantly getting hit in the face, left and right, by the woke mind virus.

But the last place we want it is in our beer.

If you know which bathroom to use, you know what beer you should be drinking.

Stop giving money to woke corporations that hate our values.

And to the rest of you woke corporations, stay that f ⁇ away from our kids.

And this is is still fucking going on, guys.

We are eight months into the Dylan Bulvaney Bud Light boycott, whatever, and they're still doing this shit.

Conservative Dads Ultra Right Beer just released a limited edition 2024 calendar featuring a bunch of scantily clad conservative women influencers with the cover star being Riley Gaines.

Riley Gaines is a young woman who tied for fifth place in a single college swim meet with trans swimmer Leah Thomas and has parlayed her anger from that one fifth place tie into an entire career in right-wing media, which, as I've said many times on the show, is a shockingly easy thing to do if you can find the right way to sufficiently pull on the transphobic grievance heartstrings of enough conservatives on Twitter.

Riley Gaines was on Fox News last week talking about the Dylanization of corporate America.

You know that clip of Mr.

Krabs from SpongeBob where he's like losing his mind and he's going, day 23, we're on day 23.

Day 23!

Give it up for day 20,000!

That's how I feel about where we are with the Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light backlash.

I'm like, month eight, we're on month eight, everybody.

I'm sorry to everyone who usually thinks my voice is ASMR suitable.

I realize that that probably just woke you up.

So what does Bud Light do?

Well, Anheuser-Busch's CEO, Brendan Whitworth, issued the following statement.

He says, we never intended to be a part of a discussion that divides people.

We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.

My time serving this country taught me the importance of accountability and the values upon which America was founded.

freedom, hard work, and respect for one another.

As CEO of Anheuser-Busch, I'm focused on building and protecting our remarkable history and heritage.

I care deeply about this country, this company, our values, and our partners.

I spend much of my time traveling across America, listening to and learning from our customers, distributors, and others.

Moving forward, I will continue to work tirelessly to bring great beers to consumers across our nation.

Now,

I remember reading this statement.

And for the first time during this whole thing, feeling absolute rage.

Because you know what?

When you are a regular viewer of these right-wing media outrage cycles, as I have been for a few years now, as part of my job covering them, there's always something that they're mad at.

They're mad that Minnie Mouse is wearing a pantsuit.

They're mad that the green MM isn't sexy anymore.

They're mad that there's like a they-them pronoun character in some obscure Nickelodeon show.

Like there is always

something.

And so while I was always

angry for Dylan, that there was so much hate and transphobia coming from Fox News and its viewers towards her throughout this whole situation, it didn't surprise me because she was

their topic of choice du jour, right?

However, When the company that hired her, when the company that cashed in not only on her audience, but her community, on our community, the queer community, did not publicly back her, in fact, publicly abandoned her, publicly and privately, by the way, we'll get to that in a second.

When they said, we never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people, you know what?

I'm sure they didn't.

I'm sure they thought, as many brand campaigns have done before them, that they were going to hire some queer people, appeal to the queer audience for 15 minutes, make their check, and

cash out.

And frankly, as we've learned, as they've learned, that's not the moment that we're living in.

And, you know, I resent the fact that the moment we're living in is one that

trans people cannot exist in without being inherently political.

I think that's wrong.

But as we've all learned, that is the moment we're living in.

And so for you to hire her, for you to put put her in the line of fire,

and then when the fire comes, for you to run the other way as the multi-million dollar corporation, actually, is it a billion dollar corporation?

Let me Google that.

Billion dollar corporation.

Anheuser-Busch's annual revenue is $60 billion.

For you as the billion-dollar corporation to hire a trans person and run the other way when there's backlash and say, well, we didn't mean it.

Fuck you.

you.

That pissed me off.

That still pisses me off.

And the interesting thing about this statement, though, is it didn't just piss me off.

It pissed everyone off.

And in fact, in trying so hard to toe this middle line of like, we don't want to upset anyone and we just love America.

They made everyone angry on all sides of this issue.

There were gay bars that started boycotting Bud Light and ceased to serve Bud Light at their bars.

And the the people who were already enraged on the right wing became even more enraged because they saw this as a lukewarm statement, which frankly, it was.

Amidst this whole thing, Brendan Whitworth, the Anheuser-Busch CEO, ends up going on a televised interview with Gail King and a couple others.

And I want to play you some clips from that.

It's been a challenging few weeks.

And I think the conversation surrounding Bud Light has moved away from beer.

And that conversation has become divisive.

And Bud Light really doesn't belong there.

Bud Light should be all about bringing people together.

This whole Bud Light doesn't want to belong in a divisive conversation thing, like, are you kidding me?

This shouldn't be divisive, but it is.

And you did start this conversation.

And while you sit here and try to make your billion-dollar corporation marketable to bigots again, queer people, trans people, are suffering from the hatred.

