WHEN will Je Suis Whatever reach its fill?

There was a poetic, poignant purpose to the deployment of Je Suis Charlie following the Charlie Hebdo gun massacre in Paris in January.

Now the expression is used for any sort of trifle where someone who has been either gratuitously or gauchely offensive defends their right to offend by saying Je Suis Whatever. Usually with a hashtag.

Je suis marre de je suis.

Of course, the fashion designer Stefano Gabbana, having riled Elton John with his comments about gay parenting and IVF babies, has responded with Je suis D&G. If I had any urge whatsoever to purchase designer clothing I'd be bumping Gabbana and his dear chum Dolce right to the top of my boycott list for that alone.

"You are born to a mother and a father, or at least that's how it should be," Dolce said during a magazine interview. He also expressed niche views on IVF and surrogate parents: "I call children of chemistry synthetic children. Rented uterus, semen chosen from a catalogue."

Gabbana added: "The family is not a fad," an interesting comment given his life's purpose - creating fads - though certainly unarguable.

Elton John, who has two children via IVF, was furious and called for a boycott of D&G. Courtney Love obliged, offering to burn hers. Select dozens gathered outside London's flagship D&G store to protest. Elton, meanwhile, was seen out with a D&G bag not two days later, the only thing synthetic being his outrage.

There's your problem with the boycott - even if you start the ruddy thing it can be awfully tedious to stick to.

When the actor Stephen Fry suggested Russia's homophobic culture warranted a boycott of last year's Winter Olympics in Sochi I doubt he'd had any plans to attend in the first place.

I'm still boycotting the G1 Group - a Scotland-wide pub and nightclub chain that secretly fitted a two-way mirror in the women's lavatories of Glasgow nightclub Shimmy to allow male patrons a perv at the ladies. They weren't especially apologetic about the affair and not weeks after another of its venues hosted a spectacularly sexist pub quiz ("Is is still rape if you kill her first?").

I'm fairly certainly I'm in a gang of one on this issue. I'm more than certain that turning down nights out with chums hurts me more than it does G1.

I felt obliged to boycott 50 Shades of Grey given my chairing role on the board of a women's aid organisation but curiosity almost killed this Cat.

I still avoid Nestle, though I'm not entirely sure why. Posters in the Queen Margaret Union in the early 2000s have had some subliminal effect, leaving me, not boycotting Nestle exactly, but certainly flinching at the logo.

There's an example of a successful boycott. I don't like Nestle, but I don't know why.

All of my consumer choices are based around moral and ethical fretting. And yet, and yet. I have an iPhone, albeit an original model from 2008, and I shop in Primark, despite reading myriad tales of grim staff conditions. I wouldn't shop at Amazon (tax issues) but I'm not shy of a Starbucks flat white.

Studies show that when a company's boycott makes the news its stock prices fall but even with a short term impact there is no long term gain. Dolce and Gabbana will care little that human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and others made a lot of noise outside one of their stores.

I like to think I'm making an effort to proceed decently in life, ready and prepped for another Montgomery bus moment, but maybe boycotts are nothing more than the pretence of doing something while doing nothing.

Boycotts achieve little, yet I persist in the face of futility.