Someone in charge of booking entertainment for a post-Republican National Convention party done goofed.

Third Eye Blind, a San Francisco band that peaked in 1997 but which continues to make new music and tour frequently almost entirely on the strength of Millennial sentimentality for the 8th grade, was hired to play a private show in Cleveland last night for charity. Held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for an audience of recording industry big-wigs and lobbyists (as some noted ahead of time on Twitter), the performance was not technically affiliated with the RNC — but it was a half-mile away from the convention center, scheduled during the convention, and unsurprisingly packed to the gills with Republicans.

Once there, frontman Stephan Jenkins used his platform to condemn the Republican agenda and preach tolerance for LGBT people. These comments were met, again unsurprisingly, with booing from the red state-heavy crowd in attendance.

“Raise your hand if you believe in science!” he proclaimed, according to several sources. At one point, according to Cleveland.com, Jenkins responded to the growing jeers with the remark “You can boo all you want, but I’m the motherf****** artist up here.”

But apparently worse (?) for those in the audience, Third Eye Blind pulled the oldest trick in the indie-band-protest book: refusing to play any of their singles, instead opting for only obscure and newer material — which, to be clear, would piss off most crowds. When I last saw Third Eye Blind, at a weird music industry party in 2014, the audience looked to be mostly San Francisco residents and bridge-and-tunnel folks in their 30s — all of whom willingly traveled and spent money to be there — yet nearly all of whom seemed deeply uncomfortable in that don’t-know-what-to-do-with-your-hands way until the band launched into one of their three best-known singles. (Cue a giant, enthusiastic sing-along.)

In any event: After responding to disappointed attendees last night and this morning on Twitter, Jenkins apparently decided Facebook was the right medium for issuing a statement. It reads:

We did not play an RNC event. We performed at a benefit for Musicians on Call because we support their mission in bringing music to the bedsides of patients in hospitals.

Given that the benefit was held in Cleveland, we suspected that convention types might show up and we let it be known we were there to support Musicians on Call and that we in fact repudiate every last stitch of the RNC platform and the grotesque that is their nominee.

–Science is science.
–Coal is not clean.
–Black Lives Matter.
–LGBTQ = equal.
–Separation of church and state (still a good idea)

We could go on.

We have Republican friends, family members, and fans, and we love them all. What we reject is what their party has come to stand for. But in keeping with Musicians on Call’s message, we believe in the gathering power of music. With that spirit we don’t step back from our audience wherever or whomever they are.

Warmly, your friends in 3eb.

So, a few things: If they’re going to insist on continuing to make albums, the next one should obviously be called Separation Of Church And State (Still A Good Idea). But aside from my sense of internal conflict here — I’m not alone in having mixed (at best) feelings for Jenkins & Co. and yet this was an undeniably good-spirited, well-executed musical middle finger — I’m mostly wondering who was in charge of booking this show to begin with. A quick Google background check on the band’s politics would have led said individual to a Huffington Post article Jenkins penned in 2012, helpfully titled “Why We Aren’t Playing at the RNC.”

Suffice it to say, the guys will probably be a little more at home (literally and tonally) when they play Outside Lands on Sunday, Aug. 7. Ladies: Jenkins is known to be a fan of you. Start making your “science is science” tank tops now.

There’s a mass tantrum underway on Twitter right now, and it’s going by several names: #FreeMilo, #FreeMiloNow, and #FreeNero are just a few. (The grossest is #FreeDaddy.) Now, be forewarned — what you’ll see will either make you laugh hysterically or seethe with rage, so prepare yourself before clicking.

What’s happening on those hashtags is the result of Twitter booting conservative columnist and infamous troll Milo Yiannopoulos on from the social media site on July 18, apparently permanently. Yiannopoulos; his employer, the conservative website Breitbart News; and his thousands of fans — his Twitter account @nero had over 330,000 followers — have been on a rampage against the San Francisco-based company ever since his suspension was announced.

This has been a long time coming, no matter what his supporters say. Even other conservative columnists acknowledge that “Milo lives on confrontation,” and he’s been fighting with Twitter for quite a while now. Just this year alone, Yiannopoulos lost the little blue checkmark that showed his account was “verified” — he actually asked the White House press secretary about how to get the check back — and his account was suspended last month after he tweeted a series of anti-Islam remarks in the wake of the brutal massacre in Orlando.