They're dying from the hatred.

I know Brendan Whitworth is not an activist.

I don't think he should be.

But if you're going to enter the ring, fucking stand in it.

Given the moment we're in, this moment in America with trans issues at the top of a Republican social or conservative

political agenda, knowing what you know now, if you could go back, would you send this can to this one person again?

There's a big social conversation taking place right now, and big brands are right in the middle of it.

And it's not just our our industry or Bud Light.

It's happening in retail.

It's happening in fast food.

And so for us, what we need to understand is deeply understand and appreciate is the consumer and what they want,

what they care about, and what they expect from big brands.

There is a big social conversation happening right now.

What we need to deeply understand and appreciate is the consumer.

Well, guess what?

The thing that your consumer appreciates, the thing, the person that your consumer is, is someone who films themselves shooting beer cans because symbolically, that's how they show themselves hurting trans people in a way that doesn't violate social media guidelines.

Some customer you have.

And you, Mr.

Three Piece Suit, can't even say the word transgender.

Okay.

You did point out that Anheuser-Busch has in the past supported the queer community.

In fact, you had these cans

in 2019 that were rainbow bottles that were sold in stores all across the country.

But the political arm of Anheuser-Busch has donated to anti-LGBTQ plus politicians.

So where do you stand and where does the company stand on queer rights?

You know,

we support...

politicians that support our business.

And when we say that, we talk about things like things that work for the industry, allow us to grow the business, allow us to employ more people, and really help drive the economy.

We support politicians who support our our business.

You know, I think this is the most honest he's been so far.

He doesn't care about LGBTQ people or safety or Dylan Mulvaney or anything.

He cares about the beer company that he's the CEO of.

And we knew that.

We knew that the whole time.

But at least now we're saying it.

As your sales are dropping, people, you know, we have people firing guns at Bud Lighthands.

I mean, it's just gotten really off the chain crazy.

So how have you, how are you grappling with that, handling that?

I think it's the impact, honestly, on the employees that weighs most on me.

But again, as I mentioned, seeing the pride and the commitment that they have working on behalf of a 165-plus-year-old American institution is what gives us energy

as we look to move forward and focus on what we do best.

This fucking guy should be a politician.

Brendan Whitworth, go into politics.

You're great at not answering questions.

Now, Dylan ultimately posted a video to her Instagram a couple months later saying that Bud Light never checked in on her, that they ran for the hills.

What transpired from that video was

more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined.

And I should have made this video months ago, but I didn't.

I patiently waited for things to get better.

But surprise, they haven't really.

And I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me, but they never did.

And for months now, I've been scared to leave my house.

I have been ridiculed in public.

I've been followed.

And I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

And I'm not telling you this because I want your pity.

I am telling you this because if this is my experience from a very privileged perspective, know that it is much, much worse for other trans people.

For a company, to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse in my opinion than not hiring a trans person at all because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want.

And the hate doesn't end with me, it has serious and grave consequences for the rest of our community.

And, you know, we're customers too.

I know a lot of trans and queer people who love beer.

And I have some lesbian friends who could drink some of those haters under the table.

So, okay, June rolls around.

It's pride season.

And every year, as you, the listener, may know, a large part of the internet, including myself, jokes about the hollowness of corporate Pride campaigns.

Memes circulate largely around the gay internet, joking about how June is the only time where companies remember that queer people exist and that they don't actually care about us.

And they don't.

And so when June came around this year and the Pride campaigns simply didn't happen, I wasn't the most surprised I've ever been in my life.

But the swiftness with which all the companies just bowed out was shocking.

Now, from the creator side of things, I can tell you that many companies which had scheduled pride campaigns and influencer pride-related partnerships with queer creators this year, they just canceled them.

They canceled them before they were meant to go live.

And some of the queer creators who were hired for those campaigns were paid and just told that the work was never going to go out to the public.

And a lot of them were not.

And even more common, many queer creators this past June just didn't get hired because the campaigns were canceled before that could even happen.

I remember texting with my creator friends, you know, political creators like myself, artists, drag queens, and we were all like, are you working this month?

And nobody was.

The one time of year where most of us make most of our money, it was all gone.

And any of the brands that did end up publishing their Pride campaigns, they were all boycotted too.

Target was boycotted for selling LGBTQ Pride merch, which it does every single June.

Conservatives spread this libel that Target was selling tuck-friendly underwear for children, which they weren't.

It was tuck-friendly underwear for adults in the adults section.

But this myth that Target was selling tucking underwear for children was spread so far and wide by right-wing media that it led to a bunch of bomb threats on different Target locations to the point where Target decided to move their LGBTQ pride merch displays to the backs of stores.

The Northface did a pride campaign with the outdoorsy drag queen Patty Gonia, leading to them being boycotted.

