In the mid-2000s there was a brief fad in Australian government messaging where they went out of their way to insult the public as much as possible.
This fad eventually died out after the tourism board attempted the same style of messaging in the UK, causing a minor scandal which led to the head of Tourism Australia, Scott Morrison, getting the sack.
The first time we drove past the ādonāt drive like a cockā sign, my mum looked at it was immediately SO confused - after all sheās a good semi-conservative Christian woman. My brother and I knew it right away but for the next half hour she guessed literally EVERY other word for cock (donāt drive like a rooster, chicken, hen, chick, bird, fowl, poultry) trying her goddamned hardest to make the sign make sense until my - at the time - eleven year old brother got fed up and yelled COCK at the top of his lungs from the back seat.
My mum was FURIOUS - we werenāt even allowed to say āheckā - until she realised heād just been telling her what the sign was, and for the rest of the three hour trip our good semi-conservative Christian mother proceeded to amuse herself by muttering ācockā under her breath and giggling like a teenager every time she did.
We still bring it up every now and then. So that particular advertising campaign has been making my family laugh for over a decade.
This one was always my favourite, though:
Reblogging to make sure this excellent story is seen
i don’t care if the barbie movie is even good at this point. the amount of marketing and advertisements and brand integrations i’ve seen for it has poisoned my heart forever
since my last post about it did not clarify, Fran Drescher being anti vaccine mandate IS antivaxx. it doesn’t matter that she, as an individual, got the COVID vaccine. claiming to be against the mandate, not the vaccine itself is a common tactic used by antivaxxers. Many antivaxxers also do still get vaccinated while advocating antivaxx sentiment. If someone, Fran Drescher or otherwise, was truly pro-vaccine, they would not have a problem with them being mandated, period. It’s the same kind of faux mental gymnastics bigots use when they say shit like, “I don’t have a problem with gay people. I just don’t think the law should allow them to be married.” Fran Drescher is antivaxx and she’s also a massive financial supporter of the Israeli Defence Force, having donated millions in fundraising over the years to the IDF to support their occupation of Israel. Both those things are indefenseable to me and many others, but they also don’t cancel out what she has done and continues to do for labour rights in the film industry. “Fran Drescher is antivaxx and pro-Israel” and “Fran Drescher is a vital leader in current labour rights movements in Hollywood,” are not mutually exclusive statements. It just means there’s more work to do, more people to listen to, and no one person should ever be touted as a symbol of resistance for all because human rights advocacy is never going to be achieved through reliance on individuals or exceptionalism.
This part right here:
…no one person should ever be touted as a symbol of resistance for all because human rights advocacy is never going to be achieved through reliance on individuals or exceptionalism.
we need to go back to hating tumblr. no more hellsite (affectionate). don’t even think of giving these clowns your money. if i see you with a checkmark next to your name i’m opening fire
the thing is this dashboard change isnt the end of the world ill get used to it whatever im just fucking dying of embarrassment that its supposed to look like twitter
twitter gets run over by a bus and the next day tumblr comes 2 school wearing her clothes like. oh my god come on
