Scott Galloway Answers Your Questions on Resist and Unsubscribe

Summary

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The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway

Episode: Scott Galloway Answers Your Questions on Resist and Unsubscribe

Date: February 6, 2026
Host: Scott Galloway (Vox Media Podcast Network)

Main Theme & Purpose

This Office Hours episode centers on Resist and Unsubscribe—Scott Galloway’s campaign urging consumers to wield economic pressure rather than outrage to influence corporate and political behavior, especially in the lead-up to the US 2026 election. Scott dives into listener questions, addressing how targeted unsubscription and avoiding certain platforms might function as an effective signal to power, and explores the risks, limitations, and ethics of this approach.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Economic Pressure Over Protest?

• Scott introduces the campaign:
  • Resist and Unsubscribe is a framework designed to empower consumers to make market choices rather than relying on traditional protest or outrage.
  • The campaign provides resources at resistandunsubscribe.com, focusing on which platforms to avoid and how your money matters.
• Principle: Rather than asking people to take risks or protest physically, Scott posits that non-participation (unsubscribing, canceling non-essential services) in a consumer-driven economy can be a powerful market signal, especially to an administration receptive mainly to business interests.

Notable Quote

"I'm not asking you to risk getting fired. I'm not asking you to take your Saturday and go protest... This is meant to create a signal and a framework for showing people that they have more power than they think."
— Scott Galloway [03:09]

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2. Listener Question: Could This Hurt Workers—And Will It Be Politically Weaponized?

• Question from Kia (Physician, Minneapolis):
  • Will economic action lead to job losses? Won’t Republicans blame liberals for any recession, making the tactic counterproductive?
• Scott’s Answer:
  • No action is consequence-free; job losses are possible, but major tech companies are already downsizing due primarily to AI, not boycotts.
  • The companies targeted are resilient—largely Big Tech—and not essential service providers.
  • Republicans will politicize economic downturns regardless of the cause—blame is inevitable.
  • The real pressure point is market sentiment: If the market sours ("S&P down 17%"), that's a lever for real policy change.

Notable Quote

"Anything bad that happens in the economy or anything, period that’s negative... it’s going to be reverse engineered not just to Democrats but probably to the Biden administration. So I think that’s coming no matter what."
— Scott Galloway [03:47]

"You want to find the soft tissue. And the soft tissue here is the markets. And the soft tissue within the soft tissue of the markets is in fact Big Tech..."
— Scott Galloway [04:10]

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3. Risks of Backfiring: Political Division and Unintended Consequences

• Listener Email: What’s the biggest way Resist and Unsubscribe could fail or backfire?
• Scott’s Response:
  • Campaign could become overly politicized (e.g. conservatives counter-subscribing to targeted platforms just to spite progressives).
  • Not comfortable with the idea of politicizing all spending or threatening livelihoods over views—does not advocate cancel culture.
  • Personal risks: Scott describes loss of a speaking gig and declining an advertiser for the campaign’s sake—there are tangible costs.
  • Worried most about reputational or financial damage to his team if the campaign results in advertisers fleeing the podcast.

Notable Quote

"There is no battle, there is no effort that’s cost free... The thing I probably worry about most is that advertisers flee from our platform and it ends up damaging the economic well being of the people who work with me because of my political views."
— Scott Galloway [06:13]

"But it’s the shit that you don’t see that always hits you... Whether it’s Covid or 9/11. It’s the shit you’re not expecting that hurts you."
— Scott Galloway [07:39]

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4. The Activist Leverage Point—Consumers or Advertisers?

• Reddit Question: Given that companies like Meta depend on ad revenue, shouldn’t the campaign focus on convincing advertisers, rather than consumers?
• Scott’s Analysis:
  • It's been tried—no single advertiser wields enough power to move the needle; the ad ecosystem at Meta/Google is too diversified.
  • Past advertiser boycotts (e.g., over content harmful to young users) fizzled out; advertisers just shifted budgets rather than enacting real change.
  • Most effective pressure comes from interrupting subscription revenue: it's recurring, high-margin, and market-sensitive. Even small drops have disproportionate effects on share prices and executive attention.
  • Example: A modest hit to subscription revenue in Big Tech “hits them in the nuts”—it’s the most sensitive point.
  • A 5% drop in Kroger sales is minor; a similar drop in Netflix or Meta subscription revenue can shake markets and provoke senior executive and political attention.