But the straw that broke the back of Twitter’s tolerance came after he wrote a scathing review of the new Ghostbusters movie and then proceeded to jump in on the attacks being levied at Ghostbusters actress and SNL fave Leslie Jones on Twitter. Some of what Yiannopoulos wrote in his review was offensive, such as describing Jones’s work on the film as “flat-as-a-pancake black stylings.” But it was part of a massive wave of racist tweets directed at Jones that resulted in her leaving Twitter.

Since the beginning of this year, representatives from Twitter have said the company is trying to find solutions to the overwhelming amount of harassment that occurs on Twitter. And in many ways, Yiannopolous has been its test case. It stated as much to the Associated Press on Wednesday:

“We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter. We agree,” Twitter said in an emailed statement following the Jones incident. “We are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to better allow us to identify and take faster action on abuse as it’s happening and prevent repeat offenders.”

But now that Yiannopoulos is gone, Twitter is seeing a repeat of something that basically happens every time the site has tried to reign him in. After the news of his permanent suspension was announced, Yiannopoulos announced at a “Gays for Trump Rally” that he was declaring war on Twitter, against a somewhat distracting backdrop.

Breitbart then went on the offensive, publishing multiple stories declaring that Leslie Jones and others should be the ones who are banned (note: calling someone “white” is not being racist). And the army of trolls that supports #FreeMilo has been lighting up the Twitter-sphere with threats of leaving the site, harassment of its advertisers, and claims that Twitter suppresses conservative views but gives terrorists and potential murderers a pass (which is not true — the site has been actively removing accounts linked to terrorist organizations).

To be clear, this is not a fight about free speech. Social media companies are private companies, not countries, and they’re allowed to have consciences — you could say Twitter’s decision is like eBay banning the sale of WWII paraphernalia that has a swastika on it. Twitter is fighting against hate speech, the kind the Alt-Right embraces , the kind that comprises the horrible harassment Jones endured. Twitter can’t back down this time and let Milo sign up again, because that’s exactly what he wants. He might say that being banned is the best thing that happened to him — he’s a martyr, apparently — but if he’s willing to ask the president for help with his account, it must be pretty important to him. And if Twitter’s treating him as a test case, it would look pretty damn bad on their end to seem soft here.

What Yiannopoulos, his supporters and Twitter should actually do is heed Milo’s own advice, and look to the values he ironically espoused himself back in 2012:

So perhaps what’s needed now is a bolder form of censure after all, because the internet is not a universal human right. If people cannot be trusted to treat one another with respect, dignity and consideration, perhaps they deserve to have their online freedoms curtailed. For sure, the best we could ever hope for is a smattering of unpopular show trials. But if the internet, ubiquitous as it now is, proves too dangerous in the hands of the psychologically fragile, perhaps access to it ought to be restricted. We ban drunks from driving because they’re a danger to others. Isn’t it time we did the same to trolls?

Throughout the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this week, there was a persistent and obvious theme of discord on repeat. Call it “Music vs. Meaning” and let us sing some of its many verses: Musicians expressed resentment at Donald Trump and his party’s use of their songs. Acts — both on and off the arena floor — tried to send messages, with varied levels of success, about their political views. Intentionally or not, the possible future First Lady snuck a viral refrain from a 1987 pop song into a speech that was already problematic. The whole week was studded with such uncomfortable, perplexing and frankly odd moments.

Quite a few bands whose music has been used along Donald Trump’s campaign trail have made their unhappiness very public: The O’Jays. The surviving members of Queen. George Harrison‘s estate. Adele. Earth, Wind & Fire. REM’s Michael Stipe. The Turtles. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler (though he said his objection was financial, not ideological). Neil Young (though he, like Tyler, eventually said he was concerned about money and permission). And perhaps most famously now, The Rolling Stones — more on them later.

Legally, however, the GOP and the Trump campaign can use all those songs, as Melinda Newman (a former colleague of mine at Billboard) explained in Forbes this week, as long as the rights holders are paid: “The sad truth is for many artists, they can not keep their songs from being used in this context even if they vehemently disagree with the politician who is using the song.”

The only use that such unhappy musicians can prohibit is in political commercials — and so far, Trump has not needed to rely on paid advertisements to get his message and visage in the public eye. (By contrast, a suit involving music used in a Ted Cruz campaign commercial during the primaries will go ahead, a judge in Seattle ruled earlier this month.)

Other musicians who have in the past publicly said that they don’t necessarily agree with the Republican platform took a different tack. The convention’s house band this year was led by guitarist and former Saturday Night Live musical director G.E. Smith. This isn’t the first time that Smith and his bandmates have played a Republican convention. As Smith explained to Guitar World in 2013, he’s taken these gigs on with family bills in mind: “Well, not only will this pay for several years of Josie [his daughter]’s school, but I can hire six or seven of my friends, and give them a really good pay day too … We may not be Republicans, obviously, but it was really interesting.”

Nonetheless, Smith and his fellow musicians put together some intriguing song choices together to entertain the delegates. Among them was David Bowie’s “Station to Station,” which includes lines like “It’s not the side-effects of the cocaine/I’m thinking that it must be love/It’s too late to be grateful.”

And one of the band’s picks on Wednesday was, according to Newsday, a huge crowd favorite: Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” — a song which was, Diamond claimed in 2007, written in honor of one very notable Democrat: Caroline Bouvier Kennedy — the current U.S. ambassador to Japan. (Diamond later said that his cute back story was only partly true.)

Other artists were a little more directly confrontational with the delegates. Four years ago, singer Stephan Jenkins explained why his band, Third Eye Blind, turned down an invitation to play a private party during the Republican National Convention: “They are in fact, a party dedicated to exclusion…If I came to their convention, I would Occupy their convention.”

This year, however, Third Eye Blind, a band whose popularity was at its peak about 20 years ago, morphed into a Trojan horse of anti-Republican sentiment when they played a charity show at Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the apparent purpose of riling up the GOP attendees at the show. They played almost none of their ’90s hits, and Jenkins taunted the crowd with comments like, “Raise your hand if you believe in science!”

On the other side of the stealth spectrum was the debut of Prophets of Rage, a supergroup featuring members of some more obviously political groups: Public Enemy’s Chuck D, Rage Against the Machine’s guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk, alongside B-Real from Cypress Hill. As the New York Times‘ Joe Coscarelli pointed out, they played for — and rallied beside — like-minded audiences in Ohio. He jotted down sketches of their time in Cleveland: “Prophets of Rage, meanwhile, face an entirely friendly room eager to mosh and scream along to aggressive anti-establishment songs written two decades ago.”

But some of the most interesting intersections of — and muddlings between — music and politics this week came out of the Trump campaign itself. One of the highest-profile moments at the convention this week actually seemed to carry certain musical resonances, even if none were intended. After the sections of Melania Trump’s Tuesday evening speech that her husband’s campaign now says were taken from Michelle Obama came words that seemed to be a Rickroll: “He will never, ever give up. And, most importantly,” Mrs. Trump said, pausing just then to let her words fully sink in, “He will never, ever let you down.” Yesterday, CNBC reported that Rick Astley’s now-immortal 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” has enjoyed a 19 percent surge in Spotify streams since Tuesday night.

Throughout his primary battles, Trump’s campaign soundtrack has included recorded tracks that expressly seemed to be aimed at simply amping up the audience, like Adele, The Beatles, and Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” But Trump has also thrown in some curveballs that make it plain that at least somebody on that campaign has an ear for using music as theater. His playlist has often included a recording of Luciano Pavarotti singing the Puccinia aria “Nessun Dorma” (None Shall Sleep) from the opera Turandot.

Here’s one case in which the lyrics actually do appear to reflect Trump’s political intentions. “Nessun Dorma” ends with these words: “All’alba vincerò! Vincerò, vincerò! (“At dawn, I will win! I will win, I will win!”)

But in case that high-culture song is a bit too coded, the Republican candidate’s arrival in Cleveland on Wednesday was reportedly heralded by a recording of Jerry Goldsmith’s music for the 1997 flick Air Force One, starring Harrison Ford.

As the balloons and confetti (eventually) began to rain down last night at the Quicken Loans arena, however, rock ‘n’ roll had the last word on Trump — or maybe exactly the inverse happened. The evening’s last musical selection was the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Commenters on Twitter last night made hay of the seeming disconnects in meaning between the song and the convention’s spectacle of unity. But Trump has long used that tune in particular as one of his campaign’s anthems, despite the band’s fury and a request the band sent to the GOP candidate’s team earlier this year to stop using it.

No one from the Trump campaign has explained exactly why “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” has become such a staple selection at his events — at one rally in Carmel, Ind. back in May, for example, the song was played at least four times at that single campaign stop. But in May, Trump himself responded to the Stones’ request in a way that appeared to slough off any implications of the song’s lyrics entirely: “I like Mick Jagger. I like their songs,” he told CNBC.

