Smash Stuff

[00:05] Oh, we do under Google rules that was the player super excited told us we had to
[00:17] say we said we signed up for it. In the end, it's going to be better and more
[00:25] true than Google can give you. Okay, I've got one boycott. The phrase boycott. Why is
[00:38] it called boycott? What's the history of boycott? When did we come up with it? Why
[00:44] is it connected to that phrase? What's the political idea behind boycotting
[00:49] things? I just want the whole history of boycott. No, no pressure. I just don't
[00:56] understand why it's called that. And when it came about, you know, I think of it
[01:02] popularly in among American culture, we think of sort of boycotting the bus, you
[01:11] know, during the civil rights movement, but this thing had to exist. But this had to
[01:16] exist before that. It had to be used as a as an implementation against higher
[01:23] powers before that. And, and I think also, it's a strange phrase. So where do we get
[01:30] all this? Well, so I want to challenge you on that because I don't know that it
[01:35] would have been used much earlier than that. Right. This is a technique that is
[01:41] only has teeth in post consumerism capitalism. Right. Okay. Okay. Like when
[01:50] people realize that power comes from or that corporations or government's power
[01:56] comes from the contribution of dollars to them, basically. Gandhi was
[02:03] hinting at it with like the salt thing. Right. But like, okay. Yeah. I don't know
[02:09] if it was ever organized ideologically at that point. And we're at an Indian
[02:15] term. I don't think it would end up as boycott. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. So yeah,
[02:21] I didn't really become like, at least in America, and we were probably at the
[02:27] forefront of this, didn't really become a consumer economy until like the post
[02:33] world war two almost like, well, I mean, yeah, I mean, industrial revolution. I
[02:39] mean, there's a lot of stuff going on. I mean, but people weren't consuming
[02:43] stuff that's happening between. I mean, yeah, but like the, the fact that,
[02:50] that most of the economy was driven by buying of goods. Yeah, no, I just, I'm
[02:59] agreeing with, I think you're making a very good point. I'm just wondering
[03:02] whether that there was that, that realization about the consumer economy
[03:07] was happening between World War One and World War Two, you know, with, with
[03:10] the, you know, sort of the Gilded Age, the beginning of the, especially
[03:15] when you hit the Great Depression, whether people are starting to connect
[03:21] these things about wealth to power and whether there's boycotting going on
[03:25] before that, right? Like unionization is happening in the twenties, right? I
[03:29] mean, there's an understanding that something has to be done and you have
[03:32] to pull levers against those that have more power. You know, I wonder if
[03:39] unionization has something to do with boycotting. Yeah. Even then, even
[03:43] then I think going back to the 20s or something, right? I don't think
[03:47] there's much, much beyond that. Yeah. I mean, because nobody had any
[03:51] money during the thirties. What are they going to do? Not spend their
[03:53] depression money. Right. Because the whole point of the unionization
[03:58] movement was that they, people still had nothing. They were working
[04:01] their ass off and they still had nothing. They couldn't spend anything.
[04:03] So they couldn't stop spending disposable income first. Yeah. Right.
[04:07] Right. Okay. Before you could have a consumer. And, you know,
[04:10] that was a lot of direct action and, you know, strikes and, you
[04:16] know, violence even, right? So the 50s, then 50s, 60s. Well, the civil
[04:22] rights movement went a long way into developing an ideology of, you
[04:26] know, nonviolent protest, right? Prior to that, right? You just
[04:29] threw rocks at stuff. Right. Unless you were gone. Unless you
[04:34] were gone. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, otherwise you just ran
[04:37] around with bats and hit people. And smash stuff. Yeah. Smash
[04:42] stuff. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. So where would this
[04:45] term come from then if we've got our, if we've got our time
[04:48] frame? That's a really good question. I have no, I have no
[04:53] either. I feel like I must have run across this at some point
[04:56] in college, Coalson, but I sure don't remember where. If we do
[05:01] anything, it's to, you know, jog your brain about college.
[05:05] That's, that's our job here. Yeah, I know. I can't even
[05:11] think of it. So, okay. Yeah. Oh, so like, there's a person named
[05:20] boycott. I'm grass master. So like, it's an interesting term
[05:30] to, yeah, to like, come out of nowhere and then, and then spur
[05:36] collective action such that everybody would understand what
[05:39] you mean when we said, that's my point. It's a verb. Like you
[05:42] can't have this, you can't have this, this phrase come out of
[05:46] nowhere and everybody understands it. It's got to
[05:48] somehow be understandable or part of the vernacular at some
[05:51] point. The only thing that comes close to me is boy scout. I
[05:57] mean, lots of words have boy in it. Yeah, but do they all end
[06:03] at similar phrases to cotton scout? Come on. I feel like
[06:07] that's close. Um, a cot can be a bed. Yes. Ooh, good. Okay. So
[06:16] what if you you're laying down? Let's lay on the cot and
[06:23] during that extra tea for? Yeah. Could you put is boycott
[06:32] perhaps a something that comes up from like abstaining from
[06:38] something or like, I'm trying to think of other instances in
[06:41] which people would, you know, not utilize a service or like not do
[06:48] something, you know, because of some reason, like giving up
[06:51] some length or something, right? Um, and maybe it comes from
[06:58] like abstaining somehow from
[07:00] they just borrowed the term from like some weird. Exactly.
