Awful horrible (possibly triggering) t shirt on Amazon Marketplace

[ediblewoman]

Please can we repeat the earlier success and see if we can get Amazon to remove this from sale foul

Doctrine mentioned it on the earlier thread but I felt like we needed a bit more focus. Should I post in chat too?

I have emailed already.

[Darkesteyes]

Alex Thomson fron channel 4 news is tweeting about an offensive card featuring a "joke" about sexual harassment and hes getting a bit of a mysogynistic backlash. People are going on about how its the algorithms fault. Wonder how they would explain the link on one of these threads to that violent "erotic fiction"

[pofacedplot]

maybe English is not his first language in which case I am being too harsh I suppose.

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Decent apology I'd say overlooking the slight problem with "offensive response" !

[giraffesCantDateDucks]

this was on news earlier

[pofacedplot]

That bloke is illiterate. 'Offensive response' Oh dear. Even spell check can't hide that.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Now that's what I call an apology.

[sashh]

This has popped up on Solid Gold's website



I am sorry.

As the party responsible within our company for scripting and creating this automated process that created the matched slogans for this "Keep Calm" series, I apologise for the offensive response this has created across the world.

No words can express how I feel about what has occured and in no way do I condone or promote this serious issue. I will offer a more in depth explanation of cause to explain what and how this occured. Both myself and our company and it's associated Solid Gold Bomb brand have never had any intention of the spread of violent slogans or even poor taste humour t-shirts. This was a computer error of my creation and I accept my responsibility in the matter.

In process, it was one year ago when this parody series was released in repsonse to the outcry on the "Keep Calm" trademark issue and the fact that it's trademark was accepted in both the EU and USA. My response to this was to create a large scale release of parodies (something t-shirt companies often do) and relied on both computer based dictionaries and online educational resources ie. verb lists. I then generated word lists that were called using simple scripting methods to generate image based art of the modified slogans. These were subsequently scripted to position themselves on t-shirts and the associated product data was derived simply from the product name and the 16 word combinations like "On" and "Off" and "Him" or "Her" and so forth. Near all of these combinations either work or don't work and are certainly non-offensive such as "Dream On" and "Dance Off" and so forth.

As the volume of combinations of words/slogans/styles/colours/sizes are well into the millions, a volume of computers were used to do this entirely in a cloud type environment. The ultimate filelist generated created the base data and the core of the problem was certainly the fact that certain words both individually and in combination were or became offensive. This was culled from 202k words to around 1100 and ultimately slightly more than 700 were used due to character length and the fact that I wanted to closely reflect the appearance of the original slogan graphically.

These items sat online and on non-indexed servers for the last year and myself and our company had no idea of the issue. We simply do not produce poor humour or offensive products and are primarily known for our sporting related products and icon series that are based around similar techniques. As a father, husband, brother and son, I would never promote such product in our company and it was clear to see this when looking across the millions of t-shirts that we offer or can produce on demand. Had these items ever sold, we would have immediately pulled the series and are doing so on our own and Amazon channels worldwide. Currently, our listings have been fully removed and we are working to delete the entire parody series. Again, this was never my intention and I am extremely sorry for the trouble this carelessness has caused.

As a company, we are a good company that prints t-shirts and associated product on primarily American made garments. We produce product with related cities, schools, colleges and universities the world over. We have never done such an activity deliberately and ask for understanding in the matter. It can happen, it happened and we are doing everything in our power around the clock the world over to correct the issue. We've been contacted by many news agencies throughout Europe and received thousands of emails and letters of all natures. We are not ignoring this and are addressing these as much as we can in the short space of time that this has erupted. Rest assured, we do not condone the offense nor do we have any desire to promote it. Ultimately, it comes down to my error and I should singly accept repsonsibility for the mistake. Again, my sincere apologies for the unintended outcome.

• Michael Fowler / Solid Gold Bomb founder

[FairyJen]

I have reported doctrine what a twat tho honestly!

Brilliant respOnse btw about these revolting clothes

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

KeepCalm is everywhere today, FJ. Ignore and report..

[FairyJen]

Is your nn supposed to be funny " keep calm"?

[powerjen]

Along with this one: www.tshirtoffensive.co.uk/view/offensive_t-shirts/no-%2B-rohypnol-%3D-yes/10099 .

I'm new to MN and have really enjoyed (not sure that's the right word) reading through the posts on the feminist board. I'm loving the power of the collective!

I'm also extremely depressed by some of the issues that you've highlighted - I had no idea such disgusting products were on sale. I cannot imagine what kind person would buy/wear one. Never mind all the individuals who are complicit in the manufacture/ sale of them.

[pofacedplot]

Just looked. you can still buy it

here

And that is deliberate. A campaign to remove that even more important.

[pofacedplot]

I don't think Filly is defending the company, she is just being accurate.

it is unacceptable that is was up there though. And the 9 out of 10 one is unspeakably awful - has that one been removed or is it still up, if it is from a different company?

[INeverSaidThat]

I think it was Doctrine who first found the TShirts on Amazon and posted about them on a MN feminist thread.
Ediblewoman 'credits' Doctrine in her OP and was very sensible to highlight these TShirts by giving them their own thread.

Doctrine and EdibleWooman are the heroines of the day.


It is a shame that MN hasn't been credited with this story. All the news reports talk about Twitter but the Twittering originated from MN.

(I think, Please correct me if I am wrong )

[scottishmummy]

Thank you ediblewoman for flagging up this tshirt,and great work all the agitation
Heard it on news, great bit agitation and direct action

[INeverSaidThat]

All the Solid Gold Bomb TShirts have been removed from Amazon now.

Including all of the 8500 different Keep calm versions

[LineRunner]

Filly, are you only here defending a company?

[FillyPutty]

They have fifteen suffixes, him is not one of the.

[MortaIWombat]

What results do you get for "Keep Calm and .... Him"?

[Corygal]

I've just rung up to complain that the muppet at Customer Services didn't even bother to read my complaining email but directed me to buy the T shirt instead. Woman with phone warp voice didn't see what the problem was.

Despite heavily laying on the charm and reading her all missives, plus the slogan on T shirt, s-l-o-w-l-y, she still didn't manage to get it. I am charitably blaming zero English skills.

Had to cancel all me Prime, me orders, etc etc & finally got manager after hours on the phone. She graciously offered me a fiver.

Amazon = yuk. They're used cos they're cheap, but other retailers are catching up, so it's good night from me to them.

I hope their customer services advisers get home safe, that's all.

[FillyPutty]

That's a different company but I agree

[SocialClimber]

Posted on the wrong thread.

No computer was at fault for the t shirt saying "statistically, 9 out of 10 people enjoy gang rape."

No excuses for any of this. I won't use them again, ever.

[FillyPutty]

They didn't only pick violent slogans. There is camp, cater, coach, bow, comb and many others.