That this was somehow okay?

Neboken Ja Neyo..pull your damn heads out!

Cultural insensitivity is built right into our automatic world. The likely answer is that nobody at Amazon was thinking about it.

Rather, a computer probably quite happily accepted the design and the money, without a "thought" at all.

But I know what you're thinking, you random special you out there somewhere: Rush is AWESOME!

The question that should be asked is, what about the company that made them? What exactly were they thinking making such a t-shirt? Who the hell inside that company thought it was a good idea to put that on a shirt and then thought someone would actually buy it?

Who wants to support Amazon if it can't even provide a little oversight of products it sells?

Next up: "My shirt was made in a sweatshop that burned workers unrecognizable"

Amazon sells tons of stuff that will offend somebody. It's not their job to censor, just as a local bookstore should not decide what material is offensive or not.

And was this sold by Amazon, or by a third-party via Amazon? Many companies sell their own wares using Amazon services - Amazon can't possibly monitor every one.

if that is the case... than there is only one word I could say..

[font color="black" size="60" face="bold"]BAKA![/font]

For better or worse, Japanese swear words just do not have the heft for these people.

Welcome to DU... Irasshaimase, ...Yokoso!

You're just going about, tying to make a buck and BAM you're selling something disgustingly offensive.

Doncha know?



(jic)

I misread your t-shirt slogan. I could have sworn it said, "Stay calm and spit a big loogie on this t-shirt."

Channel4.com
02 March 2013

No wonder the GOP had to be dragged kicking and screaming to pass the VAWA. Thanks for the additional images. I'm sure they'll be selling something like these again any day now...

Where is "Keep calm and blow her brains out"?

This company makes a lot of novelty t-shirts, and I would urge everyone to check out their own t-shirts and see if they are made by this company. If so, I would mail it back to them (COD), and ask them to refund my money. Assholes. And many of these sayings make no sense, and that may be on purpose, I don't know, but they are stupid. At any rate, someone had to have seen these shirts beforehand, even if they only saw them as they put the listing up on Amazon. I guess it never occurred to the moron doing it to ask themselves if this was perhaps not a great idea for a t-shirt slogan, let alone something that should be listed for sale.

that would actually explain those shirt slogans that make no sense. The program picks a verb and then a noun or a pronoun that is supposed to be the direct object of the verb, but the verb doesn't fit logically or, in some cases grammatically, with the noun or pronoun that is meant to be its direct object.

I'd love to knock some sense into them.

...I have a twisted sense of humor that many here would probably find vile (e.g. Love Family Guy humor)....but seriously.....WTF?!

These guys are not only stupid, but seem out of touch with modern humanity. Well, I hope there is complete success with the "new" branding campaign they are about to experience.

The British had it made at the start of the Second World War to try to encourage people to, well, keep calm and carry on, but it was never publicly distributed. Someone doing some archives-diving found a surviving copy about ten years ago, and a few years after that people started playing around with the image.

No specific marketing past that beyond everyone jumping on a jump-on-able image that's old enough to be in the public domain. (A couple idiotic companies are trying to trademark or copyright the original poster.)

As for this particular company's branding, I imagine they're starting to feel like they just sat on one, and for a screwup of that magnitude I'm quite okay with that.

Now and then the intarwebz as a whole seem to decide that one thing or another will be fun to play with for awhile, and the specific poster that company's based that shirt off of is one of those.

I'm kind of fond of that one (as a Canadian, "keep calm and shovel on" appeals to me at this time of year), but a lot of the results of people playing with it get pretty stupid.

we got a bumper sticker that said "Keep Clam" and advertising a restaurant. I still smile when I see it in the garage. (My husband has stickers all over one wall in there). Men - some never grow up. Which can be a good thing at times.

There's nothing there except offense.
Is that the whole basis of it existence?
Wtf

What sort would wear something so gutter trash as that?

I just don't get it.

raping, hitting, and knifing a woman doesn't work

You can always choke her or screw her

http://www.amazon.com/Keep-Choke-Black-Jersey-T-Shirt/dp/B007E0J07S/ref=sr_1_1?s=apparel&ie=UTF8&qid=1362239389&sr=1-1&keywords=Solid+Gold+Bomb+keep+calm+and+choke+her

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dapparel&field-keywords=Solid+Gold+Bomb+keep+calm+and+blow+him#/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dapparel&field-keywords=Solid+Gold+Bomb+keep+calm+and+screw+her&rh=n%3A1036592%2Ck%3ASolid+Gold+Bomb+keep+calm+and+screw+her

Computer generated, my ass.

Not one of those sayings are directed towards males.

But hey, it is only an exersize in free speech and all. They are entitled to their opinion and can express it anywhere.

verb being changed. The program could be directed to choose a transitive verb, but the "her" could be, like the "Keep calm" part, unchangeable.

