In early June, Robby Starbuck sat on the screened-in patio of his home in suburban Tennessee and recorded an eight-minute monologue on his mobile phone — a no-frills, TikTok-style video entitled “Exposed: Tractor Supply Went Woke.”
“All right y’all,” he began, “you’re going to want to see this.”
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Speaking in tones that swung between urgent, amused and appalled, Mr. Starbuck listed an inventory of what he considered to be outrages committed by Tractor Supply, which sells feed and farm equipment.
The company hung Pride flags at a distribution center, he said. It offered equal health care for transgender people. It sponsored a Pride event near its headquarters in Brentwood, Tenn. It provided unconscious bias training for 40,000 employees. It paid $50 to employees who got the Covid vaccine.
Mr. Starbuck, a 35-year-old former music video producer, wrapped up with a call to boycott the company until it changed course and dropped its policies aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion.
“So now everybody, remind Tractor Supply who their customers actually are,” he said.
With 674,000 followers on X and 353,000 followers on Instagram, Mr. Starbuck has a not-exactly-gigantic fan base when measured against other influencers’. But his posts about Tractor Supply — roughly 30 in total, over the course of a few weeks — were forwarded and posted so often that the name of the company started trending on X.