Over at The New Yorker‘s website earlier this week, Amanda Petrusich published an essay about some of those apparent paradoxes of meaning, along with some of the musicians she’s encountered in Cleveland this week. “In this particular context,” she wrote — citing famous examples like “Born in the U.S.A.” and “This Land Is Your Land” — “it doesn’t matter if there’s a staggering fissure between what a thing really means and what someone else wants it to mean. All that matters is that it sounds cool.”

Trump’s response to the Stones bulwarks Petrusich’s point. But it’s also true that there’s something of a bargain that artists — musicians, poets, painters, whatever — implicitly make when they put their work out into the world. They can create with whatever intention they want, but the receptors of that art — the public — are inevitably going to receive and interpret that output with their own filters, experiences and frameworks. There can be a big split between what is legally allowable and what makes artists happy. That is the deal. And once the creative work is public, others can assign whatever meaning they want to it— consciously or unconsciously, earnestly or cynically.

And forever after, those works carry, in our communal memory, not just the artists’ intentions about that output (correctly understood or not), but also the resonances of how that music is later used by others. Even if Richard Wagner had not been an anti-Semite himself (which he certainly was), would most people be able to completely divorce his compositions from how they were loved by Hitler and the other Nazis? A less loaded Wagner example: Can anyone today hear his “Ride of the Valkyries” without instantly flashing to Apocalypse Now?

Artists can make their displeasure widely known, of course; it’s easier today than it’s ever been, and absolutely instantaneous thanks to social media. But as soon as musicians feel the need to publicly disassociate themselves from their own work, they are that much farther away from their creations. There’s an intercessor, an interloper. After last night, will we ever be able to hear “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” again without feeling a slight tug of a certain memory — not of Mick Jagger singing, but of Donald Trump shouting?

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Of all the festival lineup announcements I’ve received in my life — both as a music-loving citizen and as a music writer — perhaps none has made me actually yelp with surprised delight so much as when I saw “Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem” on this year’s Outside Lands bill.

If you grew up on the storied rock ‘n’ roll five-piece — that’s Dr. Teeth, Floyd Pepper, Janice, Zoot, and of course Animal on drums — you already know the singular pleasure of watching our felt-covered friends perform songs that tease out exactly what makes the Muppets so genius to begin with: a graceful, perhaps unmatched ability to walk the fine line between thoughtful children’s entertainment and deeply weird, subversive sh*t.

In any event: The band’s early-evening set on Sunday, Aug. 7 at Outside Lands was billed as its “first live performance” ever, and if you were wondering what San Francisco did to get so lucky, the band members tossed out a few hints in their between-song banter — not to mention their cover of The Mowgli’s song “San Francisco.” Have you ever wanted to hear Muppets making weed jokes while psychedelic Summer of Love-influenced animation ebbed and flowed behind them? Now’s your chance.

The whole set ran just under half an hour in total; check back with KQED Arts’ music editor Gabe Meline (who’s been posting updates from the fest all weekend) for more tomorrow.

For now? This YouTuber managed to catch most of the set — be sure to watch until the end for a lovely cameo from the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. Kids’ stuff? Maybe. But I dare you not to smile.

This #MeToo-era-cum-yuletide-season, radio stations are pulling the plug on that holiday earworm with lyrics that, to some, ring date-rape warning bells, rather than evoking innocent snow-bound flirtation.

The tune “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” with words that seemed charming when FDR was in office, may land with a tone-deaf thud on the ear of today’s listener.

But the stations banning the song have been met with a controversy of their own.

Written by Frank Loesser in 1944, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” featured in the 1949 film Neptune’s Daughter, winning the Oscar for best original song.

The call and response duet has a female voice trying to tear herself away from her date in myriad ways: “I’ve got to go away … Hey, what’s in this drink?” And finally, “The answer is no.”

But her declarations of “no” are far from final, with the male voice, wheedling “Mind if I move in closer … Gosh, your lips are delicious … How can you do this thing to me?”

Cleveland’s WDOK put its foot down where the female voice could not, announcing its ban of the song last week.

“I do realize that when the song was written in 1944, it was a different time, but now while reading it, it seems very manipulative and wrong,” host Glenn Anderson wrote on the station’s web site. “The world we live in is extra sensitive now, and people get easily offended, but in a world where #MeToo has finally given women the voice they deserve, the song has no place.”

Brian Figula, program director of KOIT saw the headlines and determined the song would have no place at his San Francisco station. He banned it on Monday.

But he told NPR that he had no idea of the “tornado” he would face: hundreds of emails demanding the song be put back in rotation, more than ten times the number of requests he said he fielded asking him to yank it.