Starbucks was boycotted for including a trans person in a commercial that they did.

And then, of course, there was a Disney boycott spearheaded by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, because Disney got too woke or fucking whatever.

Now, I hope this is obvious, but I don't blame Dylan for any of this because none of this ever had anything to do with her.

She was just the trans person who happened to become incredibly famous in a moment when the right wing was searching for a mascot enemy.

Someone to make the face of their hate movement so that they could emotionally galvanize their base into springing into action and springing to the polls.

You know, when Anita Bryant, the famous singer and Florida orange juice spokeswoman from the 1970s, when she became the face of the movement to exclude gay people from non-discrimination ordinances and ban them from being able to teach in public schools, she inversely galvanized the gay movement to fight back.

A movement needs something to root against just as much as it needs something to root for.

And when the right-wing media establishment organizations like Fox News and people like Ron DeSantis, when they honed in on Dylan, they had found their person.

A lot of people have compared what happened with the Bud Light boycott to the 2018 Nike advertisement with Colin Kaepernick.

So just to recap on that outrage cycle, in 2016, the football player Colin Kaepernick kneeled during the pregame national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice in the United United States.

And subsequently, he became the face of a national controversy, earning him a condemnation from then President Donald Trump.

In 2018, Nike hired him and they did a campaign, an actual campaign, not a singular pair of shoes, where they did a photo shoot with him that turned into billboards and magazine ads and social media ads, including one kind of iconic image that has Colin Kaepernick's face on it and on top of his face it says, believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.

This led to a widespread boycott of Nike.

People were burning their shoes.

It resembled the Bud Light boycott in a lot of ways.

Now, when this Nike campaign came out, Nike's stock initially dipped by 3%.

It was a $4 billion loss in the company's value.

But within a month, Nike regained its losses and the stock grew 5%, reaching a record high for the company.

How do you explain the difference between between the ultimate success of the Nike campaign and the failure of the Bud Light campaign, which Bud Light, you guys like, Bud Light is still trying to scramble to cover their losses.

Like I won't pretend that this ultimately was successful for them.

CNBC published this report in August that basically said that people just don't want brands to be political as much as they used to.

It found that Republicans are less likely than Democrats to think that brands should espouse political beliefs or advocate for causes.

I don't think Republicans are actually more or less against brands taking stands than Democrats are.

It's just that when brands do take stands, they're usually progressive, which conservatives don't like.

On the rare occasion that a brand does espouse conservative values or that their CEO espouses conservative values, Republicans love that.

I think that consumers right now, especially young consumers, feel more than ever the political weight of their purchases matter, which is something that we're seeing play out right now with great intensity as it relates to Palestine.

There is a huge movement on social media among young people right now to boycott brands that are passively or actively aiding in Israel's massacre of Gazans.

And simultaneously, these long threads that people are making of information about which brands are supporting Palestine and are supporting a ceasefire.

There was this Forbes article I read while preparing for this episode that was also discussing this point about how the reason the Colin Kaepernick campaign was ultimately successful and the Bud Light one wasn't was just because people are dramatically less interested in brands taking political positions now.

And I just don't think that's true.

But speaking of politics and political positions, we have to return to this question of: was Dylan Mulvaney's Bud Light video political?

Check out my Instagram story to see how you can enjoy March Madness with Fud Light and maybe win some money too.

Love ya!

No, the video was not political.

There was no political messaging, there was no pride messaging, there was no messaging about womanhood or transness or literally fucking anything.

Categorically, it wasn't an advertisement for children.

It's a 21 plus ad.

So even people who think that queer and trans people are like inherently dangerous and should be kept away from children or whatever, like even those people don't have a leg to stand on.

All Dylan did was exist as a trans person online with a can of beer in her hand.

And all Bud Light did was hire a trans person.

That is what it boils down to.

The backlash to this wildly innocuous video signified the mainstreaming of just hardcore, straight-up transphobia distilled into a message that that many queer people have been seeing for a long time now.

We are not to exist in public.

It's not about child safety or whatever other bullshit argument they come up with to keep us in the shadows.

It is about erasing us from public life by any means necessary.

And in the tradition of American capitalism, we can only meaningfully exercise our beliefs with our dollar.

So if your belief is that queer people should not exist anywhere, then you will withhold your dollar from any company that gives us a platform.

And if enough people boycott successfully, the companies will cease to include queer people in any of their advertising.

And that is exactly what happened.

With, by the way, an incredible quickness.

Because the photo shoot diversity quotas and the pride campaigns were only ever important if they served the corporation's bottom line, which was and is and will always ever be profit.

Queer people and black people and fat people and disabled people were not invited to the corporate initiatives because business executives one day suddenly decided to be nice.

They did it because they remembered that our communities had money to spend.

And take our money, they did.

