Costco And Meta (Facebook) Both Commit To Diversity, With Hilariously Diverse Results

I Have No Melanin and I Must Scream.

How much time has American public discourse spent on debating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives the last few years? It has been one long string of wingnuts bulldozing and bullying every college, media company, retail chain, sports team, and politician into adopting their preferred worldview that a universe with white men at the top and anyone non-white or in possession of a vagina or both far down on the ladder is the only acceptable way for society to order itself.

Quite frankly, we’re exhausted by all of it. So it is nice when a company tells the anti-DEI crowd to go fuck itself with a tree branch the size of a Saturn rocket. Even if they use much more polite wording.

Thus we would like to give a big old Wonkette round of applause and hoots and “fuck yeahs” to Costco. The board of the giant warehouse retailer with the best prices if you want to buy a pallet of toilet paper or a 55-gallon drum of pretzel sticks recently fought off a group of activist shareholders that wanted the company to abandon its DEI efforts. This standing of their ground not only was the morally correct stance, but it also pissed off some of the MAGA crowd enough to threaten a boycott of the company.

What a bonus! The lines for the $1.50 hot dogs will be so much shorter next time we’re at Costco stocking up on aspirin and meat.

The demand that Costco abandon DEI came from some conservative “think tank” called the National Center for Public Policy Research, an anodyne name for a group that spends its time trying to get companies to pretend problems such as climate change and bigotry don’t actually exist. Which is about the level of intellectual robustness we would expect from an organization that puts a hack like Peter Schweizer, the nativist who wrote Clinton Cash and has worked on documentaries with Steve Bannon, on its board.

Costco’s board, to its credit, did not cave into this swill the way other companies have done in a never-ending quest to satisfy the perpetually unsatisfied dipshits of the Right. It’s worth quoting at length:

Our success at Costco Wholesale has been built on service to our critical stakeholders: employees, members, and suppliers. Our efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion follow our code of ethics:

For our employees, these efforts are built around inclusion – having all of our employees feel valued and respected. Our efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion remind and reinforce with everyone at our Company the importance of creating opportunities for all. We believe that these efforts enhance our capacity to attract and retain employees who will help our business succeed. This capacity is critical because we owe our success to our now over 300,000 employees around the globe.

God, yes. It is crazy how some anodyne corporate gobbledygook about respect and diversity can actually serve as an emotional release of sorts. But restating basic values of human dignity and respect is something so few people in power do anymore, and won’t happen very often in our emerging tech broligarchy.

Let’s have some more:

We welcome members from all walks of life and backgrounds. As our membership diversifies, we believe that serving it with a diverse group of employees enhances satisfaction. Among other things, a diverse group of employees helps bring originality and creativity to our merchandise offerings, promoting the “treasure hunt” that our customers value. That group also helps to provide insights into the tastes and preferences of our members. And we believe (and member feedback shows) that many of our members like to see themselves reflected in the people in our warehouses with whom they interact.

Of course MAGA is reacting the same way it reacts every year when Target uses Pride Month to acknowledge the existence of gay people: by screaming about this illegal discrimination against white people. We foresee a lawsuit being filed in Matthew Kacsmaryk’s courtroom soon, followed by a rapid path to the Supreme Court so Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas can explain how Costco’s position is illegal because it offends their fee-fees.

At the other end of the spectrum of companies with actual self-respect, you have Meta. The parent of Facebook and Instagram announced it would soon start rolling out AI-created user profiles, because if there is anything that says social media, it’s chatting with people who do not actually exist.

On Friday, sharp-eyed users noticed that Instagram had already posted an AI profile that truly has to be seen to be believed:

That’s Hi Mama Liv, not Him Am Alive, or is it?

Lord, if that doesn’t hit every single talking point of how the cloistered minds of Silicon Valley think about diversity, we don’t know what does: She’s Black! And queer! But has kids! And she keeps it real, yo! You slay, kween!

It’s like someone crossed the “Poochie” episode of The Simpsons with an episode of Black Mirror.

The writer Karen Attiah tried to have a conversation with “Liv,” and boy was it hilarious:

How does Liv the Meta chatbot celebrate her African-American heritage? Boy, is she glad you asked:

This was all hilarious until the writer Parker Molloy got Liv to admit that AKSHUALLY she’s Italian, but her Black wife’s family taught her to say “spill the tea” and now we are dead from hitting our head against the wall

So Liv the Black chatbot is actually Liv the Italian chatbot, and she’s code-switching and faking her identity like a virtual Rachel Dolezal. We can’t decide if we are offended by this cringe-worthy view of diversity, or horrified by it, or find it hilarious. But at least the guys speaking Jive in Airplane were in on the joke.

Welcome to the AI future of social media. We hate it.

[Fast Company / BlueSky]

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