[07:05] Hebrew. Yeah. Or is it some biblical story of somebody that
[07:09] yeah, did something? Yeah, I really, I really don't know. Do
[07:15] you've been thinking about this for a while, Coalson? Do you hit
[07:17] the other than boys? And what would and so, so it sounds like
[07:21] Boy Scout and then you must have liked that idea. What is
[07:24] your rationale? I did. I liked that. Connects to. Um, yeah,
[07:29] no, I thought of the Boy Scout is going out and trying to be
[07:34] leaders in the community, you know, so let's try to go with
[07:36] that direction. Um, are they or are they training them to be
[07:40] followers in the community?
[07:43] Hey, don't throw the Boy Scouts under the bus. Yeah, I mean,
[07:48] the reason I asked is because I got nothing. Yeah, I got no
[07:51] thanks. And I and I thought maybe we were going back to
[07:54] like, you know, medieval times and you guys very quickly
[07:57] reminded me that that doesn't quite work because nobody had
[07:59] I mean, no, nobody had to spendable income to, to, to
[08:05] boycott things. That was the whole point, right? The whole
[08:08] point of boycotting is to not use your money or, or, uh, you
[08:13] know, disposable income on things to, to force those with
[08:19] power to, um, give some of the back. And it's entirely
[08:22] possible that, you know, someone in, you know, whatever England
[08:26] or something named boycott innovated this and then we
[08:29] stole it and popularized it. But, you know, I just, I
[08:34] suspect that it just wasn't something in wide use until
[08:39] well into the 20th century. Yeah. This is, uh, okay. I'm
[08:44] gonna, I'm gonna guess, uh, right before we look this up,
[08:48] I'm gonna guess that it's a derivation of, um, Hindi and
[08:53] we got this from Gandhi. Okay. Okay. Take it. I like that.
[08:57] Okay. It's a dude. Captain Charles Boycott. Charles C.
[09:05] Boycott. So Boycott is actually the dude who is the victim
[09:09] of the Boycott. Interesting. He was an agency agent of an
[09:14] absentee landlord in Ireland. So he's just the, you know,
[09:19] he's the guy collecting the bills and then Charles Stuart
[09:24] Parnell and his Irish land league in 1880 apparently
[09:29] withheld money. That's what I'm gonna guess here.
[09:32] Oh, okay. Yeah. So 1880. I'm on new world encyclopedia.org.
[09:40] All right. Is that where you're at? Um, okay. Uh, Boycott
[09:47] became a subject to social ostracism organized by the Irish
[09:51] land league in 1880 and September that year, uh,
[09:56] protesting tenants demanded from Boycott a substantial
[09:59] reduction in their rents. He not only refused but also
[10:03] ejected them from the land. It's perfect. That worked out
[10:06] great. Yeah. Got a little surprises that caught on.
[10:10] Despite the short term economic hardships to those
[10:13] undertaking this action, Boycott soon found himself
[10:15] isolated. His workers stopped working for him in the
[10:18] fields and stables in house. Local businesses stopped
[10:21] trading with him and the local postman refused to deliver
[10:24] him his mail. So yeah, I guess we forgot to factor in
[10:28] that feudalism was still happening in the 1880s
[10:31] somehow. Yeah. Uh, the times of London first used
[10:35] uh it in print in November 2018. The organized isolation,
[10:41] the people of New Palace have resolved to boycott them
[10:45] and refuse to supply them with food or with drink.
[10:49] Um, yeah, so it's it's the dude's name. It's a dude's
[10:53] name. So, uh, and then Wikipedia has a one little
[10:58] section where they say that although the term itself was not
[11:01] going until 1880, practice dates back until at least the 1790s
[11:06] when supporters of the British abolitionists led and supported the
[11:10] free produce movement, which was a bunch of whole fooders out
[11:16] like demanding organic food. So we just everybody gets free
[11:20] fruit. Let's do it. It was an international boycott of goods
[11:23] produced by slave labor. Wow. Oh wow. That that's ballsy.
[11:28] That is that is way ahead of its time. I might have been
[11:31] boycotting something else, but hey gotta start somewhere I
[11:35] suppose. The concept originated among members of the
[11:39] Religious Society of Friends or the Quakers in the late 18th
[11:44] century. There you go. That sounds about right. Yeah.
[11:47] Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott sounds like he was kind of a dick.
[11:51] Yeah, his his name is now part of the lexicon. His name became a verb.
[11:58] That's how famous Charles Boycott is. You know, it's funny, uh,
[12:04] we don't often guess name enough. Really?
[12:07] We do occasionally. It's rarely named. It really is named. Yeah,
[12:11] apparently this guy William Fox published a pamphlet
[12:16] urging the boycott of slave sugar, which became the most popular pamphlet
[12:21] of the century. Wow. So over a quarter million copies
[12:26] printed on both sides of the Atlantic. And so people weren't supposed to have
[12:30] sugar because it was uh slave sugar. The pamphlet says if we
[12:34] purchase the commodity we participate in the crime.
[12:37] Wow. What's that guy's name again? William Fox. I'm a big fan of William
[12:44] Fox.
[12:46] It's also got a solid name. In every pound of sugar used we may be
[12:50] considered as consuming two ounces of human flesh.
[12:53] Dark. Yeah, the British boycott at its height had more than 400,000
[12:59] participants. Yeah, however, as the French
[13:02] revolution turned violent in mid 1792, grassroots grassroots movements
[13:08] lost support, which they did not regain until it
[13:13] became known that Napoleon Bonaparte opposed
[13:16] emancipation. All right, free produce movement.
[13:25] Who knew? Heck yeah.