Tried reading it again this morning. Still can’t make sense of it.
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Big up the middle class for getting rid of that crap logo.
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That was an unreadable try-hard word treacle and you’ve already followed up the first post with enough other posts to contradict yourself in the article: “The percentage of skaters who are just shit people to know (yours truly the obvious exception but).”
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I think the article overcomplicates what was essentially a poor business decision, badly handled, in response to a very unusual set of circumstances.
With the pandemic and the lockdowns, people felt scared and after a while they went a bit stir-crazy. Feeling powerless and trapped is never good, and it’s natural to want to find some kind of evil or sin to blame and atone for. This has always happened, since the days of the Black Death. In the past it came out as religious fervour: this time round it came out as political fervour.
When a scumbag policeman killed a scumbag petty criminal while ‘restraining’ him it set off a worldwide crusade against racism. People took to the streets, toppled statues, torched cars and looted shops, and millions were desperate to do something - anything- to show they were on the right side.
This was when Independent decided to ditch the most famous logo in skateboarding, They did it without explanation and - crucially- without any thought for what it meant for the kinds of ultra-loyal customers who’d had that logo tattooed on their bodies.
And now the world has moved on, and Independent is just another truck company in an increasingly competitive marketplace, but without the once-fanatical brand loyalty that used to sustain it.
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It’s so American ‘preppie nutsack culture of high school cliques’ but sprinkled with British terms like ‘shat’ and based around the class system, something, that feels far more British than American.
The very existence of a distinct class system in the US is a point of debate among many. Independent Truck Co being an American company after all.
Even if it does exist, it will be viewed very differently between British and American audiences.
The U.S. vs British difference lies not in different levels of class consciousness but in a different party system. British politics offer British voters a choice between a middle-class and a working-class party; U.S. politics offer no such choice.
That is why it reads like such a mess to me (apart from the word vomit and repeated phrasing and points that aren’t needed).
I’m not sure from whose perspective this is from.
I’d say it was more of a reaction to right wing fuckheads on the rise everywhere since before COVID.
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What sort of timespan are you looking at?
Are you saying there was a big rise in the extreme right around the world pre-2020, and this is why Independent changed their logo?
No more your hot take about how the anger over George Floyd was some kind of hysterical reaction brought about by lockdowns when Trump etc. was already making racism acceptable again.
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I’m going out on a whim here but I was never offended by the iron cross independent logo. I also never considered it an overt adherence to right wing extremism or nazis by the brand. Maybe I’m wrong but that symbol has surely been used in plenty of other places and no one’s complained? Pretty sure the independent book uses a photo of the pope with the design on his robes.
I’d be far more concerned if independent or some other brand tried to pass off the use of the nazi cross as it’s original sun symbol of hindu(?) faith.
I can only think that a few bad people associated closely to the brand were outed for their far right tendencies (eg jason jessee) and this pushed independent into corner where the easy choice was to drop a logo. I dont think greater world events had such an impact. Although the US is crazily racially divided.
If I had the independent tattoo on my skin it would be because I identified as an independent person, not brand loyalty otherwise I’d have a marmite pot on my skin too.
Not any more, looks like they binned it off too.
So it does, just when I googled it, it came up right away. There must still be alot of old stock with it still on, floating about, on amazon and skatedeluxe, ect.
It does yeah, it’s the bigger book from a while back. Cover of Time magazine maybe.
Changing the Independent logo was the same step that Disney took when they renamed Boba Fetts ship to anything other than Slave 1. The massively overestimated who might actually be offended by it and created a whole group of people who took more offense to it having been changed.
The product is still the same, there’s still an owner or shareholder looking to make a profit and sometimes a change might be made to reflect the world as it is. Does it change the end product? no, people will still skate the trucks and Star Wars fans will likely still call it Slave 1 (even though it’s never referred to that name in any of the movies)
less people likely give a shit either way
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I’m not saying it was hysterical, but it was very much a product of its time.
Every year, before and since, people have died at the hands of US police. But it was that year in particular it got taken up around the world. There were even BLM marches in South Korea, where there are very few black people (or white people, for that matter).
It was a volatile time, and I think that lockdown had something to do with the way people expressed their feelings back then. Stuff like BLM marches, trans culture wars and pronouns have all faded away or are in the process of doing so.
what? the rise of facism in the West with all the populist bullshit that it has ridden in on has caused racism and hatred of minority groups to be worst than ever.
in the UK we have a labour prime minister who would struggle to do worst for LGBT people right now.
non-White people are being told to go home everywhere. regardless of where they were born or how “British” they are.
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Against that we’ve our first Asian prime minister, and we have our first black female Tory leader and we’ve got an Asian female Labour Home Secretary. My parents and grandparents would never have imagined a day when they would happen.
I don’t think that actually happened in anything other than Lego sets and games. I agree with your general point otherwise!
Sorry i only just realised what you had written
Both Kemi Badenoch and Shabana Mahmood are fucking awful. Badenoch is a white supremacist and Mahmood’s recent immigration ideas are straight out of 1930s/40s Germany.
Why on earth did you pick these people as examples of “BLM marches, trans culture wars and pronouns have all faded away or are in the process of doing so”
Listen to what non-white people are talking about when they phone up radio shows or speak on the news. Listen to what trans people are talking about. These minority groups are being STILL being attacked in culture wars that are only getting worse. not better.
Less than 0.5% of the adult population are trans yet media would have you believe that government policy around sports, schools, prisons and toilets are going “woke” in order to cater to this tiny group of people who just want to live their life in peace. Earlier this year Starmer did a full turn around on his position of “trans women are women” and is now firmly in the “only females are women” boat of terfy opinion
i’d like to go back to my default position of lurking the forum and not posting now. thank you.
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I thought that guy was only allowed back if he wasn’t talking about politics.
I’ll go back to lurking now too.
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