“People are unbelievably passionate about their Christmas music, it’s the one thing that you can’t mess with,” Figula said, adding that listeners rely on it “to reminisce to the good old days when life was easy and simple.”

Finding common ground on “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has been anything but simple.

A feminist defense of the lyrics points out that when they were written a woman with a reputation had to protest a man’s advances, even if she actually welcomed them, and the song’s figurative woman is actually expressing her sexuality in a veiled era-appropriate way.

Furthering the ambiguity, KOSI in Denver has done an about-face, first banning the song on Monday, then opening up a poll to put the decision to listeners. The results were unequivocal: the vast majority of the 15,000 respondents demanded the song’s return, the station said.

“While we are sensitive to those who may be upset by some of the lyrics, the majority of our listeners have expressed their interpretation of the song to be non-offensive,” Program Director Jim Lawson said in a statement.

In San Francisco, KOIT is also now reconsidering its decision and may bring the song back, depending on the results of its own poll. Listeners have until Dec. 10 to decide.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Consider the cast of fierce female characters on screen in 2018.

Danai Gurira’s unflappable war general in Black Panther. Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone in the love and power triangle The Favourite. Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan as rivals in Mary Queen of Scots. Nicole Kidman’s bedraggled, hellbent detective in Destroyer. Viola Davis and her partners-in-crime in the heist thriller Widows. Rosamund Pike’s portrayal of gutsy journalist Marie Colvin in A Private War. Yalitza Aparicio’s fortitudinous housekeeper in Roma.

These movies have both star power and Hollywood muscle behind them. Yet studies persistently report that women are not equally represented on the big screen. So do this year’s badass heroines mark a change in the movie industry? And will these characters play differently in the age of #MeToo?

In 2018, movie theaters offered a range of explorations of women and power: how they wield it, fight for it, abuse it. In the occasionally absurd tragicomedy The Favourite, power is rarely pretty, whether it’s Queen Anne’s (Olivia Colman) childish hissy fits or the seemingly innocent servant Abigail’s (Emma Stone) blatant ass-kissing.

Olivia Colman says her queen would probably prefer to be anywhere but on that throne.

“She’s in a position she never chose to be in,” Colman says. “She’s highest on the mountain in the nation at the time. But she would probably rather not be if she could guarantee that she could have more happiness in her life. She doesn’t know if anyone loves her for real.”

Mia Mask, a film professor at Vassar College, says The Favourite‘s director, Yorgos Lanthimos, “brings to life the adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

“[Lanthimos is] really making us think about how one can have a moral core and center, but be knocked off-center in particular ways,” Mask says. “And how women can succumb to the same desires for power that men do.”

It’s a different story altogether, Mask says, when women gain their power out of necessity. She points to Alphonso Cuarón’s, Roma in which Yalitza Aparicio plays the quietly resilient domestic worker, Cleo. She takes care of everything: the children, the house, the pet dog’s waste.

When the father abandons the family she takes care of, his wife tells Cleo, “We women are always alone in the end.” Cleo seems to have known this all along.

Mia Mask says Cuarón explores a kind of power we rarely see honored in movies.

“One of the strongest themes I feel in Cuarón’s film is that women, mothers, domestic caretakers have a kind of under-appreciated tenacity of spirit,” she says. “They’re really the backbone of these families.”

It’s a completely different kind of film, but the women in Widows are forced to find their inner power—more specifically, their inner criminal. With Viola Davis as the alpha, Widows also stars Michelle Rodriguez, Cynthia Erivo and Elizabeth Debecki as women who muster the courage to commit a heist because they need the money to pay off the debt their dead husbands left them.

Directed by Steve McQueen with a screenplay by Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl), Widows is adapted from a 1980s British TV series. Flynn says she told McQueen that some of the women need to have children so that women watching will relate to their plight. As Rodriguez’s character says: “If this whole thing goes wrong, I just want my kids to know that I didn’t sit there and take it.”

Widows was in production well before the #MeToo movement made it into the mainstream. But Flynn can’t help but think that audiences—especially women—will feel differently about these characters.

“Ultimately they are coming alive because they are finding rage and finding their empowerment and pushing back,” Flynn says. “And that … has been so much of what the #MeToo movement has been about.”

Despite the number of fierce females on screen this year, overall representation of women on screen remains low. A study released in 2018 by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that while women make up half the box office, about one-third (33) of the top 100 movies in 2017 had a female lead or co-lead. (The same number was 34 in 2016 and 32 in 2015.)

Josie Rourke, who directed the movie Mary Queen of Scots, spent several years working in theater, where she says the situation has also been slow to change. As “ridiculous” as it might sound, Rourke says, “I was the first woman director to run a major London theater … and that was only 7 1/2 years ago.”

