Question #1: Who Approved these designs? Manufacturer seems to be saying no one.
The Huffington Post is reporting that Amazon.com was selling shirts that encourage rape and violence toward women.
The shirts, now removed from Amazon.com included the following slogans:
Keep Calm and Rape a Lot.
Keep Calm and Knife Her.
Keep Calm and Grope a Lot.
Keep Calm and Hit Her.
Keep Calm and Choke Her.
Solid Gold Bomb, the company selling the shirts was bombarded with angry public comments on Twitter and eventually took down its Twitter account claiming in its defense that the shirts were computer generated. A more comprehensive explanation and apology is on the company’s website. Its unclear whether or not any of these “on demand” shirt designs were ever ordered or manufactured. The company’s official apology seems to indicate they were not.
On its website , Solid Gold Bomb founder Michael Fowler says:
As a father, husband, brother and son, I would never promote such product in our company and it was clear to see this when looking across the millions of t-shirts that we offer or can produce on demand. Had these items ever sold, we would have immediately pulled the series and are doing so on our own and Amazon channels worldwide. Currently, our listings have been fully removed and we are working to delete the entire parody series. Again, this was never my intention and I am extremely sorry for the trouble this carelessness has caused.
But here’s the question a lot of people are asking. How can products like these be available for sale on Amazon without a single human being somewhere, somehow, approving the designs?
“Keep Calm and Choke Her”, “Keep Calm and Grope On”, yeah sure, that was an accident. Heads should roll over this bull #solidgoldbomb
— the Annelis (@the_Annelis) March 3, 2013
Think I might launch a new T shirt ‘keep calm and blame the algorithm’ #solidgoldbomb
— Alice Cullerne Bown (@DDsDiary) March 3, 2013
Keep Calm and Go Out Of Business. #solidgoldbomb #trolls
— KDub (@WEAGLEMAN) March 3, 2013
And if you think these Solid Gold Bomb shirts are an anomaly, it would appear they are not the only example of rape shirts for sale on Amazon.
Thought #solidgoldbomb was the only brand of offensive rape T-shirt on @amazonuk? Think again. twitter.com/JointDestroyer…
— Destroy The Joint (@JointDestroyer) March 2, 2013
Meanwhile, in some quarters, people are asking why this is such a big deal…
In the era of “legitimate rape” and the c-word being used the describe an African American child actress, it would seem that people are a bit edgy about the trivialization of violence against women. And I, for one, can’t blame them.
About Mark Greene
This is the explanation to read. No human made the design, no human seemingly checked the word list, no product actually exists. This is a ‘throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks’ approach to production and sales. For every offensive T-shirt, there are several dozen meaningless, pointless, or nonsensical ones.
Of course, the only thing that rivals such an algorithm for a senseless, unconsidered, and automatic process is Twitter in outrage mode. The T-shirts are terrible and, in hindsight, the company made a huge blunder (albeit a sin of omission not commission) thinking that leaving the countless results of such an algorithm unchecked, or even considering the possible combinations, would be without cost. However, we should all be mature enough to ascertain the facts before casting judgment and not jump to conclusions that could exact a serious toll on parties who just made a very silly oversight, heighten the sense of cultural besiegement of vulnerable persons, and create a precedent of overreaction that decreases the credibility of future reports of genuine abuses that really do merit our outrage.
I think the reason why people have a hard time believing it is that the variance isn’t there. The pictures and ads were randomly generated too. If what they’re saying is true, I doubt I’d get 6 “rape” themed or “violence” themed shirts where the violence is directed at only one specific gender. Where are the stay calm hug her or stay calm kiss her t-shirts? If they used only a short list of words, why would rape even be one of them? Who approved the list?
There were ‘…kiss her’, ‘…love her’, and ‘…hug her’ t-shirts (if you Google you will see that Solid Gold Bomb used to sell these items). The list probably wasn’t read at all. Someone, rather stupidly in retrospect, presumed that nothing terrible would happen if everything were left to the algorithm and a computer generated word list. It is worth remembering that there were thousands of versions of these t-shirts.
Actually, given the degree to which people of both genders are raped and abused, I’m not sure its a bad thing to have any example of abusive language pointed out via Twitter. Also, it seems to me that the marginalizing or diminishing description “outrage mode” is only ever applied to an issue if its not an issue that outrages the speaker directly.
The problem with ‘outrage mode’ is its mindless kneejerk reaction, reaction that can end up causing great harm and confusion, given how quickly unfounded rumours, false accusations, semi-digested news stories, misunderstandings, and the like can travel on Twitter. People have lost jobs, innocent parties have been stigmatized, threatened, or accused, and vulnerable people have been triggered. On top of this, Twitter continually loses credibility as a source of reliable information every time that this happens. This makes people less likely to respond when a genuine cause for outrage exists.
This really wasn’t a cause for outrage. If any human had knowingly chosen or approved the words of that t-shirt, if a human had produced one, or if any person had bought and worn it, then there would be cause for outrage. But no one did. Solid Gold Bomb is as appalled as the rest of us, like a parent whose child accidentally pronounces a really dirty word that they had never heard before. This is just mindless computers operating as they operate. And people who reacted without carefully checking the facts were trolled.
If people hadn’t just reacted but had brought the matter to Solid Gold Bomb’s attention, Solid Gold Bomb could have removed the offending items, apologized to the very few parties that saw it, tightened up their process and 99.999% of the people who heard about this never would have done so. However, instant jumping to outrage mode before getting the facts straight made a lot of people look stupid, made a worldwide news story out of a dumb computer’s actions, caused people to boycott and attack various companies, and risked some people’s jobs and livelihoods. The people spreading the outrage are the real people doing harm here.
