Textad too stimulating

June 4, 2003 6:38 PM

You've cum a long way baby!
posted by anathema to Bugs at 6:38 PM (31 comments total)

I thought it had to be a joke, since we've already seen ads for Bushfilter.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:56 PM on June 4, 2003

See that line in the sand? I think we just crossed it. Leapt it would be more accurate, perhaps.
posted by dg at 7:52 PM on June 4, 2003

Agreed. That line is gone gone gone.

So, does anybody approve? Disapprove? I mean, we're all adults here, for the most part, right? We all know pr0n exists and we sometimes even link to it in order to further our point.

Me, I wish that c***filter hadn't been approved. If I want pr0n, I know where to find it, and frankly, it shouldn't be at MetaFilter. I feel that it lowers the value of the moral esthetic that we supposedly have. Isn't that what separates us from Fark?
posted by ashbury at 8:35 PM on June 4, 2003

I wholeheartedly approve. It's time to stop treating sex like it was something secret and naughty. _{Um, I mean, you know, sometimes you want to treat it like it's naughty, and spank its naughty bottom, and make it call you Master. Nothing wrong with that.} But in general, I think a pornographer's money is as good as yours or mine. Come on, be honest. At some point in the not-so-distant past, it probably was yours or mine.

Well, yours anyway. I don't look at that smut.
posted by rusty at 8:56 PM on June 4, 2003

Porn? Sure. Cunt on the front page? Well, I'm sure I would have received a ration or two had I used that word in an FPP. So I vote for "inappropriate" (assuming that's what we're doing here).

back to Jeff Buckley - Lilac Wine
posted by Witty at 9:18 PM on June 4, 2003

I turned the ad off and refunded the ten bucks to the guy that placed it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:25 PM on June 4, 2003

With the standard disclaimer that mathowie can do as he chooses here, I second what ashbury said. We all know pr0n exists, but that doesn't mean we want it shoved in our faces (not publicly, anyway). If you take the tack that anyone's money is good, where do you stop? Is a child pornographer's money as good as any other pornographer's?
posted by dg at 9:39 PM on June 4, 2003

Oops, should have checked for more comments after leaving the screen in "preview" for so long.

For what it is worth, I would gladly pay the $10 that you have lost in revenue to keep an ad like that out.
posted by dg at 9:41 PM on June 4, 2003

dg: No. And slippery slope arguments are pretty much always dumb. Child porn is illegal. That puts it in the same category as ads for e.g. black market human organs and hit men. Porn is not illegal, which puts it in the same category of ads as web hosting services and funny stickers.

You know what's funny here? One time, quite a while ago, someone submitted an article to K5 about swear words and bad language and titled it "Cunt." Now, it wasn't a bad article, though the whole point of posting it was simply to get that title on the front page. After some thought and soul-searching, I decided to change it. I actually changed it to "Profanity Reconsidered," which would have been damn witty if I'd grasped the multiple levels of meaning (but I didn't, and so it was, at best, inadvertently witty). Anyway, the overall reaction was that I should have left it the way it was.
posted by rusty at 9:46 PM on June 4, 2003

I like the pr0n as much as the next guy (since I'm in Utah, probably more than the next guy), but I think that ad was unacceptable. Not because it linked to a porn site, but because the "c-word" (as it's referred to at my house) is, in my opinion, derogatory. No one would expect Matt to accept an ad for NiggerFilter, or SpicFilter, or FagFilter, so why should this one pass muster?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:52 PM on June 4, 2003

Mefi was temporarily in some odd company with the other refers to that site.
posted by sailormouth at 9:56 PM on June 4, 2003

rusty, I guess I could come back and say that pornography is illegal in some countries so, were ads such as this one to be considered acceptable, should we have one of those splash pages warning of adult content with a link to *insert cartoon site here* if you click on "no"? However, you do make a valid point re slippery slope arguments and I knew that it was a dumb argument leading nowhere a second after posting the comment.

As with mr_crash_davis, I believe the "c-word" is not acceptable in any reasonably polite society and is widely considered a strongly derogatory term.

Either way, I'm glad it's gone. In the case of the article that you altered, you would have been equally damned if you had left it as it was, so you probably made the right choice. Would you have made the same choice if the article was simply an ad for pornography and added no value (except financially, of course) to the community?
posted by dg at 10:09 PM on June 4, 2003

I don't know. After that whole debacle I basically decided that I wasn't anyone's nanny, and they got the articles they voted for, which has worked well overall. But that's a different situation, since it isn't normally my decision.

I have approved several porn ads for K5, where the advertising system is ripped off from very similar to MeFi's. They've generally been either funny or merely not obviously offensive though. I'm actually not sure whether I'd approve that ad. Now that I think about it more, I probably wouldn't.

