The Amazing Warriors on Bunz
You may understand Bunz as the place that you can get rid of your old crap for some tokens or tall cans, but I have seen some great work come out of Bunz. More importantly, I have seen several businesses fail so hard because the Bunz community calls them out and tears them apart.
CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNING: IMAGES RELATING TO RAPE JOKES
A story broke on Sunday that the bar, Locals Only, had a sign in their establishment that read, “no means yes”. This obviously started a flame of backlash that only the Internet had the power to fuel. The Bunz Helping Zone post contained the email for the establishment and had tagged several Toronto blogging sites in order to bring attention to the issue. As I am writing this*, the post is blowing up with people commenting that they have emailed the establishment and left comments on their Facebook page.
(*written Sunday February 12th)
This is not acceptable to display at a bar or anywhere period, especially with what happened at College Street Bar in mid December 2016, where a patron was sexually assaulted and confined from leaving the bar.
The social justice warriors on Bunz blew this post up overnight with an overwhelming number of people writing comments on the Locals Only social media pages, which led to someone from Locals Only finally speaking up about the situation. Their acknowledgement of the issue was blown over because the people of Bunz found evidence that this wasn’t a one time occurrence. This sign in Locals Only has had shown so many problematic statements that the thread is now 100 comments long. Below is the statement from the bar, as well as previous signs:
When there is collective agreement of a negative issue, such as protesting the College Street Bar or more recently Locals Only, it takes a small post into a huge movement. There has been so much negative talk over the last 24 hours about this business and it has effectively tarnished their name. But as much as this was a social media fail for Locals Only, it was a social media win for Bunz and the Bunz Helping Zone. People like Katii Capern who brought this issue to life (shoutout to people in my program doing good things!!!) are able to enlighten others and use social media to fight against companies through a strong word of mouth. It has now been covered by BlogTO, CBC, and CityTV.
Bunz is a community where everything that is posted is controlled, moderated, and influenced by the community itself, making all of its content planned. The uniqueness of this community allows for so many members to influence the content that is seen. By being in control of the virality of a post through “bumping” posts, it brings more attention to things that may be important to a large community of people. Obviously Bunz comes with negative drama as well, there’s no way in avoiding that when there’s plenty of people with opposing opinions.
Please remember that despite all of this, and despite what companies may choose to promote #ConsentComesFirst.