Much outrage is stupid, because it is responding to something that doesn’t exist, to paranoid perceptions, and the like. This was such a case. My resistance to the outrage in this case doesn’t mean that rape isn’t something that we should be outraged about (so please spare me the subtle personal accusation in your comment). Quite the opposite. I resist the outrage here because we make ourselves look silly and lose credibility when we react instinctively, rather than responding proportionately and after consideration of the facts. When outrage over rape culture is whipped up to such great heights by people who haven’t studied such a case carefully people will start to associate opposition to rape with irrational and disproportionate overreaction. This is a perfect recipe for the wider public taking an issue that is incredibly serious less seriously. If, instead of getting their knickers in a twist over the randomly generated text on a t-shirt, Twitter had employed its outrage for an actual case of rape and the news outlets had been flooded with that real story instead of this non-story, we would actually be making a difference.
Dear Alastair,
Please keep in mind that there is a degree of irony in your absolute certainty on this issue. The use of a phrase like knee jerk is a double edged sword. And as for Twitter loosing credibility? Twitter like the rest of the internet is a reflection of it user base. That is a mix of the crazy and the sublime. I wouldn’t be so sure that the anger toward Solid Gold Bomb is yours to judge with any degree of certitude or clarity. Your bias is no different than mine. That is to say, bias.
Mark,
I have come to an opinion, but only after quite a lot of reading around the subject – several news reports, a number of blog pieces, dozens of comments, a whole morning of outraged reactions from people on Twitter, with a gradually dawning awareness from many that they had missed some rather crucial facts, and the company’s own response. I was silent all of this time. Only after looking around the issue more did I make up my mind and voice my opinion on the matter. This is quite the opposite of a kneejerk reaction.
And this isn’t just ‘bias’. It is an informed opinion and considered response that I am prepared to argue for and defend. This isn’t to say that informed opinions are never wrong, just that they are significantly to be preferred over uninformed reactions, which have represented the vast majority of reactions on Twitter surrounding this issue.
A place like Twitter is more than just a reflection of its user base. It is a medium that encourages and facilitates certain forms of interactions rather than others. In particular, it encourages terse, relatively context free, and rapid interactions. Once again, on this issue, Twitter has demonstrated its vulnerability to wildfires of uninformed outrage, with other users having to frantically assemble buckets of truth to douse the flames. So, yes, forms of media can suffer harm to their reputations. If Twitter were a site that forced restricted people to longer comments, had methods for rating reliable sources, etc., the same users would produce very different sorts of interactions.
http://www.keepcalmandposters.com/ Is it based off this?
User customizable shirts would make more sense to me that’s one of the reasons that I suspect there is more to the it was just a computer algorithm defense.
User customizable shirts would make more sense to me
agreed. i had the same thought. was surprised to read a computer algorithm was the cause
So these shirts were designed by no one, produced by no one, bought by no one, and came into existence by a mindless computer algorithm. If anybody wants to bet against me and say that these shirts won’t come up in some rant about Rape Culture, I’d be happy to take your money.
Looks like Cyberdyne and ‘Skynet’ are trying to defeat humanity again- now they’re attempting to promote dissention in the ranks through gendered warfare…
Ah Internet – always finding ways to justify our worst expectations of everything, everywhere, for everyone.
Just what internet feminism needs! More censorship!
If you don’t like it, then don’t buy it. That’s all there is to it, folks. Grow up and stop thinking you have some kind of right to live a world where nobody gets to say things you don’t like.
This is why I’ll never take a boycott (or feminism) seriously.
soullite,
Your anti-feminist position seems very binary to me. Blanket statements about feminism are no different than blanket statements about rape. Furthermore, when you put yourself in binary opposition to a concept, that concept begins to define you (as its opposite.) I would suggest that you carefully consider the concept you are choosing to be the opposite of. If that concept is a blunt and simplistic generalization, how can the opposite of it be otherwise?
Please note, I am APPALLED by extremist feminists. As much as I am APPALLED by extremist Men’s Rights activists. But a love many of the more centrist ideas and philosophies from both camps.
I notice that Amazon are still selling the full range of “Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them” merchandise – and that no mainstream media commentators appear to give a damn about that.
Put some links up Tom. Lets expand the conversation.
Yeah I highly doubt I’ll it discussed on many feminist sites, feminists feel free to prove me wrong.
I’ll write a 500 word article about it for you if you like.
Okay, Tom. Send it over. I look forward to reading it.
Give me 24 hours. Where shall I send it?
If I sell a product with my company’s name on it, and I’m making the profit from using a particular technology, then I bear some responsibility for what the technology does in my name.
I agree that this was a case of incompetence, not malice. But, if the word generator is supposed to pull verbs and objects out of a database of words, then someone should have thought to create some sort of filter, or thought about worst case scenarios. Then, they could at least have a form letter response to anyone who doesn’t like their T-shirts. The fact that the company was taken by surprise shows their lack of foresight. (Unless claiming ignorance was their planned defense, but that’s not a very good long-term defense!)
Perhaps now there will be increased awareness about how we shouldn’t let computers do our thinking for us. That includes not letting Twitter do our thinking for us…..
Okay. Now I’m outraged.
I’ve sent you the article. I’m having difficulty finding stock photos which are copyright free, but will keep searching.
Back in the 80s, the most controversial t-shirts we had only said “Keep calm and RAP a lot”…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inPGlpHBhBM
Here’s an action alert article I wrote just published on the subject, called Keep Calm and Carry on Throwing Rocks at Boys:
http://therightsofman.typepad.co.uk/the_rights_of_man/2013/03/keep-calm-and-keep-on-throwing-rocks-at-boys-by-tom-martin.html
(- and here’s a video discussion on the men’s rights movement, between me and the Guardian’s Ally Fogg): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stn_wkTEESE