The boycott of Bud Light has hurt the entire brewing industry. Alas.

he beer industry has had a brutal year marked by boycotts against Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev, shifting consumer behavior and plummeting sales -- and it's only going to get worse.

U.S. beer shipments dropped by more than 5% over the first nine months of 2023, according to data compiled by Beer Marketer's Insights. By the end of the year, shipments are expected to fall to their lowest level in 25 years, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Part of that is due to a long-telegraphed shift of consumer tastes as consumers -- especially younger ones -- ditch alcohol over health concerns. Gallup, which has asked American adults about their alcohol consumption since 2001, found in an August survey that adults under 35 years old were the only group to actually lower their consumption.

Gallup also found that although beer is the most popular type of alcohol beverage among Americans, that status is in decline as liquor gains ground. In addition, consumers have more options, often substituting canned cocktails and non-alcoholic beverages for beer.

So, Bud Light did have a problem: People are drinking less beer. But not because they don't see enough trannies with their own bespoke Bud Light cans. Because people are avoiding carbohydrates where they can, and unless you love the taste and ritual associated with beer, then beer is the easiest bucket of carbs you can avoid.

I haven't drank a beer in... well, okay I did have one Coors Light a few months ago as my act of defiance against Bud Light, but before that it's been years and years.

It's now just a meme that "beer makes you fat." I'm going to buy my first bottle of rye or whiskey soon. It'll be Bullet, because I hear good things and I like the name.

And hard liquor, for all its faults, is lower carb.

This is another case of a company that's going broke -- well, seeing declining sales, while not actually going broke at all -- and going woke thinking that will fix things, and then actually going broke because the cohort they've decided to pander to is not only incredibly small but would never, ever buy their product.

People avoiding beer for health reasons are not going to buy Bud Light because they approve of its woke embrace of evangelical transgenderism. These two things have nothing to do with eachother. Non c'entra, as the Italians say. Transgender propaganda doesn't enter into it.

If they wanted to reclaim part of the customer base that is avoiding beer for health reasons, they could have just put more money into advertising Michelob Ultra, formerly my favorite low-carb, easily-available beer.

Or they could have created some new bottled spirit that was made up of a little vodka, some carbonated water, and a sugar-free sweetener.

Instead, they did what they all do, which is to say "Let's pander to a microscopic fraction of the population which will never in 1000 years buy our product!"

This is yet another case of a company which has a declining but still profit-granting customer base -- like comic books were years ago -- and deciding that the right move is to alienate all of their current customers to chase a Phantom Customer Base that does not exist.

Have trannies and Gen Zers rushed to make up for the huge declines in the sale of Bud Light due to millions of people dropping it like a bad habit? No, of course not. Of course not. Just like an army of diverse autistic lesbians and transgenders did not rush in to buy comic books just because Marvel and DC hired diverse autistic lesbians and transgenders to write what were formerly boy's action and adventure fantasies.

If men are drinking less beer, try harder to appeal to men, the traditional beer drinkers. And traditionalist men, too, because traditionalist men will keep drinking beer despite faddish, flighty concerns about its carb content.

But corporations hate men and hate traditionalist men especially.

They just would rather go bankrupt than pander to Those People.

So, like DC and Marvel comics, Bud Light is now on the glide-path to extinction.

But they'll keep doing it.

Until they all go broke.