Or should that be “humour”?
Anyway, it’s weird (but inevitable) that news reports now quote random bloggers in their news stories. It would be one thing if the blogger replaced the “man in the street” nonsense interview, but it seems as though “the bloggers” are actually considered more than that. But that’s beside the point.
So there’s a story about how a Microsoft print ad in Poland replaced a picture of a black guy with that of a white guy (the US picture showed the original black guy). The ad didn’t bother changing the guy’s hand, which is still the original.
Here’s a quote from a commenter on a blog (not even a blogger, but a commenter on a blog!):
“The white head and black hand actually symbolise interracial harmony. It is supposed to show that a person can be white and black, old and young at the same time.”
Now that’s a joke. It’s a joke by a commenter on a jokey blog.
But the BBC seems to be playing it as though it’s real and a shared opinion of several bloggers, “with some suggesting Microsoft was attempting to please all markets by having a man with both a white face and a black hand.”
It really is the silly season. Next post: Was this swap a terrible, racist thing to do, or a no-big-deal play towards a given market?
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