Mouri Sunlight

wanna comment on a really effective tactic for quelling canadian discontent in things that are genuinely bad, as it's currently being used in mitigating the reaction to a really fuckin big problem. oh and a ton of this post is focussing on that really fuckin big problem, not the tactic. long post.

there's this thing, im gonna call it the "american ridicule effect". essentially, most of canada is socially-linked to the USA tightly enough, while having just different enough issues, that getting americans to make fun of canadians over some problem is likely to make them stop talking about it. how you use this, is you present americans with an infantilized version of something canadian that causes problems. that can be the RCMP¹, police reaction to protests², the protests themselves³, oppression of the first nations⁴, oppression of french-speakers outside of quebec⁵, etc. you just have to make americans think this is a cute, harmless thing.

and, well, now you're done. you've done it, canadians can now no longer discuss this problem with each other or clue in foreigners looking to come here about it, because the immediate response will be 7 americans posting that guy tipping over a trash can with the caption "canadian riot", or similar memes.

if you want a really recent example of a company doing this in a hurry as things started to become troublesome, let's look at the fact that you know about no name. the brand. no name is a store-specific brand for the store, no frills. it's the funny yellow brand, right? americans know about no name primarily because no name started to have marketing, like at all. it didnt exist before. you just received no name when you went to no frills, you knew going into no frills would retrieve you some no name, it's like Aldi in that way.

(also, yes these names are lower-case that's not just the fact i havent pressed shift this entire time)

anyways, no frills is what we currently call a loblaw-owned grocery chain. if you've heard murmurings about the loblaws boycott, good news! it's not just bread, it's not just 20%, and the vast majority of canadians cannot partake without starting their own sustenance farm. if you're not aware of the boycott, essentially the loblaw family (who own almost every grocery chain with any presence in canada) have been engaging in price fixing on groceries for a fairly long time at this point. no frills specifically is a major culprit brand, since the store is marketed as an ultra-budget chain and no name is supposed to help solidify that, but buying groceries from no frills is somewhere between 3-30 times more expensive than buying from an independant grocer, depending on where you live and what your diet is, and the majority of canadians do not know this because there is no non-loblaw-owned grocer within 20 kilometers of their home (or there is but they have no idea where it is or can't get there).

people have been getting pissed about this! including regulators, and international grocers finding out that the current high bread prices were influenced by local pricefixing in canada. as well as being pissed with the fact that a bunch of the family are throwing a tantrum at regulatory inquisition, and grocery prices at loblaw-owned grocery stores has been rising at an extremely obvious and unusually-fast rate. in the past year, my groceries have gone from being $55 for one week of almost-sufficient food, to $90 for one week of not-sufficient-but-ill-suck-it-up food. one year.

so, part of damage control, as per usual, is getting americans aware of no name. making it look whimsical, and not like what it is (cheapshit, sometimes barely-edible food, sold for high-quality prices). really get the idea into the head of the american that this is a funny silly brand, because the amount of force that american assumptions exert on canadian politics is ol' reliable, and canadians will always be made fun of for their problems if an american thinks it's something silly.

no name awareness in the USA did actually start with americans making memes about that yellow brand, a number of years before this, but that was extremely small. no name marketing started... 2022? and started being pushed harder, especially on social media and aspects relating to social media, in early 2023. the ads they put up usually try to cash in on people not from here seeing them as a quirky little wacky brand, like having people wearing no name clothing (doesn't exist), or having no name sofas (don't exist) or no name nametags (don't technically exist, closest thing is no frills employee nametags). new "no name branded items" (which barely existed prior to recently) ditch the actual no name design in favor of flat yellow, instead of the yellow with the white starburst that is no name's actual packaging motif.

all of this said, don't feel shame for laughing at memes about no name. if you didn't know, you can't blame yourself for not knowing.

oh, also, if you didn't check the ref numbers when they were brought up earlier, have fun lmao it's depressing

1. semi-gendarmerie, all extremely well-armed, roam the country and known for random violent events. a gendarmerie, btw, is a military force tasked with law enforcement. no, this is not like american cops, the closest thing to a gendarmerie that the USA has is the national guard and it's still not it. essentially: a cop's job boiled down is to roam, identify a crime in progress, and stop the crime in progress. a gendarmerie's job is for the squad to roll up and attack when there is 20-30 people who are very well-armed and ready for a firefight, like a military force, which is again what a gendarmerie is. a cop goes in expecting a tense situation and is supposed to talk it down and make an arrest, an officer of a gendarmerie goes in expecting a firefight and is supposed to shoot to maim or kill. anyways, the RCMP is not fully a gendarmerie, they roam like cops and identify potential problems like cops, but they're not looking for crimes in progress, they're looking for fights and federally-wanted people. big branches are pure gendarmerie, though.

2. always extremely brutal.

3. things tend to be tense enough to go straight to rioting if the issue is important, outside of quebec, or have extremely upsettingly-small turnouts.

4. the nations themselves are recognized as their own countries, only in conversations where this is the worse of the two choices. there are also units of the RCMP known for crossing those borders and kidnapping/killing people among their nearest canadian locale.

5. this is difficult to breach in general when speaking to americans, but in ontario just copy what you know about being black in america and dull down a couple specific things, and keep in mind this is only somewhat close and not quite accurate. in some parts of ontario you are likely to be encouraged into gangs, in others you are likely to be pushed off to go live in a town that's "for frenchies" nearby. i live by a town that has a large section that's one of such places, albeit basically bel air for franco-ontariens. also, yes, black people in canada have similar experiences to black people in the USA, but again it's not quite identical. im not the person to ask for details on that.