Set in the 16th century, Mary Queen of Scots explores the rivalry—and kinship—between Mary (Saoirse Ronan) and Queen Elizabeth (Margot Robbie). These queens are constantly grappling with how to use and keep their power without getting killed.

“It’s specifically a movie about the cost of power,” Rourke says. “So one of the things that the screenwriter Beau Willimon and myself were really keen to portray is what these women had to sacrifice in order to keep a hold of their thrones at a time in history where people thought—many people thought—that the idea of a queen was a complete aberration.”

Rourke, Flynn and Colman all say there is no shortage of powerful female characters out there. But they also believe we’re still not seeing enough of them on screen.

Colman optimistically points to the TV phenomenon Dr. Who. For the first time ever, a woman is in the starring role. Colman recalls a YouTube video of a little girl watching the announcement.

“When it’s revealed who the doctor is, she just sort of bursts into tears and says, ‘It’s a girl!'” Colman says. “And it’s one of the most beautiful things. Girls are so thrilled that there’s a female role model and boys are accepting of it. And so the next generation, it feels so promising—that if we show that it’s fifty-fifty, they’re going to just take it as the norm.”

For years, conventional wisdom in Hollywood held that heroines didn’t have the same commercial appeal as heroes. But another study, by the research firm Shift7 and Creative Artists Agency, found just the opposite.

From 2014 to 2017, movies lead by female characters outperformed movies lead by male characters. The report was the brainchild of women in Hollywood involved in Time’s Up.

Nina Gregory edited this story for broadcast.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Giant razor-maker Gillette got itself into a bit of a tough scrape with a new, nearly 2-minute-long ad promoting the ideals of the #MeToo movement.

For over a century, Gillette has championed the alpha men who use its razors, including, its ads have claimed, “all the world’s rulers” and “the millions of big, strong-limbed supermen who are fighting to save freedom.”

But a new ad released in advance of the Super Bowl, cuts the other way, channeling the #MeToo movement and undercutting toxic masculinity. The first half of the ad portrays males as boorish, sexually harassing women, mansplaining and bullying. About midway through, the narrator proclaims that something has changed and that “there will be no going back.”

“You can’t hide from it. You can’t laugh it off, making the same old excuses,” the narrator intones, as a long line up of men shrug, “boys will be boys.” Then, the ad exalts men who “say the right thing” and “act the right way,” as it showcases caring and empathetic men who intervene to stop friends—and strangers—from catcalling or bullying. “It’s only by challenging ourselves to do more, that we can get closer to our best,” the ad concludes, in a twist on its decades-old tagline “The Best A Man Can Get.”

Many are hailing the ad for its call to action. “Thank you for this reminder of the beauty of men,” tweeted actress Jessica Chastain. @ChettaYoda called the ad “superb,” tweeting that it brought tears to her eyes.

@AlisaHovha applauded Gillette what she called a “Fantastic ad,” tweeting “thank you for recognizing the toxicity and moving towards a change. Bravo and keep moving forward!”

But the ad, which has more than 14 million views on YouTube, is getting more than twice as many “dislikes” as “likes,” and many are vowing to dump their Gillette razors and wage a boycott.

“I’m researching every product made by Proctor & Gamble, throwing any I have in the trash, and never buying any of them again until everyone involved in this ad from the top to bottom is fired and the company issues a public apology,” tweeted @JoeS3678.

He went on to bash Gillette for “telling [its] customers that they are the problem and need to change. That masculinity is bad, and that all men are responsible for the actions of a few.”

Others have blasted the company for “crapping all over” the guys who’ve supported the company for a century and “gender shaming” men. “Stop trying to emasculate men!!” @angelsvoice66, tweeted to Gillette. “Let them be men!”

A Fox News commentator asked: “Does Gillette want men to start shaving their legs, too?”

“This ad is offensive and insulting,” tweeted @Willpowers5, calling out Gillette for “imply[ing] that this is what men do, fight, barbecue and harass women.”

But others have shot back, suggesting those most offended might be those who most need to heed the message. “Wow somebody got triggered. You okay there snowflake?” @kirrasdad tweeted back to @JoeS3678. “The ad is just suggesting we try to be better people in my opinion. If it threatens you to the point of hatred, you may want to think a little about that.”

For its part, Gillette says its goal was to spark discussion, and it takes heart in seeing that happening.

