A new low for the professionally outraged…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/39051079/backlash-after-primark-pulls-fantastically-offensive-walking-dead-t-shirt

Have some people got nothing better to do with their lives?

man starts thread complaining about people being offended ans uses the line

Have some people got nothing better to do with their lives?

with no ironic smiley

6 pages minimum including “Snowflake” “Virtue Signalling” “Leftie” and “HandWringing” bonus points for getting yoghut knitting on the fist page

Wouldn’t really say I was complaining! More WTF disbelief than anything else.

Think I’ll take my mind off it by going back to my yoghurt knitting 😉

nah you don’t get the points for that….

but in reality maybe it’s time people spent 10 mins checking before producing stuff

It features the rhyme “eeny meeny miny moe”, which has a racist origin.

bonus points for getting yoghut knitting on the fist page

Here ya go, just to help facilitate that bonus point for some lucky git…

“Snowflake”..”Leftie”

Not going to happen as the user is on an enforced two week holiday. 🙂

Really??? 🙄

If the guy was right- if it really was a slogan about attacking black people- I’d be right behind him. It’s just that it’s not

Going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he genuinely thinks that’s what it is and that nobody’s had the stones or sense to just go “dude, that’s not what it is at all, let us explain”.

As it is, the feller is obviously trying to do the right thing and has got it wrong, and that’s snowballed where it didn’t have to. I think it’s mostly Primark’s fault. Nothing to really get worked up about but the internet is full of people getting offended about people getting offended, with no sense of irony…

“ if I were black and were faced by a wearer I would know just where I stood.” 😆

Also worth remembering that if you were looking for a good insight to discrimination and the like you don’t ask middle aged, middle class white men.

Sounds to me exactly like that’s who raised the whole thing in the first place (although middle-class in Primark, maybe not 🙂 )

Given the nursery rhyme, which to my mind belongs in the past (no way would anyone be printing the 2nd line) it’s pretty stupid to launch this product.

To say the T shirt is about assaulting black people is ridiculous tho.

It features the rhyme “eeny meeny miny moe”, which has a racist origin.

It probably doesn’t. There’s a variation of the rhyme which contains the word “****,” but there’s dozens of other variations too and there’s nothing I’m aware of to suggest that this one was its “origin.” The article even says as much later on, contradicting itself.

“The graphic has a large American baseball bat, wrapped round with barbed wire, and covered with blood.
“This image relates directly to the practice of assaulting black people in America.

No it doesn’t, this is a flight of fancy. I’ll wager the complainer has never seen the show and jumped to conclusions. (And are there any other kinds of baseball bat?)

“The graphic has a large American baseball bat, wrapped round with barbed wire, and covered with blood.

If anyone has watched the Walking Dead they’d know it was just a pretty iconic image from the show….

Northwind – Member

I think it’s mostly Primark’s fault.

I wanted to do an edit but too late…

So, a while back we printed a leaflet and soon after we got some outraged people complaining that it was all fake and that we’d made it falsely efnic and that we’d used models to stage it, it got a little press attention and our PR guys went into full on “sorry for any offence”, what they thought was the appropriate recovery.

Actually, they were all genuine students and the entire selection process was “who’s available in an hour to do a photo shoot, we’ll pay you £10”. No selection, no picking out the pretty ones or colour coordination. It did look a wee bit hollyoaks because mostly teenagers who turn up when you say “photoshoot” are confident in their appearance etc. (though we did have a massive ginger in it)

So as soon as we explained that to the offended people they said, oh, fair enough, sorry to waste your time. And we said no bother. But if we’d carried on apologising and withdrawn the leaflet, it’d have gone totally differently.

This sort of thing happens pretty much all the time now, I think. Maybe it’s all part of the same general malaise… People who haven’t done anything wrong think the right thing to do is to back off, “the customer is always right”. Meanwhile people who have done something wrong, will either double down on that, or they’ll do “We’re sorry that you are offended”. The centre cannot hold…

Cougar – Moderator

It features the rhyme “eeny meeny miny moe”, which has a racist origin.

It probably doesn’t. There’s a variation of the rhyme which contains the word “****,” but there’s dozens of other variations too and there’s nothing I’m aware of to suggest that this one was its “origin.”
But that’s the only version many people have heard.

I’ll wager the complainer has never seen the show and jumped to conclusions.

Nice assumption/alternative fact – you know nothing about it and only display your own prejudice.

(And are there any other kinds of baseball bat?)

Yes – smaller, English baseball bats are more commonly referred to as cricket bats, though. That might have given rise to a bit of confusion, I’ll admit 🙂

If anyone has watched the Walking Dead they’d know it was just a pretty iconic image from the show…

To be honest, I watched the first series and I wouldn’t have had a clue what the t-shirt was about.

