The Boys: The Truth About Social Justice

the company produces pro-military ads like this: - (Queen Maeve) We are proud to fly alongside them. And now we could use your support. - (Homelander) That's right, Maeve, with our new campaign, Saving America. - (Michael) Kind of like that Captain Marvel ad, right? On the other hand, as Stormfront points out, it's all a farce. - (Stormfront) Oh, FYI, it's not a real base. - (Michael) Look, just like Homelander, Vought isn't interested in real national security or supporting the troops. All they're interested in are those sweet military contracts. - (Madelyn) And there is only one company that has the product to defend itself. - (Michael) And to that end, Vought does everything from blackmailing sitting senators to imprisoning and experimenting on innocent civilians with Compound V.

Really good job keeping America safe. There's also a kind of Christian virtue signaling: you know, pastors who get rich and famous for letting the world know how much they love Jesus, even if they're sleazy. - (Hughie) He preaches all that "pray for gay shit. - (Billy) No, he's the meat in the manwich. - (Michael) Like that. And finally there's what I'll call authenticity signaling, which is about conveying how "real" you are, as best embodied by Stormfront. - (Stormfront) Be a bitch if you want! Just take off the mask once in a while - (Michael) Of course, her character is also carefully crafted, with the. intended to irritate her base for her own boorish purposes, but because she defines herself in opposition to her "squeaky-clean" heroes, her own interpretation of "reality" finds a receptive audience - (Stormfront.) As if Homelander and Maeve were going to eat at MRE and pee in a ditch with the rest... - (Michael) With all this virtue signaling coming from both the left and the right, from individuals to corporations, you might be getting a simple question: How the hell did we get here?

Virtue signaling, although it is not called that, is quite old. They even complain about it in the Bible, when Jesus said to shut up on Facebook about buying a Starbucks from a stranger. Well, I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what he's saying. But our current virtue-signalling hell may be, at least partially, the result of one industry: public relations. Ever since Ivy Lee, the founder of modern public relations, first repaired the Rockefeller family's robber baron image through highly biased press releases and a highly choreographed and sympathetic tour of Colorado, the world has woken up to the fact that a little positive publicity goes a long way. .

Of course, people slandered Lee as a “hired slanderer” and “poisoner of public opinion,” and perhaps they were right. Because here's the problem, Wisecrack. One hundred years ago, Lee opened the floodgates and now the field of positive spin can be used to rehabilitate the image of almost anyone or anything. And that's where things get dark. To see what I mean, let's look at the messy journey of the guy you love to hate: The Deep, aka Aquaman, except he commits sexual assault. After being kicked out of The Seven for sexually assaulting Starlight, The Deep turns tough and finally gets some time in the clanker for taking over a children's water park. - (The Deep) You think water is supposed to be fun?

Try swimming in Marianna's trench, you little idiots! - (Michael) However, when he is rescued, it is by the Church of the Collective, who, in exchange for his bank account, agree to do some serious public relations work to return him to the Seven. To that end, the Church has Deep appear in some very cheesy infomercials and even tests him on a wife. - (The Deep) But I thought I had to choose. - (Woman) Yes. And you're choosing Cassandra. - (Michael) Now the running joke of the season is how truly pathetic The Deep is and how willing he is to accept a PR blitz that presents such a patently false image.

But behind the humor, we have to realize how fundamentally fucked up this whole thing is. Through the persuasive dark arts of public relations, The Deep, a repeat sex offender and total jerk, nearly regains his position in the world's most prestigious paramilitary organization. - (Alastair) Did you catch Malala Yousafzai's tweet? I called you darling! - (The Deep) Well, she's a sweetheart. - (Michael) But if you think it's scary that PR can rehabilitate a piece of shit like The Deep, then you'll love this one. The Boys shows how public relations and all its virtue signaling can even make Nazism seem kosher.

To understand what I mean, let's look at Homelander and his new boo, Stormfront. By understanding the ins and outs of public relations, Stormfront can revitalize Homelander's American brand. - (Stormfront) You don't need 50 million people to love you, you need 5 million fucking angry people. You have fans. I have soldiers. - (Michael) In other words, Stormfront, in true Don Draper style, knows how to sell a message to the masses. Basically, Homelander takes all those patriotic virtues that characterize him and adds them to a violently xenophobic message. And the results are downright terrifying. - (Homelander) One nation under God, remember?

Just before these godless, inhuman supervillains started crossing our borders and dragging us into their mud! - (Michael) Of course, it goes without saying that neither Homelander nor Stormfront care about this supposed super terrorist threat. A threat, we might add, that was literally created by Homelander himself. - (Homelander) Did it ever occur to you that the appearance of a sup-terrorist, EXACTLY when we needed one, was... a fucking incredible coincidence? - (Michael) Instead, this whole twist serves to convey a larger, darker message: a race war led by Eva Braun here. - (Stormfront) They want to erase us from this Earth, just because of the color of our skin. - (Ryan) Really? - (Stormfront) It's called white genocide. - (Michael) Look, Stormfront intuitively understands that if she wants to sell her “white is right” vision, she needs to dress it up in all that classic American apple pie virtue signaling.

Or, in his own words:-(Stormfront) People love what I have to say. They believe in it. They just don't like the word Nazi. - (Michael) It's also interesting to consider that Stormfront's own brand of "reality" is just another cynical way of branding herself. While Vought might traditionally favor the more “restricted” approach of giving speeches with talking points, it prefers to create a less polished brand, but a brand nonetheless: paying people to make memes and packaging the bigotry of the people. - (Stormfront) Oh, this is just the first batch. I'll make Logan punch fear. - (Homelander) Logan? - (Stormfront) My meme queen! - (Michael) Now, the problem with virtue signaling is that many sociologists and philosophers have said that basically EVERYTHING we do is a performance.

Whether you go to church, pursue a career, or get a crazy new pair, everything we do is filtered through how we think others will perceive our actions. - (Queen Maeve) But hey, as long as you say you're trending, right? - (Michael) If Starlight wants to do good and be recognized for it, that doesn't necessarily mean that her good deeds are useless. The problem, The Boys wants to remind us, is when people use good deeds as weapons to distract attention from their bad deeds. And with a world full of marketers and PR representatives, it's often hard to tell the difference. - (Billy) So it's just business, huh? - (Stan) When, Mr.

Butcher, has it ever been about anything different? - (Michael) But what do you think, Wisecrack? Are the

boys

right? Can we even begin to decipher what is real? And does that even matter? Smash the subscribe button like Homelander does... okay, we can't show that. Don't forget to ring that bell. Many thanks to all our patrons for their support and always thanks for watching later.