Notable Quote

"If you have an enemy, what do you want to do? ...You want to hit the kidneys, you want to hit ...the testicles, you want to hit the solar plexus... Whereas if you go after the subscription revenue of the seven companies responsible for 30% of the S&P, you are hitting these people in the nuts."
— Scott Galloway [12:47]

"A bad decision is wrong. No decision is worse... I want to start doing even if, you know, do I have this 100% right? Unlikely. But I felt like I needed to do something."
— Scott Galloway [15:29]

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Scott’s forthrightness about the risks to himself and his team (“...advertisers flee from our platform and it ends up damaging the economic well being of the people who work with me because of my political views…” [06:25]) grounds the episode in personal stakes.
• Visual analogies (“You want to find the soft tissue...Big Tech…”) add humor and immediacy to the otherwise technical discussion of market pressure.

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:43 | Scott introduces Resist and Unsubscribe; first listener Q | | 03:09 | Non-participation as market signal—explained | | 04:10 | S&P and the idolatry of the dollar in US politics | | 06:13 | Backlash and campaign risks | | 07:39 | Unseen/unexpected risks | | 10:19 | Targeting advertisers vs. consumers—Scott’s rationale | | 12:47 | The "soft tissue" of Big Tech—subscription vulnerability | | 15:29 | Scott’s philosophy: Action over perfection |

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Tone & Style

• Scott is candid, direct, analytical, and a touch irreverent—cutting through pretense to discuss the real mechanics of consumer power and political wrangling.
• He recognizes the ethical dilemmas and personal risks, and does not pretend to have a “clean” or cost-free solution.
• He fields tough questions without sugarcoating.

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Summary Table

| Topic | Scott’s View/Advice | |------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------| | Economic resistance vs. protest | More leverage/$ impact, less personal risk than protests | | Political blame game | Inevitable—do what’s effective, not what’s blame-safe | | Potential harm/backfire | Can hurt workers/brand/team; not all consequences foreseeable | | Consumer vs. advertiser activism | Subscription revenue hits matter most; direct ad pressure too diffuse| | Ethical limits | Avoid cancel-culture, basic needs, respect dissent | | “Is it perfect?” | No, but better than inaction |

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

This episode unpacks whether ordinary consumers can use their spending power to shape national policy—especially amid polarization and Big Tech’s influence. Scott Galloway lays out not only the strengths of his Resist and Unsubscribe campaign, but also the messy, real-world consequences, including political backlash and personal costs. He invites open feedback and critique, suggesting activism is better than armchair commentary—even if the lever, and the risks, aren’t perfectly clear.

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For feedback and questions: Email a voice memo to [e-mail] or post on Scott’s subreddit.

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Transcript

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This week on Explain it to Me from Vox what to do with your online regret. New episodes on Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts.

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I'm Estet Herndon and this week on Today Explained, I traveled to Minneapolis to speak with Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is suing the Trump administration over ice descending on his state. It would mean that we had federal active duty troops patrolling our streets, which is concerning because the way ice does its business is been proven over and over again to be deeply problematic. New episodes of Today Explained drop every day of the week wherever you get your podcasts and you can now watch our Saturday [e-mail] Fox Megan Rapinoe here.

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[Scott Galloway]

Welcome to Office Hours with Prof. G. Today we're answering your questions about Resist and Unsubscribe, a campaign built around the idea that economic pressure, not outrage, is the most effective lever for change. We've built a website. I apologize, I'm hammering this home. That makes it easy who to unsubscribe from, what to avoid, and where your money actually matters. Join us and go to resist and unsubscribe.com if you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to office [e-mail] Again, that's office [e-mail] Anyway, let's bust right into it. Our first question comes from Kia side 6230 on Reddit. They say physician from Minneapolis here, mother of two boys and love your podcast. Thanks for that. I understand your point about boycotting businesses and canceling streaming platforms because Trump does respond to the market. But what would stop Republicans from then blaming the upcoming recession on the commie liberals? Wouldn't just biding our time be a better long term strategy? Not saying Minneapolis can wait that long. We are pretty desperate here. Thanks for all you do I think it's a fair point. I don't think there's a free lunch here. I think possibly people could lose jobs. Although the companies I've listed as potential targets for your unsubscription or non participation, you know, they're laying off people because of AI. I don't see them laying off people because of a short term economic strike. What I do see them doing is calling the President and saying, just FYI, this is really impacting us and could take GDP growth negative and could take the S and P down substantially. Also, I'm not comfortable telling people not to work or telling them, yeah, vote, I get it. But I think a lot of damage.

[Scott Galloway (continued)]

Can be done between now and November and I feel as if we should have more leverage and more opportunity as consumers. In addition, the thing I like about this is you don't really have to do anything. I'm not asking you to risk getting fired. I'm not asking you to take your Saturday and go protest. I'm not even telling you which companies to unsubscribe from or when you might subscribe back. This is up to you. This is meant to create a signal and a framework for showing people that they have more power than they think. That in a consumer driven economy where the President only responds to market signals that you actually have more power just through non participation and power of the purse. Do I think the Republicans will blame Democrats? Yeah, I mean they're going to do that anyways. Anything bad that happens in the economy or anything, period that's negative, whether it's a cartoon not turning out the way they'd hoped or puppies being run over in the street, it's going to be reverse engineered not just to Democrats but probably to the Biden administration. So I think that's coming no matter what. I do think if the S and P had been down 17%, not up, I don't think we'd have ice in cities. I think the President would be in.