But when it became apparent to them in April of this year that our bodies and voices and image caused more trouble than they were worth, we were shut out as quickly as we had been welcomed in.

Well,

we've reached that point in the episode where it's time to make it all about me.

Look, it's weird to speak candidly about career stuff, but whatever.

Let's do it because I do not exist in a world outside of this story and this boycott.

I think people tend to think that at some point a healthy amount of clicks just magically converts into money.

And on most social media platforms, that is not true.

YouTube pays its creators a good portion of the ad revenue generated by the user's videos.

So if you are a creator on YouTube who's regularly bringing in millions of views, then yeah, you're set.

But YouTube is basically the only platform that operates that way.

Instagram, Twitter, TikTok,

you hardly get paid anything, if anything, just for being there.

For the most part, creators like myself make their money through brand partnerships, which is why you, as a consumer of online media, see them.

For the average creator, they pay way better than the trickle of pennies you get from ad revenue.

So what happens when those advertisers stop calling?

I've been a creator since I was in the middle of college, which was about five years ago.

And it took me a year or two to make any sustainable income from it, but Once I did, as someone who is known primarily as a gay creator, I could depend on making about a third of my annual revenue each year just in June.

This past year, that simply did not happen.

In fact, the only brand deal I got last June was for a behind-the-scenes consulting session with a brand that wanted to hear my input about how not to fuck up pride campaigns.

The fuck is going on?

Well,

there's a fire

in the apartment, in an apartment on my floor.

I'm gonna open my window.

No, I can't open my window because it's too loud.

Okay, I'm just gonna keep going.

Make it to the end.

One of the things about being a creator online is that, financially speaking, you're beholden to when brands think you're marketable, which for some of us is only in June, and And this year, it wasn't even in June.

You also just have to be constantly wary of how you might be alienating a potential brand partner.

And, you know, how am I going to make money if I alienate all of them?

And that's not an impossible thing to do when brands are being amenable to progressive causes and to left-wing political creators.

But in the current political climate, where conservatives and the conservative outrage cycle have made it so that you cannot breathe as an outspoken queer person without being considered controversial, that's basically impossible.

And so, in this moment, for me to appease advertisers would mean literally just not being able to do my job or having to do it in a way that is soulless with a husk of the integrity and the passion that got me started to do it in the first place.

And if that's how I have to do it to get a sponsorship, then like, what's the point?

And And so, forgive my long-windedness, but I am starting a Patreon.

And I'm doing that for a couple reasons.

Patreon, you probably know what Patreon is, but if you don't, it's a website that allows creators to provide a feed of content that's only available to subscribers.

So, you, as a subscriber, can pay a couple bucks a month and you can gain access to the creator's content and bonus features.

It's like OnlyFans for non-porn creators.

Now, I want to be super super clear.

All of my regular content will remain available for free for everyone.

The bi-weekly podcast, all of the Instagram content, everything is still going to be there and remain just as it is.

But on Patreon, I'll be offering some bonus content.

There will be a bonus piece of deep dive content like this one each month available to all subscribers.

You'll be able to weigh in on upcoming topics for the podcast and for other content.

There will be a members-only group chat, which I'll be hanging out in, and I'll also be doing a monthly live stream that will be scheduled in advance.

So as a subscriber, you'll have the details and know when to come hang out and how to participate.

The idea behind Patreon for me is twofold.

On one hand, I can fund all of the free content without sole dependence on advertisers, which will not only be relieving in that I don't have to wait for them to want me, but I also, you know, don't have to worry about discussing topics that would alienate potential partnerships.

So in short, I can be a controversial faggot and it won't matter.

And then on the other hand, it'll be a more intimate place to make content.

As you may have noticed, at some point or another, my content began reaching a volume of people such that everything I made began leaving my little corner of the internet, our little corner of the internet.

And I'm extremely grateful for that, but also it makes comment sections pretty wild, sometimes for good and sometimes not.

Patreon will be a place that, at least to me, because we're behind a paywall and the only people who are there are people who really intentionally want to be there, feel safer, quieter, more still, which I'm really looking forward to.

The link to the Patreon will be in the description of this episode.

I would love, of course, if you joined.

There are two tiers, the Gay Agenda Evangelist at $5 and the woke mob boss at $10, each of them with slightly different offerings.

I'm really, really, really excited to have fun over there.

Now, that said, if for whatever reason you can't or you just don't want to, please, please, please do not feel badly.

Like I said, all of this will continue to be here.

I will continue to be here.

And your just being here, as always, means the world to me.

Happy holidays and happy new year, my friends.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

I hope you're enjoying the slowness of this time of year and finding some stillness of your own.

If you like this episode, feel free to share it with a friend, a mom, an uncle who's still boycotting and forgot why.

Until next time, I love you.

I appreciate you.

Stay fruity.