I'm also a lurker who's been prompted to post for the first time by this thread. I have a step-daughter and a few nieces around the same age, I don't think they joined this promotion, but it was the kind of thing they might have, so I've been reeling about it. I also posted on the moneysavingexpert forum earlier.
I hope nobody minds but I've sent the following letter to the Guardian, sorry it's a bit long. I tried to put it on their public forums but it wouldn't let me.
Dear Sir/Madam,
I wish to write about an article that appeared online on 18th July 2010 by Vikram Dodd entitled 'Coca-Cola forced to pull Facebook promotion after porn references?.
I have never written to a newspaper before, I don't know if this is the correct format or email address, but I feel that I have to say something as the tone of this article has me, as somebody who has followed this subject since last night, deeply fretful.
I am a regular Guardian reader, liberal and open minded, and generally against censorship and 'Mary Whitehouse-isim'. I despised the Sun's campaign outing pedophiles, the campaign to abolish 'Jerry Springer the Opera' made me sick to my soul, the Daily Mail backlash against Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand made me despair (the Daily Mail generally makes me despair!). The last, and only other time I have spent a day following something online was when The Guardian mobilized its readers to unearth and destroy the super injunction, and I cheered. Much as I did at Charlie Brooker's fantastic dissection of Jan Moir?s malicious article.
I apologize for my tangent; I just wish to outline what kind of demographic catergory I fall into, because I truly believe that the tone of Vikram Dodd's article is wrong, dangerous, dark and worrying.
I understand that offence is a subjective thing, but the quotation marks around this word in the subtitle seem to undermine the article before its point is even known. I understand that the title of this infamous video clip 'two girls and a cup' absolutely should not be mentioned, but still, had I read only this article today and not the threads on the forums Mumsnet and Moneysavingexpert, I would have dismissed it off-hand as some hysterical mums hailing a latter day Mary Whitehouse who had heavy-handedly spoilt the fun of some 'bemused users on the Dr Pepper Facebook page' who 'bemoaned the abrupt ending of the competition?. This article made those mums sound just like the hysterics that cried to the Daily Mail about Ross and Brand. It made Mrs Rickman into a joke by quoting her complaining about the theatre tickets, whereas in the context of the thread it was bitter sarcasm at what she, correctly, I think, saw as a brush off. At this point, Coca-cola had no intention of pulling their competition.
I need to tell you why this is different.
Firstly, I have seen this video. I doubt whether Mr Dodd has. I saw it at a convention in 2008 called Zombiecon, where it was shown, in a closed room, to a forewarned group of mid twenty to mid forty year olds as an example of the broad spectrum of the Internet. I could only watch the first few seconds, gagged horribly, and could not watch the screen until it had finished. I was not the only one. I noticed then, that the people who I knew had already seen it were watching us, the ones that hadn't. A quick search on Youtube will come up with a multitude of 'reaction' videos. They showed Stewie Griffen watching it on Family Guy. This is because the reaction of somebody watching this video is usually similar to mine; it is utterly abhorrent to a degree that most people would not experience in their whole lives. And people watch other's reactions because nobody, but a tiny, tiny minority, would ever choose to view such images again. To call it pornography is to call surf a tsunami.
And they're funny. These reaction clips are hysterical, and I'd hate to see them taken down in some frenzied media backlash, as I believe the video itself should remain accessible to those who intentionally seek it out. As I said, I hate censorship.
What Coca-cola did with it?s ill conceived competition was firstly insist that the teenagers, and this campaign by their own publicity is marketed at teenagers, open their Facebook profiles and set them on public. This should have been a story in its own right.
Secondly, it gave a number of pretty tasteless status updates, much much worse than the lame samples also cited in Mr Dodd's article, which incidently, made the bad one look like more of a slip rather than a wider, gutter level marketing campaign.
Thirdly, and most importantly, it posted the following status on the Facebook page of one fourteen year old girl that we know about: 'I watched two girls one cup and felt hungry afterwards'. Two girls one cup is scat pornography at best, and the vilest, most depraved images currently available at worst.
My main problem with Mr Dodd's article is that he completely fails to record the most worrying part of the story; the point that has had many alarmed and frantic parents at their computer terminals all day desperately trying to be heard. That point is this - this young girl then went to a search engine, and looked up the name of the video clip that was given to her right there, word for word, by the brand Dr Pepper. Please understand the enormity of what has happened here. The public (and I mean the public and not just the right wing hysterics) have been rightly concerned about a child's ability to click on inappropriate items and parental inability to set up filters for a long time now. But here, a massive and trusted brand is giving those very links to children.
There is that, and there is also that the tone of this article may actually have done Dr Pepper more good then harm. When I read it I was immediately put in mind of the time that the Sex Pistols 'Anarchy in the UK' was banned by fuddy duddys. Please don't make this brand 'edgy' because, literally, 'mother didn't like it.' Please don't let this article put that video in the number one internet spot.
I earnestly implore The Guardian to revise this article at its earliest opportunity. What?s the worst that can happen?
Yours faithfully,
Kelly