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Designer Tweets Egyptian Riots Due to His New Line Coming Out
Famous shoe designer Kenneth Cole stuck his fabulously shod foot into his mouth by tweeting, "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online..." After an uproar from people who don't think revolution jokes are funny, he issued the following tweet: "we weren't intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment."
People will always be idiots. If you go back and read the slashdot stories on 9/11/2001 there were morons who were posting "Someone set up us the bomb!"
I suppose this one is more newsworthy by the fact that he put his real name on it and it's unusually tacky for someone considered so professional.
Congratulations. By retweeting and posting news stories about this, you've given this designer guy undreamed of publicity. I'm sure he's gutted.
This is a substitute for a clever sig that fits within the maximum number of characters.
Boing Boing captures a great comeback at a Kenneth Cole store.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Heaven forbid anyone actually makes light of a situation. I'm sure it's no carnival being in Cairo right now, but if it were anyone other than a famous person making that comment, most other people would have simply laughed it away. Now we've got a guy who thought it would be opportune to make a joke (albeit a slightly off-color joke) backpedaling and issuing half-serious apologies.
Someone got butt-hurt about it and everyone dog piled Kenneth Cole. Get over it already!
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Kenneth Cole is still going to sell his shoes and what-not to the people with money to burn; it's more fashionable to be seen in his clothes, regardless of his tactlessness. In some circles, his stock will likely now rise.
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I thought it was funny without making fun of the protesters or anyone involved. It's clear they weren't being serious....why so uptight planet earth?
"We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment."
No, I'm pretty sure that's not true. But that's fine guys, go on turning out Chinese sweatshop products anyway. I'm sure someone will be stupid enough to buy them.
Check out their new PR page on twitter! http://twitter.com/KennethColePR
I personally think its funny. In poor taste yes, but still funny.
While tasteless, in the end this company has always been activist and worked hard to raise money and awareness of important causes. Michael Musto says cut him a break and I think he's right: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/2011/02/kenneth_cole_ca.php
Rich, disconnected asshole makes bad joke about Egyptian uprising, realizes he made a mistake, and backtracks (poorly).
Move along, nothing to see here.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I don't see this as someone making light of a bad situation. I see it more as an expression of capitalism -- 'Someone's gotta make money off this'.
With that in mind, there's a lot of analogues to Cantor and Seagal, who in 1994 launched the first mass Usenet spam. In hindsight it was surprising that nobody thought to do it before them. If you have a bunch of people talking in a public, unmoderated forum with a specific topic, why not (aside from good manners) drop advertisements on those people?
Twitter is now where Usenet was in 1994 -- lots of people, talking in public, unmoderated 'hash tag' discussion threads. Of course people are going to spam those threads with ads. There will be outrage over it, but if it proves profitable it'll become more prevalent. Spam could potentially flood the signal out of some long-standing hash tag discussions. If that happens, Twitter will go the way of Usenet.
Kenneth Cole is just the first person in Twitter's upcoming Eternal September. Don't hate him, he or someone like him was fated to appear eventually.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
That would likely be a form of insult in the Muslim/Arab world...
FanFictionRecs.net
The more amusing footnotes to this story are the #kennethcoletweets tweets that everyone is making up now:
http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23kennethcoletweets
@KennethColePR: "People from New Orleans are flooding into Kenneth Cole stores!" #KennethColeTweets
@KennethColePR: Jeffrey Dahmer would have eaten up our spring collection! #KennethColeTweets
And many more...
Two hypothetical 9/11inspried scenarios:
1) 3000 people die at the hands of random extremists and nobody makes any jokes.
2) 3000 people die at the hands of random extremists and someone references AYBABTU.
I like the second scenario better. I probably won't laugh if I know a victim, but other people's laughter doesn't hurt me.
Not laughing at tragedy doesn't make it less tragic. Laughing is one of the ways people cope. There is no harm in growing a thicker skin. We can still have feelings and care about life without revering life. Death happens.
Life is for the living. Cry until you laugh, laugh until you can't breath then sleep it off and move on.
http://twitpic.com/3widwp
Do you think for a second it is their for any reason but humor?
Do you really think he is trying to get rioters to purchase his goods during the uproar?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on