Marketing and Advertising

Ethics Quiz: “Ick!”or Ethics [Hello Fresh’s Anal Sex Ad]

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

Nice.

I guess I had to post about that, though I wish I didn’t have to. I feel, and I always have felt, that being “proud” of how you have sex is like being proud of how often you have to visit the bathroom. It’s desperate and stupid, as well as gross.

That ad, and so much else our grovelling to the LGBTQ community has burdened society with, demonstrates how pernicious slippery slopes are. Because ancient taboos held that gay people should hide themselves in shame, some genius decided our society should declare that what one chooses to do with their naughty bits should swing to the other end of the spectrum and be a source of “pride.” No, it shouldn’t. In my experience, only mega-jerks boast about how and where they choose to have sex. I don’t care. It’s none of my business. If I’m interested, I’ll ask, and since I’m not and never will be, I won’t, so shut the hell up.

Hello Fresh has now exposed its marketing department as tasteless and pandering, like all those cowardly, pusillanimous companies that slobbered all over Black Lives Matter. I remember a late night D.C. horror movie TV host got himself fired for suddenly talking about smegma between reels of “The Brain From Planet Arous.” I thought his outburst was hilarious, but it didn’t belong on TV, and that was the end of “Gore DeVol.” This ad should be the end of Hello Fresh if there’s any justice in the world, and we know there isn’t.

I’m going to ask anyway, though I know my answer…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is the Hello Fresh “Pride” ad alluding to anal sex just in terrible taste and icky, or is it unethical, as in wrong?

________________

Pointer: Willem Reese

And Speaking Of Swallowing Indoctrination Regarding Racist America, That Is How Brianna Turners Are Created…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

What a moron.

Ethics Dunce Brianna Turner of the WNBA has announced that she refuses to wear the league’s special jerseys to celebrate the U.S.’s 250th Anniversary. “Whoever called for the WNBA all-star uniforms to have the USA 250 patch should have thought that through considering no WNBA players would have been free 250 years ago. The majority wouldn’t even have their freedom 100 years ago,” she tweeted.

This kind of intellectually flabby and historically dunder-headed calculation is typical of the sad victims of anti-USA hate, which is inflicted on them through devices and lies like the “1619 Project.” Hers is also the intellectually handicapped mindset that accepts the “reparations” propaganda: she is personally angry at ancient conditions that never affected her directly or personally.

Citizens who live in the United States of America derive many benefits therefrom. There is no professional women’s basketball in England, for example: Turner is a direct beneficiary of what happened 250 years ago this July. Without the second-rate basketball league that pays Brianna six figures, my guess is that her intellect would have her working at a diner or bouncing drunk and disorderly lesbians from gay bars rather than basketballs.

To be fair, there is no reason why Turner’s stupid historical observations on social media should have any more publicity than anyone else’s. Indeed, at least she isn’t a New York Times reporter posing as a historian or a DEI history professor or one of the anti-white racists elected to Congress. They and others like them make the same offensive statements about the nation they are so lucky to live in, but have sufficient credentials, however dubious, that many Americans take them seriously. You know. They are “experts.”

Come to think of it, I don’t know why what Brianna thinks about anything that doesn’t involve throwing a ball through a hoop is newsworthy. Why is Fox News, Newsweek, USA Today and other allegedly serious news sources reporting this? In fact, why am I writing about it? She’s not even a real celebrity outside of Las Vegas, which is where her team plays its inferior brand of basketball that any of the top 100 men’s college teams could trounce them in.

Never mind. She is a stupid and ignorant woman, and this is a wasted post and I wasted my time thinking about it.

But the all-anti-white–race-victim-propaganda all-the-time site “The Root’s” America-haters were impressed. It writes,

“Turner’s critique cuts straight to the core of an ongoing issue in professional sports, how many marketing campaigns prioritize shallow patriotism over historical reality. By forcing a league made up predominantly of Black and LGBTQ+ women to wear a blanket celebration of 1776, the league completely ignored the systemic chattel slavery and disenfranchisement that defined that era.”

Morons.

Hey! I’m back where I started!

Stop Making Me Defend Harvard!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Not that I find the latest controversial course offering at Harvard ennobling or likely to prompt me remove my diploma from its place of shame—front to the wall, on the floor— in the hallway to my office, but it is defensible, which is not the same as calling it “good.”

