Dylan's 15 Minutes Of Fame Are Up

Via The New York Post:

Mulvaney — who recently escaped to Peru to “feel safe” from the backlash and boycotts hounding her and the fizzling beer brand — offered up her [sic] services in an Instagram post Wednesday.

“Booking speaking opportunities for the upcoming 23/24 school year and would love to come visit,” she told her [sic] 2 million followers.

My impression of the college lecture circuit has always been that it features faded celebrities and other special pleaders past their sell-by dates. From my own time as an undergraduate in the 1960s, I remember Judy Garland (then, though still alive, largely a gay cult icon); Madalyn Murray O'Hair (prominent in the anti-school prayer movement, who quickly faded after the Supreme Court outlawed it); Immanuel Velikovsky (author of the 1950 Worlds in Collision, which argued that Biblical miracles were a misreading of astronomical catastrophes); and Michael Meeropol (son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who argued his parents had been falsely accused of espionage, something he and his brother eventually retracted in part).

According to the them website,

It’s unclear what exactly Mulvaney will be up to next. “So, right now, I’m thinking about longevity — how do I hopefully have a career that goes on for the next 40 years?” she told Them. “And how do I be happy outside of social media? Because that’s what I think I’m retraining my brain to figure out: All the other aspects of my life have to be just as important as that one.”

The overwhelming puzzle of Dylan Mulvaney is how he managed to inspire what has proven to be one of the most successful product boycotts of all time. One commentator called it not just a brand boycott, but a brand revulsion, and there's an important distinction there. A boycott is an essentially political phenomenon that may have limited short-term success. The closest example might be the boycott of Dow Chemical over napalm in the 1960s:

Dow was not known as a defense contractor — in fact, until its Pentagon contract, the business was best known for making industrial chemicals and household plastics like Saran Wrap.

But over the next few years, as Americans began seeing gruesome images of South Vietnamese children with horrific napalm burns, the antiwar movement set its sights on the company.

Activists boycotted Dow Chemical’s products, staged protests at its recruiting events on college campuses and barraged its executives with accusations of unethical war profiteering.

. . . All told, the $5 million napalm contract most likely cost Dow Chemical billions of dollars. And it was the kind of unforced error that could have been avoided if company executives had listened to early signs of opposition, done some risk analysis and changed course.

But even the emotional impact of photos showing children with napalm burns fades in comparison with images of Dylan Mulvaney that produce more like a disgust instinct that's implied in the characterization of a "brand revulsion", or the suggestion that blue-collar males now avoid drinking the brand because women will think they're gay. According to Wikipedia,

It is believed that the emotion of disgust has evolved as a response to offensive foods that may cause harm to the organism. A common example of this is found in human beings who show disgust reactions to mouldy milk or contaminated meat. Disgust appears to be triggered by objects or people who possess attributes that signify disease.

It would seem there's a great deal to be said about the Dylan Mulvaney phenomenon and how it appears to have produced something like mass disgust. One thing that's clear is that after the Bud Light influencer deal, Mulvaney will never be asked to endorse another major brand.

What if he were to reflect on his situation and produce an account where he could speak with genuine insight into his experience? That might be worth hearing. Otherwise, he's still likely to cast about for something todo over the next 40 years.