“If we get people to pause, reflect and to challenge themselves and others to ensure that their actions reflect who they really are, then this campaign will be a success,” a Gillette spokesperson tells NPR in an email.

Gillette says it’s “setting a new standard for our brand … to encourage and inspire the next generation to be its best.”

In an earlier statement launching the ad, the company seemed to be anticipating some of the backlash, noting that “in a world where the actions of the few can taint the reputation of the many, we know there’s work to be done—together.”

It remains to be seen how the ad impacts sales. It comes at a precarious time for the company, as Gillette faces stiff new competition from startup subscription clubs like Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s.

Gillette, however, may be buoyed by the experience of other companies who have plunged into similarly divisive social issues. For example, controversy followed a Nike ad featuring ex-NFL player Colin Kaepernick, who had sparked many players to protest police brutality and racial inequality by taking a knee during the national anthem before games.

But ultimately, the Nike’s controversial ad did not hurt its sales. Counter to some fears, the controversial ad drove a spike in sales, social engagement and online buzz, all of which helped the company emerge from a slump.

Gillette is so far exuding a quiet confidence.

“Successful brands today have to be relevant and engage consumers in topics that matter to them,” a spokesperson tells NPR. “This is especially true when it comes to younger consumers—a key demographic for us.”

Call it a new kind of corporate machismo, volunteering to march bravely ahead into the culture wars.

No longer can companies “just advertis[e] product benefits,” the Gillette spokesperson says in the email. These days “brand-building” also means taking a stand on important societal issues, controversial as they may be.

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Sunday’s Super Bowl was notable for three key reasons. First and foremost, this was a game so incredibly dull even football fans thought it was boring. (CNN’s Jeff Pearlman called it “a boring, lame, non-suspenseful, never-ending, drool-puddle.”) Second, the musical portion that usually pumps everyone up was such an anti-climax, Entertainment Weekly headlined its review: “Maroon 5’s Super Bowl halftime show: Well, that was boring.”

And the third thing? Well, it all has to do with Tom Brady’s mouth, and how he likes to use it. Remarkably, we’re not talking about the quarterback’s controversial political leanings that Giselle Bündchen has had to stop him from publicly expressing. No, Twitter was all-a-flutter Sunday night because of Tom Brady’s penchant for mouth kissing.

Most of the furor started when people noticed Brady kiss Patriots owner, Robert Kraft, as they celebrated the win:

But Brady’s kissing habits were under discussion in one form or another all day:

And the internet has been particularly uncomfortable about Brady kissing his sons for some time now:

Brady’s mouth kisses are, at this point, an established practice:

The problem is, the way a lot of people talk about them reeks of both toxic masculinity and homophobia. Many tweets openly suggested that Brady’s familial kisses were sexual in motive. One claimed Brady “french kisses his son and Robert Kraft.” Some suggested Brady’s children were fearful of his affections. More implied Brady kissed his wife and his children in exactly the same way.

The wall of noise around the kisses speaks volumes about America’s ongoing fear of seeing men kissing other men and ongoing discomfort with men demonstrating emotion and affection with their loved ones. It says a lot about our culture that even Tom Brady—married to a supermodel, and one of the most successful football players in American history—isn’t considered manly enough to get away with giving other males pecks on the lips.

Is Brady’s penchant for mouth-kissing unusual? For an American, sure! But as long as mouths stay closed with relatives; as long as everyone kissing Tom Brady on the mouth looks perfectly happy about kissing Tom Brady on the mouth; and as long as Brady isn’t running around trying to smooch unwilling participants, it’s really nobody else’s business. Maybe if the NFL had done right by Colin Kaepernick in time, Rihanna could’ve done the halftime show and America would’ve had something more interesting to talk about.

Some people love electric scooters. Some people hate them. And some people charge them—for money.

By day, Joel Kirzner is a consultant in Arlington, Va. But when he wraps up work in the office, he pulls out his phone and checks multiple scooter apps to see what’s available nearby.

If there are scooters low on battery, they’ll show up in the map on his phone. And if he can find the scooter in real life (and beat any rival chargers to the punch), he’ll earn a few bucks for each one he charges at home.

“It’s like Pokémon Go and you make money,” he says.

On a recent evening, he sees two scooters up for grabs just around the corner from his office. He hops in his Subaru Impreza and starts collecting.

Electric scooters are hot right now. Lime and Bird, the two biggest companies, are valued at some $2 billion each. You can rent scooters by the minute from one or both companies in more than 100 cities across the country—from Abilene, Texas, to Tacoma, Wash.