[Scott Galloway]

Such a world of trouble. What happens with America and our government is the idolatry of the dollar has resulted in the S and P and the NASDAQ becoming the ultimate arbiters of success or lack thereof in administration. And despite the fact that Democrats have vastly outperformed Republicans in terms of market returns or employment, as long as the market is up, I believe the President feels he has license to do pretty much anything. As long as people are making money, then he can do anything. And if you look at the people he responds to, he just respond to markets and the titans of industry are the titans of these markets. So will they blame Democrats? Yeah, but they're going to do that anyways, so they're going to take full credit. It reminds me of when President Trump was asked, what parts of the economy do you own? And he said, the parts that are good. So, yeah, that's going to happen anyways. Is there a downside? Probably. And there's probably downsides I'm not seeing. But if you're looking for a way to start hitting back, you want to find the soft tissue. And the soft tissue here is the markets. And the soft tissue within the soft tissue of the markets is in fact Big Tech, who I think are most vulnerable to a slowdown and in some ways most resilient. I don't think this is going to result in layoffs or any sort of consumer offering here. I'm not telling people to stop buying groceries. I don't think a person with economic security can tell people not to work or not to buy essentials. But do you really need five streaming media platforms? Appreciate the question. Question number two comes from a listener who emailed us. They say, hi, Scott and team. What's the biggest way resist and unsubscribe? Could fail or backfire. Is there a scenario where this actually strengthens the very corporations or political actors it's meant to weaken? Just reading this. Yeah. If it becomes politicized and all of a sudden conservatives find that the best way to own the libtards is to, you know, buy five subscriptions to AT T or buy Palantir stock or whatever it might be. Yeah, it could absolutely backfire. Also, I don't like the idea of politicizing everything, including corporate spending. And I don't believe in canceling people. I think their livelihood should not be threatened by their political views. So, you know, do I have perfect moral clarity around this? No. Could it cost people jobs? Potentially. Although the firms are targeting Big Tech or I don't know. I don't think this is probably going to result in a huge destruction in employment. It could definitely backfire on me personally if it's, if it's a giant thud or off mic on this podcast. We've decided not to take an advertiser for the month of February because they're one of these firms. And so, you know, I've had it. The speaking gig canceled already because they said, look, we don't, we respect what you're doing. You're just a little bit hot right now. So, like there is no battle, there is no effort that doesn't that's cost free. And could this backfire? Sure could. And could people decide that they don't like the movement and they're going to go the other way and subscribe? I guess I haven't seen any of that so far. I've seen people say, oh, you know, rich guy living in London who wants other people to stop spending. I'm trying to lead by example. I'm unsubscribing from something every day. And I'm also so trying to create a signal in an infrastructure so people realize the power they have. But I'm not telling them to stop buying their groceries or not show up for work. Sure, it could backfire, and I'm sure there's things I'm not thinking about, but I will update you on a regular basis around what's gone right and what's gone wrong. The thing I probably worry about most is that advertisers flee from our platform and it ends up damaging the economic well being of the people who work with me because of my political views. And I've always been fairly cognizant of that. But at the same time, at least so far, the people at Propg Media seem to be board with this and actually enjoying it and are excited about it.

[Scott Galloway (continued)]

But it's the shit that you don't see that always hits you.

[Scott Galloway]

Whether it's Covid or 9 11. It's the shit you're not expecting that hurts you. So the things I'm expecting could be blowback, probably aren't. There's probably things I haven't seen, but I will absolutely keep you posted. Thanks for the question. We'll be right back after a quick break.

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It is very unfortunate that it happened, but it's also unfortunate that the ICE is being blamed for like just murder, murdering somebody who was just so innocent. Which isn't the case whatsoever. A they were provoked. B He got ran over and you know, it just. It's hard to tell what's real and what's not anymore.

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He's delivered on virtually every promise he's made. The economy is booming right now. He closed the border. We're not getting any more illegals in. That has been done. That was a major promise. That's been done today.

