blahaj, a stuffed animal sold by a company that is the number one consumer of wood in the world. it becomes extremely popular because of memes, more people buy it. i dont get it comrades, it seems like pandering to me. ikea isnt like boeing in terms of awfulness but its existence is resulting in increased deforestation around the world. the ikea stores act as cultural embassies for sweden, they provide a sanitized commodified disneylandesque experience of sweden which really helps their public image on the world stage when they are allowing hate crimes against muslims to occur in their country, but hey, buy the toy shark, trans rights, consume treats, all being trans is is buying useless shit with the pride flag on it from corporations that wouldnt have hired you ten years ago but now want your money. in conclusion blahaj is a class traitor, embrace neopets, i sure hope theres no weird shit going on there like a christofascist owns it and is donating money to trump, and no i didnt look up anything about neopets, im just assuming theirs something bad there too. i wonder how right i am about that?
Idk but the one I’m hugging rn is so cute and cuddly and comfy
Blahaj is innocent! The trans community just adopted him because he has a pink mouth, white underbelly and blue surface. These resemble the colours of the trans flag. To the best of my knowledge, Ikea is not behind this. They might be capitalising on it now, but it’s not really much different than when Subaru noticed that a not-insignificant number of their customers were lesbians and started marketing specifically to them.
Well, TIL what blahaj actually is.
This is a pretty weird take, like trans people can only like things that are totally ethical? And then like oh but the microtransactions website that couldn’t even pull off an nft is ok?
holy purity test batman
No it’s a reasonable criticism of how we construct our identities with acts of consumption. The point isn’t that you’re a bad person for buying the toy shark, it’s that a company isn’t your friend because it makes products you like.
Shark isn’t ikea, trans people liking shark isn’t liking ikea, and calling out a single, extremely marginalized group for a meme toy when capitalist realism forces constructed identity on everyone every day is a little weird.
no one’s bein called out, this isn’t a sermon, and i think that ascribing the consumption of a single product to all trans people such that criticizing it is criticizing an entire marginalized group is kind of a good demonstration of the problem at hand
also the specific shark with the tradmarked name that everyone repeats literally is manufactured and sold by ikea
