Here is a really good litmus test to work out if you actually care about certain issues or if you're being baited into rage-reacting:
If you only heard about this thing in passing, without seeing hundreds of articles or people on Twitter crying about it, would you even notice?
Allow me to explain with specific examples:
Where vocabulary change suggestions have been made to make medical discussions more inclusive to trans and gender diverse individuals - for example, the idea of saying "pregnant people" or "breastfeeding people" instead of "pregnant women" - would you actually be upset if you heard this terminology in practice? Or are you just mad because people online have convinced you to be mad, they've convinced you it's an issue? If someone operating a vaccination phone line said, for example, "people who are trying to get pregnant or who are breastfeeding can get the vaccine without worrying" as opposed to "WOMEN who are doing those things", would you actually notice if you hadn't had the idea of it being a bad thing forced down your throat?
Same thing goes with the Mr Potato Head controversy - nobody would have noticed or cared that they changed the company branding to "potato head" instead of "Mr potato head" if there weren't a hundred thousand thinkpieces and Twitter crybabies, if the company had not very publicly announced it and made a statement.
And again, with the discontinued printing of those racist Dr Seuss books - very few people would have cared if conservative media had not made a very clear effort to stir up rage.
Think about where you are getting your media, what agenda they might have when telling you "ooh PC culture has gone too far and now I can't call myself a woman when I'm pregnant". And think about if you only heard of these things in context or in passing, would you actually care? Would you be angry? Would you even NOTICE? Or would you just move on?
And on top of that, it's incredibly important to be aware that with things like the Mr potato head controversy or even the Gillette thing a few years ago, that these are intentional marketing strategies to make people more aware of their brand. ALL press is good press, for these companies. They do not care, really, about the issues they're talking about - harnessing public outrage is simply a very powerful marketing strategy.
See below images to compare a new marketing campaign to an older one. Companies don't care about you, stop giving them the power to fill you with rage and hate!
