Pepsi Attacked For Allegedly Stereotyping Women

How the heck did the Sixties beget a culture with no sense of humor and so much bottled up outrage just looking for something to come crashing down upon? Talk about your unintended consequences. It's getting to be a crime to laugh at anything, though I suspect there wouldn't be an issue were the genders reversed here. Get over it, already. Geesh!

The application lets users select from stereotypes of women, like the "foreign exchange student" or "nerd" or "cougar." Then it offers possible pickup lines like, "Wasn't I in Space Academy with you?" for the nerd.

It also offers other hints, like links to world news for the foreign exchange student. For the "rebound girl" - who has just broken up with her boyfriend - it offers maps of local ice cream shops.

The app then lets users add women - along with name, date of the conquest and comments - to the user's "brag list," which can be shared online on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Social networking blog Mashable and other sites have been voicing outrage about the application. Mashable's headline Monday about the application said "Alienate your female customers? Pepsi has an app for that."

The article, and other criticisms, prompted the Amp brand to apologize on its Twitter page. It said the application, which is featured prominently on Amp's Web site, tries to show the "humorous lengths guys go 2 pick up women."

Comments

[wolfwalker]

"How the heck did the Sixties beget a culture with no sense of humor and so much bottled up outrage just looking for something to come crashing down upon?"

That's easy. In the 60s, they were kids. They were the center of attention, because they were young, foolish, and had money to burn. They were champion targets for advertisers and salesmen. Then they got older and wiser, with more obligations and less money to spare, and they aren't the center of attention anymore. They've been trying to get back to that place since the gas crisis and recession of 1978-82, and nothing has worked. That's thirty years of bottled-up rage. Any pshrynk can tell you that repressed rage bursts out at weird times and in weird ways.

[Alex]

Good Lord in heaven, outrage over this. And yet they savage Sarah Palin and her daughters, conservative women everywhere, and look the other way when a 43 year old drugs and rapes a 13 year old. Feminism is intellectually bankrupt.

[Lala]

Just call it celebrating diversity and it will be okay.

[xerocky]

Mashable seems to be a blog that's for the most part about...facebook and twitter. (Thank god I don't do either of those, just for my own self respect).

A blog about a blog? Read it here first, those should be called BLAHgs. God I'm witty, too bad I don't twitter.

You would think that a bunch of guys/ gals who have the time and energy to blog about blogs would be happy that pepsi co. has given out a few free tips on how to talk to the opposite sex.