Playboy opens old skeptical community wounds with a terrible ad

Thought Axe had the market cornered on odiously sexist ads with their shower gel suggesting that the only thing keeping women from physically ravaging you against even their own will is how you smell?

Something tells me the ad writers haven’t thought through all the possible ramifications of cold-propositioning strangers in elevators. Just waiting now for someone to seriously suggest that she would totally sneeze hot dogs if the guy propositioning her was an alpha instead of a lowly geek beta.

See also everything in my Problem with Privilege series.

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Playboy opens old skeptical community wounds with a terrible ad
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13 thoughts on “Playboy opens old skeptical community wounds with a terrible ad

  1. 2

    Neither this or the romney story youtube links work on my ipad.
    I’ve encountered this occasionally on ftb and I am just trying to let you guys know when it happens.
    Great site otherwise.
    Thanks

  2. 3

    She sprays you with mace and flees.

    She backs up into the corner and tries to avoid eye contacting while running through every possible way this could go wrong for her.

    She quickly gets off the elevator and does a facebook post describing a creepy encounter. Is subsequently declared an evil anti-sex feminist bitch.

    She quickly gets off the elevator and tries to go about her life, avoiding that elevator in the future.

  3. 4

    Gregaryous42: interesting. We just did a plugin update relatively recently, which I believe included the Smart Youtube plugins that allow us bloggers easier embedding of Youtube videos. I’ll go over the settings and see if there’s anything changed.

  4. 7

    Ok, the premise is awful and horribly sexist. That being said, the execution of the joke is fine. It made my lizard brain laugh before my monkey brain caught up and shushed him. This is often the case with lowbrow humor. It also explains the career of Dane Cook.

  5. 9

    Elevatorgate really opened my eyes to just how much elevators are considered dangerous and/or intimate spaces in film and television. By their very nature, elevators bring people together in a tight space over a limited time for better or for worse. They are excellent places for plot surprises and intense character interactions to occur and make great inescapable dead ends in chase scenes as well as giving the director an easy (and cheap) place to film a brief transition in the story involving two or three (and sometimes more) characters together at a time.

    While this ad is stupidly daring str8 men to push the stop button and see what happens, the pressing of the stop button usually foreshadows that a struggle is about to happen between characters on the lift or between one character and her or his own conscience. The pressing of the stop button (or using a special key to unlock restricted floor access as suggested might happen by one scene is this advertisement) is usually done only by villians intending to harm the elevator occupants or by characters needing to say something secretive to the audience. Indeed, the advertisement does hint at the man as being a bad guy (the woman points a gun at him intending to murder him) as well as a character who has just shared his secret daydreams with the audience.

    Despite that, it is more than a little irresponsible to dare str8 men to even try such a thing due to the potentially unpleasant or even violent consequences that could follow it in real life to either the man being stupid enough to try it or of course to the woman who is his target. And in real life, pressing the stop button (if an elevator even has one and not just an alarm button) should alert building security or some other authority if pressed too long.

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