Nike recently suffered a major public relations fiasco.
In a line of custom shoes offered by the corporation called iD, Nike refused the request of MIT student Jonah Peretti.
So long as the word wasn’t someone’s intellectual property, a trademark, name of a team, celebrity, athlete or inappropriate slang, Nike would embroider the word of your choice.
Corporations are the complete antithesis of democracies. They are run as autocratic regimes. Employees tow the line or find another job. In this respect, it’s very perplexing as to why a company like Nike would open themselves to attack.
If you want it done right… build it yourself. At Nike iD, you get to participate in the design of your own Nike products. It’s about the freedom to choose and the freedom to express who you are. It’s about combining your ideas with our resources. It’s about time you had a say in what you are wearing. MAKE YOUR MARK!
That’s the kind of motivation that only Independence Day can inspire. Needless to say, Mr. Peretti wanted to make his mark.
Jonah Peretti placed an order for sweatshop . That’s when the fascist regime of Nike, Inc. went into red alert.
The series of email exchanged between the intellectual vacuum of Nike skulls and the MIT student was quite revealing.
The first response was completely canned. Nike gave four possible reasons for declining Peretti’s request. Peretti responded that his request for “sweatshop” did, in fact, meet Nike’s guidelines. Then, Nike revealed a complete lack of language comprehension. The corporation deemed the term “sweatshop” as inappropriate slang.
Every dictionary on the planet differs with Nike’s interpretation of the word.
Sweatshop is a word accepted by conventions of standard English. Sweatshop is a generic term and, therefore, cannot be trademarked or copyrighted. It’s well within the public domain of intellectual property. To the best of my knowledge, there are no celebrities, athletes or teams with the name Sweatshop.
In next season’s XFL expansion, I think the Shanghai Sweatshop Slavers would make a great team. They would work for even less than league players already make.
Until then, sweatshop is good. Nike didn’t think so.
Losing all avenues of evasion, Nike ended the exchange by invoking their corporate discretion. There’s something about the word that worries Nike tremendously. Like the fact that they do run overseas sweatshops.
In all fairness, overseas sweatshops offer workers better wages than agricultural jobs. The problem is that everyone except Nike gets screwed in the process of buying shoes or any other textiles. The labor is cheap and the shelf price has a several hundred percent profit margin.
Most clones are stupid enough to pay whatever their favorite corporation tells them to pay but the workers can’t simply tell Nike or anybody else that there’s more than enough money to pay them better.
Unfortunately, screaming about the practices of transnational corporations is nearly as productive as screaming at the sky. This situation, however, is different.
Nike tried to make money on principles that some people take quite seriously. Nike exposed themselves to be the autocratic, neoliberal, fascist regime that they really are. A world of bald-headed thugs with Nike swoosh symbols all over them is their corporate dream.
It’s not about building things yourself. It’s about ending being better than mending. It’s not about expanding ideas. It’s about expanding profit margin. It’s not about giving you an avenue of creativity. It’s about money.
Nike made it perfectly clear that it isn’t about choice. Sure as hell, it isn’t about freedom of expression.