Harvard University hosted OnlyFans drool-object Ari Kytsya….

….(she’s another “influencer”) at a business class discussion on the adult entertainment industry. Kytsya spoke at Harvard about her career on the adult live porn site and the business of being an online peep show entrepreneur. During the lecture, Kytsya discussed the nuances of profiting from making “adult content” and shared anecdotes from her work. For example, once she was paid to “shit in a box for 10K.” Nice. She also emphasized how important it is to enjoy one’s work.

Harvard is being criticized for hosting the lecture, the complaint being that the school is debasing elite education by elevating sexually explicit content and adult entertainers to the status of legitimate topics for academic study.

The criticism is, I think, unfair. OnlyFans was a creative use of new technology when it was conceived; it is also a model that allows individuals to build a brand and a business. I can certainly see how there are valuable business lessons to be learned from the OnlyFans phenomenon that can be applied to other, more traditional businesses.

Nor are dubious courses anything new at Harvard. When I was at the college, there was an infamous “gut”—Harvardese for a shamelessly easy course—nicknamed “Ships.” The semester course, taught by an amiable and ancient professor, covered the history of sea vessels, and if you couldn’t get an A in that course, you were probably dead. There was nothing useful in “Ships” unless one was considering landing on Plymouth Rock. The OnlyFans discussion, in contrast, could have practical applications.

Ethics Alarms recently relayed the news that has-been B list actress Shannon Elizabeth, well past her wet T-shirt pull date, was displaying her wares on the site. It was reported last month that the 52-year-old earned $1 million in her first week. Now, business courses are not the only academic settings where the porn site is worthy of study; sociology, American culture and psychology students, as well as technology scholars, should heed the phenomenon. Back in 2021, law professor Catherine McKinnon called out OnlyFans as a toxic influence on the culture, contributing to societal approval of pornography and sex work, and described the platform as a cyber-pimp.

She may be right. But that would make the case that OnlyFans is a valid topic for academic inquiry stronger.

Confronting My Biases #28: Shannon Elizabeth

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I know this particular bias is probably indefensible. I know how I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t. A little help here?

Remember Shannon Elizabeth? I’d place her in the same category as Andrea Dromm, Michelle Johnson and Pam Austin, three earlier sexy, attractive starlets who had brief moments of B-level film success before they were pushed into obscurity by younger Hollywood “It” girls. It’s a cruel business, and especially cruel for young women whose main assets are their assets and not the potential to play Medea.

Shannon Elizabeth gained 10 minutes of stardom playing the sex kitten in the raunchy hit “American Pie”: that was her peak. “America Pie II” is where that photo above comes from, and professionally it was all downhill after that…a few forgettable flops, a TV series that was cancelled in its first season, nothing since 2006. Her Wikipedia page describes her as an “activist,” a professional poker player, and an actress. Her major recent accomplishment seems to be being named “one of the leading celebrity poker players”20 years ago.

I find all this ineffably sad, but that’s not the topic today. It is this: at the age of 52, Shannon just filed for divorce and announced that she was opening an Only Fans account, where horny middle-aged men can pay to see her ta-tas, and presumably other things.

“I’ve spent my entire career working in Hollywood, where other people controlled the narrative and the outcome of my career. This new chapter is about changing that, showing off a more sexy side no one has seen, and being closer to my fans,” Elizabeth told PEOPLE . “I’m choosing OnlyFans because it allows me to connect directly with my audience, create on my own terms, and just be free. I really do think this is the future.”

Fans can subscribe to her page starting today. Let me translate what her statement says to me.

“I have never developed any special skills and have the intellectual life of a salmon. My career was based entirely on my looks, my marriage went to hell, and I couldn’t write a book or host a podcast on a bet. Yeah, I’ve got some money saved up, but I’m addicted to being looked at. I’ve slid all the way down the usual greased poll of fading B-level celebrity: reality shows, Dancing with the Stars, so now it’s come to this. I know forty and fifty year-old men will pay to see me naked because they liked ‘American Pie.’ At least that’s something.”