And both companies rely on independent contractors such as Kirzner to keep the wheels rolling, by taking the scooters to their homes and charging them in ordinary outlets. In the process, chargers fulfill another key need: They help move scooters from out-of-the-way locations to hot spots where they’ll find more riders.

Lime calls the chargers “juicers.” Bird has its own puns: The chargers “capture” Birds, and then release them to “nests”—specific locations chosen by the company—in the morning.

This is largely nocturnal work: Some scooters don’t become available for charging until after 9 p.m., and they’re supposed to be back on the roads early the next morning so they’re available for commuters.

Starting after sunset on a recent chilly night, Kirzner collects 12 scooters in quick succession near his office building before heading home to charge them. He’s collecting Birds tonight—there were more available than Limes—and earning $4 or $5 for each, including a bonus for collecting multiple scooters.

The bounty offered per scooter varies based on location, level of charge and how long a scooter has been standing idle (a sign it might be in a less-desirable location). And in general, the bounties have gone down over time. For instance, Bird used to pay up to $20 for scooters that had been waiting the longest. But unscrupulous chargers would take scooters off the street and hoard them while their value increased; now, Kirzner says, $20 for a charge is all but unheard of.

The declining rates have reduced some of the previously fierce competition to snag scooters. Many people just aren’t willing to hit the road for smaller payouts—especially on a cold, windy March night.

Andy Castillo, who used to collect Lime scooters in Washington, D.C., isn’t charging anymore. He used to go out with his mom, who’s retired—”it was a way for us to spend time together,” he says—and they’d fill up his pickup with scooters.

“When I first started, it was $6 a scooter,” Castillo says. “They lowered the price recently to $4, and I did it once or twice after that and it wasn’t as exciting.”

Kirzner says it’s still worth it for him to charge, especially since he rarely goes out of his way, collecting and redistributing right near his office and his home.

“It’s like picking money off the street,” he says, when he finishes one pickup and spots another scooter, worth $5 per charge, available just across the street.

Of course, it’s not that easy. Once they’re all stacked in his hatchback—he has a very precise system for squeezing in up to a dozen Birds—he takes the scooters home and plugs them in on his patio. His chargers are neatly organized, mounted to pieces of plywood with color-coordinated zip ties.

They’ll charge for hours, and he pays for the electricity. (The effect on his electric bill is negligible, Kirzner says.) The next morning, he’ll wake up early to get the scooters out on the road, deposited in locations preselected by Bird, before he heads to his day job.

Kirzner says that since he started charging in September, he’s earned more than $9,000.

He also cautions that this job is not very reliable—not like, say, driving for Uber or Lyft, or other options in the gig economy. Some nights he might come up empty-handed. And in some cities, Lime or Bird have folded up shop and disappeared overnight.

It’s also not clear if the companies will continue to rely on contractors. Other companies, such as Lyft, use employees to charge their electric scooters. Kirzner wonders how it can possibly be cost-effective to pay him $50 or $60 for a couple hours of work that a full-time employee might do for $15 an hour.

More speculatively, some analysts suspect robots might be coming for these jobs—robot scooters, that is.

“What people are talking about already is having these things be autonomous,” says Horace Dediu, the influential analyst who coined the term “micromobility” to describe small electric vehicles like scooters.

A three-wheeled or self-balancing scooter could “crawl around on the sidewalk at, like, 3 miles an hour,” he says. “Maybe during the night they’ll reposition themselves to a charging station. Now, either you have a person there who plugs them in, or they could hover above what is essentially an inductive spot … so they could self-charge.”

“So you’ll have these these sort of armies of scooters rolling around the city at night roaming to try to find a charging station,” Dediu theorizes. “I think that’s not crazy as it sounds.”

After all, payouts to chargers such as Kirzner represent a substantial cost for the scooter companies—which are still burning through money as they expand, and haven’t yet managed to turn a profit.

But for now, chargers play an integral role in the scooter economy.

In the chilly darkness, Kirzner carries his night’s haul from his car and neatly lines them up. He says he makes decent pay at his 9-to-5 job. But a side hustle helps, he says.

“I have expensive rent, expensive car payments, cable bills,” he says. “You talk about the disappearing middle class—I feel like I’m in that zone where I can live fine, comfortably. But if you want to have a little more financial stability, this definitely helps.”

And he’d rather do this than drive for Uber or Lyft, he says. It puts fewer miles on his car—and there are no drunk people to deal with.

“The Birds don’t talk back to me,” he says. “They tweet every so often—you know, beeping—but other than that, they’re pretty nice.”

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