Talk of a "Feb 28 Economic Blackout" is spreading on social media. What is it?

Spreading defeatist comments and pessimism, saying that this won't accomplish anything anyway and undermining the power of the collective is exactly what killed this movement in Croatia.

The movement started with a general spending boycott on fridays (so no money transactions - no stores, bars, gas stations, bank transactions etc), and a week long boycott of three supermarket chains that had the most egregious prices compared to other countries (those chains operate all over Europe, and their prices in other countries are far cheaper for the exact same products - despite lower operational costs in Croatia). After that, we switched to boycotting one chain every week.

The boycott was very effective. On the first friday of the boycott, the state financial department reported a 43% decrease in sales volume in the country. Just think about that for a second. And no - there has not been an increase in spending in the days before or after the boycott. In fact, they were still lower compared to the weeks before and the sales volume decreased in the following week by about 10%.

But like I said, unfortunately it died out over the next 4-5 weeks, with each boycott achieving lower decreases. And it died out exactly because of trolls that spread this defeatist attitude thinking they're so smart for seeing the "real" picture. Laughable.
Of course, the astroturfing has been insane, they really went berserk after the first friday. There's been an insane amount of bots posting comments that this doesn't work, that we should be protesting the government instead (as if holding signs in front of government buildings hurts them more than 50% less money flowing into the state piggy bank), that this hurts the citizens more than the conglomerates, that this will cause them to increase the prices to cover the losses etc etc. Just ridiculous claims all over social media.
And yeah, people got deflated and the movement died out.

Thanks idiots.

The key thing to remember is that a one day blackout won't have an effect on the corporations. What it will do is get more people comfortable with taking action. If you can go one day without buying from Amazon, two days isn't much more, and then a week, and then a month. The idea is to ratchet up the action.

Just like how fascism has a progression to slowly "boil the frog," collective societal action does, too. This isn't an end but a beginning.

One day at a time. Isn't that what the 12 Step groups say? People in this thread saying this won't do anything. You have to start somewhere. Don't be defeatist. Get involved. Unless you are just trolling to keep people from doing anything.

I'm planning on participating, but it's not going to work. And it won't work because it's not popular, and it's not popular because it won't work.

Amazon blackout, March 7th through March 14th.

I'm personally making that my cut off point for using Amazon at all. And if it wasn't for their return policy I would have stopped quite a while ago.

Since Amazon doesn’t actually MAKE anything, just resells stuff, can’t we get a delete and cancel Amazon day too?

50501 is ready. Are you? https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/

it's going to take a much larger blackout. No one will notice one day. it's a start I guess but it's not going to accomplish anything. I've ditched amazon, walmart, target, etc,.. Buy local or even better, don't buy at all. You don't need the latest shiny distraction. vote with your wallet.

I've been cleaning out the cupboards this month. Just going through all the random food stuff we have in the freezer and cupboard instead of buying anything

I see so many of these protests and blackouts. I wish there was a nationwide, unified voice for this stuff so its not so piece-mealed together. If only there was an opposition party.

I never understood these "don't buy stuff on day X" things. Ok, then you will buy on the next day. It doesn't make a difference. What am I missing?

Talk of a "Feb 28 Economic Blackout" is spreading on social media. What is it?

A social media phenomenon where people don't shop on Amazon for a day, then spend the next day acting as if they single-handedly stormed the beaches of Normandy while being on Amazon and ordering everything they were going to order the day before. Somewhere, a random bean counter is mildly inconvenienced for about 5 minutes while making minor adjustments to a month-over-month P&L statement to account for this while the rest of business goes on as normal.

These protests accomplish nothing. Corporations know that at most, people just end up pushing off their purchases by a day or two, and know that these events can simply be ignored, and everybody in both the corporate and government world knows that the vast majority of people aren't in a position where they can keep up this kind of protest for more than a day or so even if they wanted to, let alone have the willpower to do it. It would be mostly a symbolic gesture that everybody involves knows can be waited out.

It's the adult equivalent of "I'm going to hold my breath!". That's nice, kid. You've gotta breathe eventually. If you're not willing to all but cut yourself off from society, put your own job at risk, etc. for a prolonged period of time, this will accomplish nothing but giving yourself a huge dose of copium. And most people are neither willing nor able to do that.

Hey, we're finally getting their attention!

A 1 day economic blackout will not do shit.

I just been not buying things most days. Anti-consumerism 2025