If you didn’t hear about this, here’s a good article about what transpired on Guitar.com.
In essence, Mike Fuller vented online about the looters and how they were ruining businesses. People somehow conflated that with him making racist statements which, from what I’ve read at least, he didn’t make. Or that Mike cared more about business than people. Irrespective, it touched off a HUGE backlash on social media that forced Mike to eat a huge portion of humble pie and make a public apology.
And along with the social media backlash, Guitar Center decided to pull Fulltone products from its shelves in response to Mike’s rant. Yikes!
But this is a perfect example of why words matter. Frankly, part of me agrees with Mike condemning the looting – he even stated that it was the work of bad actors and NOT the protesters. But the way in which he communicated his perspective could have been done so much more diplomatically.
One thing I’ve learned about having an online presence is to carefully weigh my words and do the best I can to not write when I’m angry. You tend to miss details and worse yet, especially with someone like me who wears their heart on their sleeve, overdo the emotion. People react to emotion – especially anger – and in an environment where all it takes is a spark to ignite a wildfire, it can get out of hand quickly.
So all that said, this is a good lesson. To be clear, I’m not saying don’t express your viewpoint. But there are ways to do it that people will hear and others that will, well, have a big box retailer remove your products from their shelves. Definitely food for thought.
This makes me want to avoid GC in the future, that’s pathetic.
agreed
It really is pathetic. I’m not even sure if they spoke to him before doing this or just did it as a knee-jerk reaction. I feel for Mike and understand his perspective, and though others online have called him a POS, my few direct interactions with him have all been very pleasant. He’s passionate about what he does. Luckily for him, GC was not his entire business as he has custom-shop-like pedals that he sells direct.
Pretty lame GC
I will boycott guitar center. They are part of the problem. I think most of us are pretty sick of cancel culture! As for the pussy musicians that want to sell their fulltone products. I will buy them. I’ll bet Ted Nugent will too! I should start returning the 10k of guitars I have bought at guitar center over the past 2 months including the one I bought last night. I’m only reading this because I was looking for an OCD pedal last night and they said they pulled them from the shelves.