My initial reaction was to the implication that because it's a porn ad, it's no good. If it's just a language thing, well ok. Some people are very upset by that word. After my trial by fire, I'm not anymore, myself. But I suppose that'd still give me pause.

So count me as a vote for yay porn, boo ads that people find inherently offensive.
posted by rusty at 11:10 PM on June 4, 2003

Incidentally, for you berks curious about "the c word," a fellow appropriately named Matt Hunt has written a pretty damn exhaustive etymology and cultural history. Cunning linguistic stunts aplenty!
posted by rusty at 11:26 PM on June 4, 2003

So is the complaint that the Ad used the word "cunt", or that the porn wasn't actually free?
posted by DBAPaul at 3:03 AM on June 5, 2003

the "c-word" is not acceptable
Thought penis-wrinkle was an equivalent.
Spell check gave the replacement, sword, for c-word.
posted by thomcatspike at 5:22 AM on June 5, 2003

Thanks for the link, rusty. Metafilter!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:24 AM on June 5, 2003

Wow, that is exhaustive rusty. Now if his name had only been Mike...
posted by gottabefunky at 6:58 AM on June 5, 2003

NiggerFilter, or SpicFilter, or FagFilter

*begins furiously registering domains*
posted by jpoulos at 7:19 AM on June 5, 2003

As the days go by, I like rusty more and more, and that cunt kottke less and less.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 8:44 AM on June 5, 2003

i'm confused matt. first you approved the ad but then you disapproved it when the metatalk thread was posted? or are ad approvals somewhat automated now or something that allowed it to slip through unnoticed?

chalk me up as another vote for porn ads OK, this ad distastefully not OK. is there some way to identify NSFW ads?

i've been meaning to email Matt asking what he'd think of an adult site ad i've been considering placing. since the subject is at hand i'll just do it here (w/o a link):

World's First

Fat Chick Porno MeFi Cone

the page linked to would a special mefi only page seeking contributors to the blog portion of the site, which is powered by mefi clone software. unfortunately the "community blog" concept seems to be something the site's user base just doesn't get as the site gets plenty of traffic but little participation in the blog.

so there's a specific reason to advertise on mefi (as i know there are mefites interested in BBWs) and i think there may be legitimate interest among general mefidom in porn sites inlfuenced by the blogosphere.

(i've never had much hope that the ad would lead to actual paying members, but i'll admit i've also had an ulterior motive for considering the ad: metatalk. the thought had crosssed my mind that the ad might get pulled into metatalk, presumably with link intact, and then indexed by google as being linked to by metafilter.com. this of course would be worth more than the price of the ad, so anathema was smart in his posting.)

in the context of the site's world, "fat chick" is understood not to be derogatory, but perhaps not in the metafilter world, so i would have also provided Matt with some alternative text for that bit and leave it to his discretion which to run.

is this a case of an acceptable pr0n ad?
posted by danOstuporStar at 10:59 AM on June 5, 2003

err, Clone not Cone.
posted by danOstuporStar at 11:02 AM on June 5, 2003

"Fat Chick Porno MeFi"

Four of my favorite words.

I'm so there, dude.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:13 AM on June 5, 2003

Incidentally, for you berks curious about "the c word," a fellow appropriately named Matt Hunt has written a pretty damn exhaustive etymology and cultural history.

You sure it wasn't his brother Mike?
posted by inpHilltr8r at 11:42 AM on June 5, 2003

I guess I'll reconsider my upcoming "I fucked Stan's Chin" ad campaign.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 11:50 AM on June 5, 2003

Well, there is a QueerFilter already.
posted by eilatan at 11:56 AM on June 5, 2003

Apropos, I think.
posted by *burp* at 1:04 PM on June 5, 2003

In the ad-list today are "Bitch", "Sex News", the "Hello Kitty Vibrator", the word "Whore", and for all Australians out there, several references to "Root Access".

More Annoying is the number (some of these ads have been changed) of ADVERTS IN CAPITALS posted by GapingVoid. (Who doesn't actually seem to be a member of metafilter at all, so that's weird.)
posted by seanyboy at 4:15 PM on June 5, 2003

You don't have to be a MetaFilter member to post a text ad.
posted by timeistight at 4:24 PM on June 5, 2003

Hmmm, I am sure you used to have to be a member to post a text ad, but I could be wrong. Not that I am suggesting that you should have to be, by the way.

seanyboy - Kiwis will get the reference to your comment as well, as in "A real Kiwi eats roots and leaves".
posted by dg at 4:55 PM on June 5, 2003

Not since we've been around, dg.
posted by timeistight at 7:54 PM on June 5, 2003