I think most of that is limited to internet insanity. I think basically the internet when it was fairly unregulated and still the "wild west" did reflect a lot of actual public opinion of the young and educated which the democrats with Obama properly picked up on while the Republicans ignored it. But when smart phones became common basically everyone started going online the barriers to entry became basically zero and I think the online discourse shifted to entirely different demographics. Younger. Less experienced and stupider. As well as a mix of older people who don't understand the internet well jumping in at this point and being horrified by what they see calling for more restrictions on things understandably.

But for what the Internet was in 2008 it's no longer that in 2025. I think the Democrats banked too much on it being their primary campaign tool but the demographics have shifted again. They've got a core following of their online zealots but that is nowhere near the mainstream. I think they are largely just blind to that though as it's easy to create a false sense of reality on the internet.

The ridiculous discussions and purity spirals and bannings essentially push the online discourse to the fringes, since many proper political organizations have chosen to recruit and pander to the online zealots they get dragged in that direction as well, but as recent election results show, that is not a very good long term strategy.

Just look at sales for Hogwartd Legacy to see how pathetic any such boycott attempts were. A bunch of mentally unstable clinically online types hate you? OK so what. They don't matter. If you pander to them, you lose your main audience, and you can't make them happy either so you lose them as well. If you ignore them they whine about it online and then kill themselves eventually when nobody listens to their whining. The correct choice is obvious for any business.

But yes renaming things is a purely political move that could be used to stoke partisan divisions but it's not something I think the average person is going to care much about.

With the whole "Gulf of America" thing. I think it's stupid to change it. It's basically just Trump throwing his base a bone with a "fuck Mexico" vibe. But that only works since it's a more outwardly focused change that doesn't really play heavily into domestic partisan interests. As if it's called "Gulf of Mexico" or "Gulf of America" is entirely irrelevant to anything.

It really is nothing new though. Politically motivated names are basically a part of American local politics at least for a long while. How many US cities have "Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard" or a "Cesar Chavez Way" despite having no historical ties to either?

It's all just virtue signaling as I see it.