I’ll wager the complainer has never seen the show

This specific shirt doesn’t strike me as particularly awful, but I’m not sure that something thoroughly and genuinely offensive should get a pass just because it happens to reference a TV show. Most people will not have seen most of the telly one is tempted to reference, so it makes sense to check whether what you’re putting on a shirt is going to give you problems by itself.

🙂

But that’s the only version many people have heard.

I learned it (in the 70s, no less) as “catch a tigger by its toe”, I assume you mean that one?

The only reason I know the racist version is because I heard it in pulp fiction. All the other versions have been kids/nursery rhyme ones.

Still chuckling at ‘if I were black…’

“I learned it (in the 70s, no less) as “catch a tigger by its toe”, I assume you mean that one?”

That’s the word my 5yo uses which must therefore be the current playground version in our area.

Wikipedia gives totally non-racist origins:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe

Cactus Jack will be turning over in his grave at this nonsense!

This thread made me think of this for some reason…

Hopefully it’s fit for sharing on this forum.

But that’s the only version many people have heard.

Perhaps. Their ignorance is hardly Primark’s problem though. As per Northwind’s anecdote, the best course of action IMHO would have been to have corrected their accusations.

Nice assumption/alternative fact – you know nothing about it and only display your own prejudice.

Well, yes, it is an assumption, that’s what “I’ll wager…” means. If the complainant was familiar with the show they’d have understood the reference, no?

I’ve absolutely no idea where you’re coming from with “prejudice” though.

“I’ve absolutely no idea where you’re coming from with “prejudice” though.”

I assume he feels the current version, which includes a large cat, is prejudiced against Cougars.

Have some people got nothing better to do with their lives?

Are you new to the internet?

As with so many subjects, Charlie Brooker had the last word on this type of thing about a decade ago

Cougar – Moderator

I’ve absolutely no idea where you’re coming from with “prejudice” though.

It’s almost like he’s trying really hard to be offended about something totally innocent, isn’t it?

Also worth remembering that if you were looking for a good insight to discrimination and the like you don’t ask middle aged, middle class white men.

I know plenty of middle aged, middle class white men who have experienced discrimination of some sort. It might not be as frequent as it is for other groups, but that doesn’t mean it’s not common.

Besides, since when did making sweeping generalisations about a group of people based on gender, race, class etc become acceptable?

Sums this sort of thing up for me.

“It was fantastically offensive and I can only assume that no-one in the process of ordering it knew what they were doing, or were aware of its subliminal messages.

Err, wouldn’t that be the point of a subliminal message? 🙄

‘…miny mo, put the baby on the poe, when its done, wipe its bum, eeny meeny… etc.’

That was my childhood version. Other similarly innocent ones are available. I was well into adulthood before I ever heard there was a racist version (in fact I think it was on here and we’ve done this before). I still find it hard to believe and I’m not convinced that in the UK the racist version has ever had much currency.

Professionally Offended…D’you mean marginalised?

I’ve nothing against offending people, as the earlier poster quite rightly says; Charlie Brooker had the right idea when he said

Pity, because gratuitous offence, when performed with aplomb, is the funniest thing in the world.

The key to it is the bit in the middle “with aplomb” be funny, be witty, make people question their assumptions and prejudices, but being rude for the sake of it is why we are plagued by idiots like Milo Yiannopoulos, who is the adult equivalent of a 2 year smearing shit on himself…He’s doing it because he can, but not pausing to think of whether he should.

I can remember the racist version being used without much of a care in my childhood.

“Don’t punch down” is a great rule of comedy.

I can remember the racist version being used without much of a care in my childhood.

Me too. Was in the pre-enlightened seventies though.

The original version could well be the offensive version (2 minutes on Google) with other words like tigger replacing it.

I’m mixed race, one of my parents is black, and they used to sing this song to me, my siblings, my cousins etc when we were little. It was always “catch a piggy by it’s toe”, but the “racially explicit text” from the t-shirt was still there.

I can see why, given the ‘n*****’ version of the song, a cautious retailer would want to avoid it, but the bloke who complained is a bit OTT.

Primark should of known this would of had this kind of reaction. They should of predicted all of this, and not launched the product.

That’s what I’m baffled the most about. How this even got off the sketch pad and into production.

Maybe because the people who designed it and allowed it to be made had no idea of any racist connotations?

I learned it as tiger in my childhood. Again, never knew there was a racist version till many years later.

This is just the opposite of reclaiming words, people see something that used to be offensive and the reason long forgotten and want to make a big song and dance about it setting the whole thing back decades. See also moron and other century out of use medical terms.