Back in 2019, razor manufacturer Gillette launched a grievously ill-considered advertising campaign addressing toxic masculinity, just as the #Metoo movement was gaining speed, using images portraying sexism, bullying and aggressive male behaviour.
The idea was to twist the company's slogan from "The best a man can get" to the "The best a man can be." It sucked big time and hilariously backfired, causing huge reputational damage to the business, as customers turned their backs on this impossibly woke nonsense.
Having bought Gillette products for years, I have never bought them since and never will again.
It's just the sort of incident that Vivek Ramaswamy explores in his forensically researched Woke Inc: Inside the Social Justice Scam, where paying lip-service to critical theories on race and gender has become a commercial imperative in the 21st century.
And it's not just about consumer products and what they say about us, it's about what we say and where we say it.
Ramaswamy looks at how mega-wealthy tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google feel that it is within their scope to not only determine who's entitled to freedom of speech, but also what they should be saying. These are the same guys who banned the then-president of the United States from their social-media platforms.
Comment: There will be no escape from the surveillance. All in the name of keeping everyone "safe". China pioneered the technique, which was then adopted around the world: