April 18, 2023

The Bud Light furor

 Axios -  Few events capture so perfectly the cultural, political and social toxicity of America as the Great Bud Light Debacle of 2023. One transgender social-media influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, radically changed beer sales and stock prices — literally overnight — after a conservative backlash spread, bar to bar.

 On April 1, Bud Light sent Mulvaney an influencer package — a glorified swag bag — to celebrate the one-year mark of her coming out as trans. The package featured bespoke Bud Light cans with illustrations of Mulvaney's face, which she showed off in an Instagram video.

That set conservative, anti-trans pockets of social media on fire — and left Republicans scrambling to protect a big donor from attacks by the right.

  • 5,600 news articles were published about the controversy in two weeks. The news received over 6 million social interactions (likes, shares, comments), according to NewsWhip data.
  • The most-shared articles came from right-wing publications, including The Blaze, The Daily Wire and Rare.us. Ben Shapiro (5.5 million Twitter followers) and Kid Rock — who fired a rifle at cases of Bud Light — called for boycotts.

The fallout: Anheuser-Busch InBev shares momentarily dropped by 5%, leading to a loss of over $6 billion in market value.  MORE

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