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[Scott Galloway]

Welcome back. Our final question came from covermyleeve on Reddit. Hi Scott, I agree with your premise that dollars are the most honest signal of public will. What struck me is that we may be aiming the message to the wrong decision makers. Roughly 97% of Meta's revenue comes from advertising. That means very small number of media directors and CMOs effectively control the cash supply. Have you considered whether motivating advertisers rather than consumers might be a more efficient pressure point than persuading millions of people to give up their subscriptions? Curious how you pressure test this is coordinated ethical media buying a more realistic market lever than a population wide consumer strike? It's really interesting and it's been tried before and it hasn't worked because it's not a concentration of buyers. Something like One of the most powerful things about Meta's business model is I don't think any one advertiser controls more than 1% of spend and that is they are have such a robust diverse ecosystem that the ability to impose any sort of damage on Meta a you'd have to go to millions of advertisers and B I'm spreading the message on resist and unsubscribe on Instagram. Why? Because Instagram basically has monopoly power. There's just no getting around it. If you want a message to go viral, you've got to be on a meta platform. I'm not happy about it. I would like to be telling people to unsubscribe from Meta, but The reality is 2/3 of Americans now get their news from social media and 2/3 of social media is controlled by one company. Something like 3 billion people are on a meta platform every day. So I would like to see meta broken up. I think it should. I think they should be forced to divest Instagram and WhatsApp. But I hate coal fired plants but I'm still going to turn on my lights. So going after advertisers of Meta has been tried before. It happened when it came out that they were lying about the addictive nature of their products and that young people who are having suicide suicidal ideation began getting served almost immediately. Images of nooses hey, hey. Need help on suicide. Here's some images we thought you might find interesting. And there was a movement, but it really didn't have any impact because advertisers have an obligation to their shareholders and scaling back meant just putting more money on YouTube. They weren't getting credit for scaling back, but they were getting punished for not having customer acquisition dynamics or a funnel online. But I think the difference here is the following. If consumer stock stop buying companies stop advertising and every dollar less in subscription revenue you spend has 7 to 20 times the impact of every dollar less you spend on something like groceries or your car payment. Because these companies control so much market capitalization and are so priced to perfection. That built into that expectation is the notion that people are going to continue to sign up another $20 a month for ChatGPT or for Gemini or what have you, or that you'll another 15, 16 bucks a month for Paramount plus whatever it might be that any small change in the uptick in subscription revenue has a massive impact on the market capitalization of these companies. If you got 10% of shoppers to reduce their spend by 50% at Kroger's 5% decrease in revenue, that would be a, you know, several hundred million dollars decrease in market cap of Kroger. And the CEO of Kroger is not being invited to the White House every other day. The ripple from the you could throw a giant stone into most spending for most companies and the ripple effect is barely felt, whereas just a little pebble of disruption in subscription revenue across big tech might create a tidal wave of reaction from the market and ultimately from the individuals who appear to have the President's year. Meta gets roughly 98% of its revenue from advertising. Google and Alphabet get 75 to 80%. Amazon's advertising arm is now about 10%, but it's its highest margin offering. And Amazon subscription revenue, including prime, was around 44 billion versus 56 billion in ad revenue, meaning ads are now larger revenue streamed in subscriptions. But what drives revenues or what drives market cap is that subscription revenue. The reason I zeroed in on this is like, okay, if you have an enemy, what do you want to do? You're fighting the enemy. You want to kick it, quite frankly, or hit it and soft it. You want to hit the kidneys, you want to hit. You want to hit the Adam's apple, you want to hit the testicles, you want to hit the solar plexus to have, you know, if you punch someone in the thigh, they're going to be able to fight back. And so when you punch someone or encourage them to stop spending less or going into work, I find you're punching someone in the thigh, it's going to take a massive amount of blows to the thigh to debilitate that person. Whereas if you go after the subscription revenue of the seven companies responsible for 30% of the S and P, you are hitting these people in the nuts. Subscription revenue growth is worth much more and any ding in that will show up immediately, be a disclosable event and potentially have real big market ramp implications and an impact on how these very powerful individuals feel about the current Trump policies. But it's a thoughtful question and also I'm open to advice here. I may have this wrong, but like Eisenhower said, you know, a bad decision is wrong. No decision is worse. Kind of sick of just talking all the time and saying what's wrong and right about everything. And I want to start doing even if, you know, do I have this 100% right? Unlikely. But I felt like I needed to do something. Thanks for the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to office hours of profitingmedia.com Again, that's office hourspropertymedia.com or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on skygalley subreddit and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode. Also, finally, if you like this podcast, don't like and subscribe, Resist and unsubscribe www.ResistantUnsubscribe or resistant unsub or Unsubscribed February and please the services, the platforms, or the models that you are unsubscribing for on your social feeds. Thanks so much. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Gennare. Cammie Reek is our social producer, Brad Williams is our Video editor, and Drew Burrows is our Technical Director. Thank you for listening to the Prophet Pod from ProPG Media.

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