Of course, that means the original plan was to come up with a bunch of things to "do" to "her"--which means that whatever was going to be done was always going to be done to a woman, and it was inevitable that some of those things were going to be violent and awful.

plugging in verbs. But since they chose to let a computer fill in the blank in "Keep calm and _____ her", and then they chose to let those things go online un-vetted, the 'computer did it' excuse doesn't excuse anything at all...

(It's a really stupid business model for another reason too, IMO: given how many of those results were nonsense or just stupid, how many customers will wade through 20-odd pages of "Keep calm..." shirts to find one that works?)

Damn. Sick.

Just stop buying their shirts. Hit them in their pocketbooks. That's the only thing that works in this country.

someone gets raped, whether on a t-shirt or on a message board is not okay.
Suggesting someone get raped in prison, is not any more acceptable than suggesting someone get raped for any other reason.
It is the same. It isn't okay.

should not be wished for under any circumstances.

It would be like a neon sign that says don't date me, don't talk to me, and pretend I don't exist.

Last edited Sat Mar 2, 2013, 01:46 PM - Edit history (1)

oh, they only do it to misogyny when it's bit less vile. All of a sudden here is some "free speech" they are afraid to defend.
Got it.

But their products are hideous and they are getting the opprobrium they deserve.

and appropriate for this community. if they're at all consistent, we should hear any minute now to "lighten up" because it's satire.

it's amazes me me how many don't get it. Especially here on DU. *sigh*

to demean will have their wish come true here.


This is sarcasm, by the way.

Step 1 be shocking.
Step 2 profit.

Usually the little corners populated by adolescent males of all ages who often seem relationship challenged.

I love edgy humor. This doesn't qualify, IMO. It's just assholery at its finest.

is that Amazon have not blocked the supplier from listing with them.

We do get some quite lairy tees here but these ones are OTT.

But I will not be surprised when the company is told to keep calm and sell somewhere else.

by the simple minded among us.
what's next- Cliff notes for Beevis and Butthead?

In this case, however, one wouldve thought that line rather thick and rather bold.

Their excuse about the listing being generated by a computer script seems absurd at first. However, if you look at some of their other listings, it begins to seem more likely.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_94?rh=n%3A1036592%2Ck%3Asolid+gold+bomb+keep+calm&page=74&keywords=solid+gold+bomb+keep+calm&ie=UTF8&qid=1362260721

Some of the shirts are so nonsensical that I can't imagine someone sitting there being "yeah, this is a great idea for a shirt."

The format seems to be "Keep Calm and (random verb up to 5 letters) (Her, Them, Us, Out, On, or In)". This results in a large number of offensive shirts. You can find at least one on almost every page of results.

Still. You think someone would have been smart enough to come up with a list of words to exclude from the script; "rape" being at the top of that list.

yeah, they didn't consider gender at all...

I'm guessing they print to order as opposed from stock.

I'd have thought the expression was pretty meaningless in the US. It comes from our government posters beginning of WW2 "Keep Calm and Carry On".

As offensive as I find this, I'm not sure how much of the blame should fall on Amazon, see that they have over two million third-party vendors and this particular company is ranked close to 5,000 in popularity in the clothing section. Because this story is less than 24 hours old and it is a weekend, I'm going to give Amazon until Monday afternoon to see what action, if any they take against this company and what their official statement says. I also agree that whomever designed the auto-script to create the slogans should be sacked.

Not UK.

But potential customers are clearly not willing to buy the deeply offensive t-shirts, slamming both Amazon and the clothes shop, which has its headquarters in the UK.

There is no UK shop and I think they refer to Amazon.co.uk / EU being here which is wrong too : Its a Luxembourg company.

The Sun made a reference to Oxford for whatever reason whereas :

Solid Gold Bomb, a label of Harold Ross Inc, based in Massachusetts

>

It closed its Facebook and other social media accounts on Saturday morning and left a message on its website which read in part: "We have been informed of the fact that we were selling an offensive T-shirt primarily in the UK. This has been immediately deleted as it was and had been automatically generated using a scripted computer process running against 100s of thousands of dictionary words.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/mar/02/amazon-withdraws-rape-slogan-shirt

The BBC refered to Solid Gold Bomb being a US company too and here's their website : http://www.solidgoldbomb.com/

btw - we don't use the expression "inc" in the UK.

excuse they are trying to pass off as an apology. And their About Us page is blank.

Well, they can't keep their contact info private forever if they want to keep selling product.

The guy gives a long, drawn out sob story about how they have SO MANY different t-shirts and the bad computer just automatically generated this one, so really it was just an accident.

Sorry, dude. You have a responsibility to keep track of what you are selling. I hope your company goes belly up.

They have other T-shirts inciting men to "knife her" and to "hit her". Amazon should pull this company from their website.

Disgraceful!!!!!