"Bud Light vice president of marketing Alissa Heinerscheid said she was inspired to update the 'fratty' and 'out-of-touch' humor of the beer company..."

"... with 'inclusivity' in a March 30 interview with the podcast 'Make Yourself At Home' podcast. But her effort to be inclusive excluded the people who matter most — Bud Light drinkers, according to St. Louis-area operator John Rieker. 'It's kind of mind-boggling they stepped into this realm,' Rieker, who owns Harpo's Bar and Grill in Chesterfield, Missouri, told FOX Business. 'You're marketing to an audience that represents a fraction of 1% of consumers while alienating the much larger base of your consumers.'"

I'm reading "Bud Light suffers bloodbath as longtime and loyal consumers revolt against transgender campaign/'In Bud Light's effort to be inclusive, they excluded almost everybody else,' says a St. Louis bar owner" (Fox Business).

I've been staying out of this tempest in a teapot brouhaha in a beer can. Too much jackassery. But the phrase "the 'fratty' and 'out-of-touch' humor of the beer company" caught my attention and I want to say a few things. 

1. Since when is the model used in a beer ad representative of the people who drink the beer? It's not a question of who the model is but whether the model will influence consumers to buy the product. No one really cares about the various traits of the consumer. It doesn't matter that only "a fraction of 1%" of viewers of the ad are transwomen. What matters is whether this particular transwoman will influence more people to buy the product. 

2. You might buy a product because you identify with the model in the ad, but you might buy it because you're attracted to the model — a skinny beautiful woman might make a fat man like the product — and you might buy it because the ad just caught your attention and made you remember the product so that you recognize it in the store. You might even miss the ad altogether but see that people are talking about the product in social media and in the mainstream news. 

3. The opponents of the ad make it viral, and then the question is whether you identify with the opponents — perhaps to the point where you'd participate in a boycott — or whether you find these people uncool and offputting. Maybe you wouldn't have responded to overtly transgender women before but when you see hateful clods railing against them, you know you're on the other side.

4. Who drinks light beer anyway? Light beer ads have always struggled to prove their masculinity. But isn't that old fashioned? Isn't it "out-of-touch"? I don't watch ads, so I'm sure I've missed a lot, but I remember ads that were premised on anxiety that light beer isn't manly enough. The Dylan Mulvaney ad essentially says: We don't worry about that anymore. We can be whatever we want. Relax. Have fun. Have a drink. And isn't that what beer ought to say?

5. Don't like it? Don't drink! Or drink yourself into oblivion. But don't be an asshole. Why are you picking on Dylan Mulvaney? Do you think it makes you look like a man?