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Microsoft Quickly Revises "Sexting" Ad For Kin Phone
theodp writes "Microsoft's Kin mobile phone project came under fire as Consumer Reports and others pointed out that a promotional video looked like an inappropriate endorsement of 'sexting,' prompting a quick edit and an apologetic tweet. 'The video,' observed Consumer Reports, 'includes a downright creepy sequence [beginning around 0:33] in which a young man is shown putting a Kin under his shirt and apparently snapping a picture of one of his naked breasts. The breast is then shown on the phone's screen, just before the guy apparently sends it to someone. Next we see the face of a young woman, seemingly the recipient, with an amused expression...'"
Okay, I could see a problem if it were a female breast ... but who the fuck thinks that sending a picture of a male breast is "sexting"?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I think somebody is confused about what sexting is.
Mother's hide your daughters. I hear 'The Nippler' is in town.
Oh good lord, how uptight does our society need to be?
It's a contradiction too, because sexualized youth seems to be perfectly acceptable as long as it's from a Mickey Mouse Club alumni that promises abstinence.
People have bodies.. get over it.
Sexting is a "phenomena" of prudes having to face the fact that not everyone experiences the same reservations as them about nudity. No-one is forcing them to participate.
How we know is more important than what we know.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Gynecomastia_001.jpg
Seriously? Is people who think like this a large enough fraction of their market base that they actually feel like they have to appease them?
Emotions! In your brain!
Clearly I was a teenager in the wrong millennium.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
They could have shown the Blue Balls Of Death.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Never mind the MOOBS this commercial is worse than the one with Bill wiggling his ass. You can tell some 70's Microsoft Hippie Chick manager wrote and produced it, total fail.
Got Code?
I mean it wouldnt be something I do, but both persons involved seem to be grown-ups, in a perfectly concious state, and it seems to be funny to both (for whatever reason). To me the complete scene is as cryptic as the idea why i would buy a phone from Microsoft; maybe this is just to show that the phone does not have real features going beyond an arbitrary cameraphone from 5years ago (but *with touch*). Overall the video seems to aim at people around 25 i would say.
So i dont understand if that is "sexting", i dont understand what the word exactly means (it seems diffuse), i dont see why i would complain about adults (male or female) sending pictures of breasts to other adults (as long as both sides are fine with it). But i think nodoby should complain by depicting seemingly funny things in an advertisement, even if the people in it act highly irrational.
I am actually more annoyed by advertisments still exhibiting old gender role models.
The Kin series of phone seems to be all about easy sharing with a green button dedicated to that called the "Kin Spot"... but well, that can be taken the wrong way, can't it?
Sexting with kin? Now your incest can have more manboobular visuals? What?
I am sure that it is part of the advertising plan to be "forced" to withdraw sensational ads as a way of gaining extra publicity. I have never seen this ad, and only once heard about the Kin phone, but now I have been exposed (oh dear) to the campaign as a news item.
I am sure that if nobody complained then the ad executives would plant their own complaints in the news just to get people to talk about it. How many times do you hear news reports about people being outraged without ever saying who those people are. I imagine that it is rare to need to resort to doing their own complaints, because the people who get offended by this are so predictably vocal. And who cares if you piss them off, because the target market are young people who think sexting is OK and who would be quite happy to rebel against the prudes.
I'd never even heard of the 'Kin Phone' until just now... is Slashdot being assimilated into the Microsoft marketing machine?
Just because society B is far more ridiculous than society A, does not mean society A is not itself ridiculous.
Toward the end of the video (ad) there is a black man and white woman kissing.
Back when I was young that would have been the controversy, not a white dudes nipple.
So from that point of view I think we are making progress.
Creepy? Really? What exactly is 'creepy' about it?
Unless you mean 'likely to make a large section of the population feel uneasy because they've been cowed into a pathetic state of guilt and self-censorship in the face of a narrow-minded and hypocritical moral hysteria of a small minority'. Yeh you're right, that is creepy.
Showing the pleasure you cannot have with an ipad. :)
The world has moved to an audio and visual level and expects it anytime, anywhere.
We have the software, hardware and bandwidth, so lets have fun.
Why wait for a US telco or "Jobs" to understand that people like to reach out and relate in both the visual and emotional?.
MS could have done it in a more nudge nudge way, but when has MS ever really understood marketing beyond a tool of market control.
But for buzz and a way better than Apple hardware offereing - a real win
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
In some states doing something like this could be construed as "sexual relations with a minor" (i.e., yourself). Theoretically, that could land you in jail for 5-10 years and forever be labeled a pedophile.
'Sex' once meant intercourse whereby the female could be impregnated. Now it can mean anything, including petting, phone sex, Internet sex, and sexting using SMS. Someday, it might mean alluding to sex through indirect references such as these. Eventually, it might even mean any arousal of the autonomic nervous system. You may someday get busted for having a wet dream. I am sure that will never happen until, of course, it does happen.
prompting a quick edit and an apologetic tweet.
How quick was it? Was it so quick, that you'd think they had the edit prepared in advance, just waiting for the "outrage"?
Come on guys, those are old, old tricks.
So, anyway, Microsoft have a new mobile device again with a hip ad again, awkward name again, that's trying to compete with a similar device from Apple again. Best of luck to them.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
...because no one else will.
Why the moral panic? So what if people see some breasts? Male or female. I don't get why this is even an issue.
Move sig!
Microsoft's Kin mobile phone project
Hate to be a 'kin grammar Nazi but there's a 'kin apostrophe missing there (to indicate missing letters - actually there should be one after as well, but that looks silly and the "g" is usually silent anyway).
As in: "'kin hell, some 'kin perv has sent me a 'kin picture of his 'kin moob! Ugh, its 'kin mingin'!"
They've failed to 'kin notice that, but they're worried about 'kin man tits?
(Plus, Kin Sexting sounds a bit incestuous...)
(To appease Pratchett fans, perhaps the next Android phone will be the "-ing"...)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Send pictures of your dong to Microsoft now!
Probably won't work - I'm sure that the Kin will detect those yellow dots they put on banknotes and refuse to take the picture. I expect even Vietnam have adopted them by now.
(Disclaimer: this is a joke based on the fact that us westerners think the name of the Vietnamese currency is funny. If you find yellow spots on the other sort of dong, please seek medical advice).
Which gives me a brilliant idea! Soccer moms of the world!! Get your sprogs' privates tattooed with yellow dots and no nasty pervert will ever be able to take photos or print pictures of them!!!
Hang on - I need to call the patent office...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
sexting with your kin? That's something only Microsoft 'Research' could have thought of.
While the ad only showed a mans chest, that is not the point of the controversy.
The point is that the ad was basically advocating sexting.
I am pretty sure no one was mad about the ad containing a males chest.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Everyone* on the planet has breasts and nipples. The two types of trouser monster are distributed half and half*. Everyone* who's undergone puberty has sex, usually for fun. One day everyone's naked pictures and sex stories will be on the internet and no one will care anymore, it might put a bunch of celebrity papparazi out of business because no one's career will be ruined because of naked videos or pictures because it wont be a big deal. Eventually.
* Approximate values.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.