Guitar Gear

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.