The "greenwashing", a big masquerade denounced with virulence on the social networks
In 2010, in front of the National Portrait Gallery in London, activists denounced the strategy of “greening” the oil giant BP.
AP - Akira Suemori
Text by: Dominique Desaunay Follow
2 min
On social networks, more and more Internet users are engaging in "greentrolling", that is to say "green trolling".
This practice in favor of ecology consists in denouncing, through caricatures or an avalanche of comments, the messages of “greening” of brands or companies.
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For a long time, the marketing teams of large companies have diverted environmental and climate issues to their advantage.
"
Drive with green petroleum
", "
clean everything with ecological bleach
", "
concrete without fear with 100% green cement
".
This advertising mania consisting in systematically greening polluting products is called "greenwashing", and it does not date from yesterday.
Social networks have accelerated the phenomenon, which now represents for brands and large retailers powerful channels of communication with consumers concerned about reducing their environmental footprint.
The virulence of social networks
On Twitter, Instagram or even Facebook, the counter-offensive has been launched, it is called “greentrolling”, that is to say “green trolling”. Recall that in the vocabulary of the web, a
troll
is a user who gives impertinent responses to messages and monopolizes, not to say pollutes online discussions. The same method is used by the "green trolls" to denounce this time the "greenwashing" of large companies with a lot of memes and humorous photomontages by diverting, for example, the advertising campaigns of companies which devote themselves to "greening" .
Some of them prefer more simply to flood the social accounts of brands or companies with messages and comments in order to enlighten consumers on the reality of their false communication strategies.
The term “greentrolling” comes from the United States.
It would have been used for the first time in 2019 by the environmental activist Mary Annaïse Heglar, who became famous by questioning on Twitter the oil company BP, which invited Internet users to calculate their carbon footprint online.
"
What about yours?"
She replied to the firm.
This practice has since grown enormously, including in France.
It has more and more followers and not necessarily from the ranks of environmental activists.
The "greentrollers", activists 4.0
The first step to reducing your emissions is to know where you stand.
Find out your #carbonfootprint with our new calculator & share your pledge today!
- bp (@bp_plc) October 22, 2019
Crédit Mutuel, for example, recently paid the price due to a poster campaign promoting a recycled plastic credit card.
These ads to encourage you to consume more without feeling guilty with a green bank card has quite angered Internet users.
They have increased their funding to the fossil fuel industries since the Paris Agreement but Crédit Mutuel has the nerve to say it is green with a recycled card.
Apparently, a customer does not agree 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/p05tL0s51g
- Bon Pote (@BonPote) July 8, 2021
If fashion companies and ready-to-wear brands are among the favorite targets of "greentrollers", green trolls are not forgetting the oil companies.
The firm Total was thus the victim of a false press conference broadcast on social networks denouncing the environmental policy of the French giant on the African continent.
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