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Update on “Ethics Observations On the Allied Injury Group’s ‘Your Favorite Attorney’ TV Ads”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Last year, almost a year ago, I posted this commentary about the Allied Injury Group’s TV ad that embodied all of the horrors the legal profession used for a century to ban lawyer marketing and advertising (thus forgetting about the First Amendment thingy, you know, just like today’s progressives..). In the process, I managed to make an unethical mistake, mislabeling the slimy law firm involved and calling it the Allied Law Group, a non-slimy law firm that was none too pleased. I apologized profusely to the representative of that firm who called to ream me out and made the correction pronto.

The main thrust of the original post was that the ads seemed to present the silly character giving the pitch as a lawyer, and no matter how unlikely that seemed it was a bright line ethics violation as misleading advertising.

This morning I saw the firms’ new add, which dropped at the end of March. That notice, with chase lights running around “not a lawyer,” appeared a few second in.

Good. We ethicists have to take our meager victories, however rare, to maintain our sanity.

AI Robocall Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This has to be illegal. If it isn’t, it is certainly unethical.

I got a call this morning with a caller ID that stated it was from a hospital. If I say “hello” and there is an odd pause, usually followed by a telltale <click> and voice saying “Hello?” I hang up immediately. because it’s a robocall. This time, however, there was no click, and a clear, unaccented, assertive voice called out, “Hello!” I was curious, so I responded,”What do you want?” “We’ve been trying to reach you,” the cheerful young woman said. “Have you been made aware of Medicare cash paybacks?” THEN I hung up. I know an AI bot when I hear one.

The problem is, most people over the age of about 40 do not. This one was good, the best I’ve heard yet. Way back in 2015, Ars Technica wrote about the then-new use of interactive robocalls, but that was before the AI revolution. Last night I had been watching a new streaming series starring Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis in which a character is addicted to conversing with an AI version of her dead wife. These fake people are improving at a logorhythmic rate, and in about a week the non-humans calling me will be undetectable. That doesn’t mean they will be the same as real callers, which means neglecting to announce to an individual that the voice on the other end of the line is AI-generated is fraud, dishonest, a lie, and, of course, unethical.

There needs to be a tough law or regulation against this practice. Now.

“Shrinkflation” Ethics: Ritz Crackers

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

For some reason, a grocery store sale led me to purchase an absurd number of Ritz cracker boxes in late 2023. Those crackers lasted until just a few weeks ago, so I only had to buy another box last week. I knew immediately that the new box was smaller and lighter than the ones I had been staring at for over two years.

Sure enough, Nabisco replaced cracker packs with smaller packs in 2024 resulting in about 30% fewer crackers by weight while keeping the same price. But that’s not what most annoyed me. The crackers themselves are noticeably smaller, and also thinner. I’ve been eating Ritz crackers, the favored crackers in the Marshall family, most of my life. I knew their size like I know my nose. I can’t find a good photo that demonstrates the difference, but it is dramatic.

That means, of course, that the “ORIGINAL” label on the front of the box is a lie, and false advertising. The weight is on the box as required, and if an alert consumer is paying attention, he or she knows that the price is the same for fewer crackers. But there is no way the smaller Ritz can accurately be called the “original” version.

Who knows what other hidden surprises will be in store for cracker aficionados in the years ahead?

This was my last purchase of Ritz crackers.

Ethics Pro Tip: If You’re a Realtor Using AI To Scam Potential Customers, You’re Not Only Unethical, You’re an Idiot

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Since AI bots are gradually corrupting everything from funny dog videos to legal briefs, it should not surprise anyone to learn that the little buggers are making real estate ads unreliable too. “Realtors Are Using AI Images of Homes They’re Selling. Comparing Them to the Real Thing Will Make You Mad as Hell” lays out this revolting development. “Future” writes,

“Realtors have made extensive use of the tech, manipulating photos of properties beyond recognition by giving facades and interiors a heavy coat of AI-generated paint. Text descriptions of properties have turned into a heap of ChatGPT-generated buzzwords, devolving an already frustrating house hunt into a genuinely exasperating experience. Making sense of what a rental apartment actually looks like in the real world has regressed into a guessing game. We’ve already come across bizarre listings of inexplicably classified houses with smoothed-over architectural features, misplaced trees, nonsensically rearranged furniture, and mangled props.”

Fortunately, the people most likely to cheat using AI are also the ones who have exceeded their Peter Principle ceilings and are incompetent at their chosen fields, hence the felt need to used bots to try to fool others who probably are smarter than they are. The ethics values are incompetence and dishonesty.

