Posts by Tom Beard
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OnPoint: MSD's Leaky Servers, in reply to Jonathan King,
To extend (flog?) the car metaphor -- this wasn't change-the-oil difficult it was reverse-into-a-car-park difficult.
Or hearing that someone's out to get you, and could walk into your garage at any time, and responding "Someone said that meant they could disable my brakes. I only care about driving, not about the mechanics, but I suppose someone who knows about cars could do that".
It sounds trivial to focus on the technical details when people's privacy and perhaps safety is at stake, but the ease of doing this affects the likelihood that any given person with malicious intent could take advantage of it. If it required specialised tools and skills that only a handful of obscure hackers would have, then of course that's a worry. But if it only requires skills that are available to hundreds of thousands of people, then the chance of someone with a grudge exploiting it are vastly increased. The statements of John Key, and of some people in the media who seem to take a blithe pride in their technical ignorance, act to downplay the seriousness of this breach.
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Going back to the particular context for the image: throughout the whole prospectus, every feature image of men shows them in control (shooting, making beer, winning medals, looking powerful and corporate in the boardroom); every feature image of women shows them as subservient, decorative, and on one case naked. As a package it has nothing to do with BDSM, and everything to do with reinforcing gendered power structures.
While there’s nothing wrong with a bit of consensual boss/secretary fantasy or human furniture play, the ashtray image here is part of a wider narrative which is about a real world of men who make decisions and women without agency, not a sexual scenario negotiated between willing and equal partners. Moa’s strategy is to “influence the influencers”, and they all but explicitly say that the only “influencers” worth reaching are rich white men. Ladies, the only influence you might have is if you drop your knickers at the sight of a stuffed shirt necking an expensive beer.
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Up Front: Moa: Sub-Standard, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I meant, for example, the coffee one.
I stand corrected. Though, as Emma says, the "discipline" aspect of that is hard to parse. While kink certainly existed then (1950s? 60s?), I would have thought that in a mainstream context that image would have been read more as an appeal to some men's nostalgia for husbandly control than as a reference to a sexual practice.
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Wasn't that one of the Anchor campaigns?
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"The thing" is when "vanilla advertising co-opts imagery from BDSM", but I think that the latter image is from actual porn, not advertising.
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Field Theory: Man Moments, in reply to Jonathan King,
Have these assholes even seen MAD MEN?
Evidently not, or at least not with a shred of insight. I mean, Darth Vader is an iconic character with unforgettable style, but it wouldn't be a good idea to base a marketing strategy on his values.
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Field Theory: Man Moments, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
Just imagine if Ecoya candles used similar marketing in their prospectus.
Did you see how Ecoya was advertised within this prospectus?
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For Moa this should be a sharp wit, without political correctness and an eye for those activities and styles that make up the lives of our aspiring drinkers – those in the super-premium end of modern manhood.
Whenever I see the phrase "political correctness", I always mentally replace it with a word like "decency", "humanity" or "respect". But if I were to ignore those words for a moment, I'd tell them to shove their modern manhood right up their super-premium end.
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Subwoofers: the bane of urban life. My next door neighbours have their hooked up to an Xbox or similar, for random booming all day. And those upstairs must be skyping with theirs on: far more irritaing than good ol' music.
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Hard News: The Advocate, in reply to Bruce Wurr,
In their world, we are governed by misanthropes
You're right, Bruce, that "misanthrope" might be the wrong word. Something shorter should suffice: