This post is somewhat inspired by a recent post in this same community called “Is anyone else having trouble giving up Reddit due to content?”
I imagine “Reddit” will be a common answer. (And it’s one of my answers.)
Another of my answers is “Hasbro.” First Wizards of the Coast (a Hasbro subsidiary) tried to revoke an irrevokable license and screw over basically all 3rd-party publishers of D&D content, then they sent literal mercinaries to threaten one of their customers over an order mixup that wasn’t even the customer’s fault. D&D: Honor Among Thieves and the latest Transformers look really good, but those are within the scope of my boycott, so I won’t be seeing those any time soon.
Third, Microsoft. (Apple too, but then I’ve never bought any Apple devices in my life, so it hardly qualifies as a boycott.) Just because of their penchant for using devices I own against me in every way they can imagine. And for really predatory business practices.
One boycott that I’ve ended was a boycott of Nintendo. I was pissed that they started marketing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (though it didn’t have a name at the time) before the WiiU came out, prompting me to be an early adopter of the WiiU, and then when they actually released BotW, they dual-released it on WiiU and Switch. I slightly eased my boycott when the unpatchable Fusee Gilee vulnerability for the first batch of Switches was discovered. I wanted to get one of the ones I could hack and run homebrew on before they came out with a model that lacked the vulnerability.
If I can help it, I try to support local businesses over Walmart, Target, Amazon, or any other near monopolistic retail chain.
Chick-fil-A, and Hobby Lobby. Owners have been vehemently antiqueer and antichoice, and have funded such organizations and politicians through their business.
Activision/Blizzard and Ubisoft. Both have been accused of large scale sexual misconduct, and neither company has completely dealt with the issue.
Twitter and Reddit. It’s not just that I hate the direction both sites are heading, but I want to fully back and support the open source alternatives that have grown during the migrations of both sites. Besides, Musk has made it to where I can’t even lurk on Twitter if I wanted to.
JonTron. He’s living proof that as long as you’re funny, people will forgive and forget anything. (Look up his history with racism and antivax for those in the latter camp, cause I’m tired of answering the “what he do” question)
The Harry Potter franchise. This one hurt the most because I had just starting to get into the Harry Potter series as the pandemic hit, and I was halfway through Prisoner of Azkaban when Rowling started her campaign against trans people. I Also used respect Rowling a lot because she’s a master at world building, and I had gotten into reading Harry Potter cause I wanted to take inspiration from it for my own work.
Ruroni Kenshin, and Nobuhiro Watsuki’s other works. I can get why people would forgive JonTron and Rowling to an extent, but defending Nobuhiro’s pedophilia is a bridge way tf too far for me.