And thus we have the risible tale of the listing for a property in Fort Totten, a suburb in northern Washington, D.C., that has been taken down from Apartments.com. While the ad was up, it seemingly promised that for just $1,800 a month, a lucky renter could have her own bathroom Hell-spawn. See it in the photo above, crawling onto the bathroom sink?

Giraffe360, an AI image editing tool for real estate photos, points out on its website that real estate organizations “consistently prohibit” edits that remove or alter structural elements, erase or modify views, or digitally renovate or upgrade interiors or exteriors. “Here’s a simple test: if an edit would require physical renovation to achieve in real life, it shouldn’t be in an MLS listing photo,” it advises. But there is a loophole: edits that create H.P. Lovecraft creature features on the property probably should also be taboo.

“How do you not notice the melted demon crawling out of the wall before you hit publish?” one user wrote, attempting to rebut the presumption that AI image editing tools were involved. That’s an easy question that regular Ethics Alarms readers can answer by quoting The Waco Kid: “You know. Morons!”

A Contrarian Ethics Take On “Body-Shaming” Performers

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I guess I’ve read too many articles like “Country Star Issues Blunt Response After Being Criticized for Her Appearance: ‘I’m Seething’” Not that I’ve read a lot of articles about country singer Lauren Alaina, yet another star in that genre introduced to the world by “American Idol”: I’ve never heard her, or of her. But I have been reading and hearing performers, particularly women, going into high dudgeon about fans, movie-goers, concert ticket-buyers and others who criticize them regarding their physical appearance, particularly their weight. Apparently Lauren’s furious because a lot of people criticized her weight based on a recent video of her performing. The singer wrote on Instagram in part,

“I’m literally so mad right now. I’m seething…We’ve got to change the way we’re talking about women on social media. We need to retire the obsession with women’s bodies. If you care about the music…talk about the music. If you don’t…. well, that’s fine too.
But this culture of speculating about women’s bodies?
It’s tired. Do better.”

Alana went on to emote about the phenomenon later. “A few weeks ago, I saw a TikTok of me up on stage singing, and all of the comments were about my weight,” she sobbed. “People were saying that my tour needed to be sponsored by Ozempic and just horrible things. It really affected me,” she said. “I am in recovery from an eating disorder that I’ve battled for a very long time. This just really upset me…I have an 8-month-old daughter, and we can’t talk about women this way. This is bull crap. If you’re a woman out there and people are commenting on your body, and saying this, myself included, we’ve gotta ignore that, and we all need to be better. This is crazy.”

“Well allow me to retort!” I say, in my best Samuel L. Jackson impression. (No, I’m not going to shoot her.)

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The N.F.L. Is Helping Chuck Klosterman’s Prediction Come True [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

I was going to get this up before the Super Bowl, but it turns out that the issue was further crystalized by the game itself. As happens approximately 50% of the time with this annual spectacle, the game was a yawn, and much of the news coming out of the contest involved the NFL’s deliberate transformation of what was once considered a unifying family cultural event, like Fourth of July fireworks, into a partisan, progressive statement about how America sucks, with expensive TV ads extolling capitalism and patriotism at the same time. That’s message whiplash, and ethically irresponsible.

As the New York Times explained, without criticism, the NFL took a hard turn Left when it put Barack Obama pal Jay-Z, the rap star and impresario, in charge of the Super Bowl halftime show after the 2018 Super Bowl had triggered anger from fans over players “taking a knee” during the National Anthem. The Times, spinning as usual, says that the kneeling was intended to “draw attention to police brutality and social justice issues.”

As Ethics Alarms pointed out at the time, none of the kneelers, including its cynical originator, over-the-hill quarterback Colin Kaepernick, ever explained coherently what they were kneeling about. What “police brutality”? Oh, you know, Mike Brown, whom Black Lives Matters still says was “murdered” on its website. What social justice issues? Oh, you know: it’s time for white people to be discriminated against to make up for slavery. The left-turn was a greed-induced mass virtue signal to blacks, clueless young fans, and Democrats. (It helped that President Trump vociferously attacked Kaepernick and Co., so the kneeling appealed to the Trump Deranged too. (See Dissonance Scale, Cognitive)

The Times:

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