Monday, February 7, 2011

Groupon and Tibet

Groupon's Stupid Tibet Ad 
There must have been someone along the way who said, you know, "This isn't actually funny enough to overcome the callous treatment not just of Tibet but of earnest advocacy in general, guys," right? Wasn't there some courageous middle manager somewhere who said, "Listen, I totally 'get' the joke, it's just not that funny, and not really worth it, and weirdly hostile to Tibet, and people who try to make a difference," or something? Not even anyone who pointed out that Tibetans don't really eat a lot of fish?
I mean, yes, we were treated with casual, standard-issue misogyny (not to mention weird race stuff) from Pepsi Max (twice!), and aggressive, idiotic misogyny from GoDaddy (twice!). But those jokes were so dumb! The Groupon joke was almost high concept—or, at least, what passes for high-concept with this stuff—and it just fell completely flat on its face.

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