Yet another Super Bowl ad provokes outrage. "meh" at 11

The BBQ Pit
1

So somebody put me on the e-mailing list for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, who put this in my bulk file recently:

*Since the airing of a General Motors advertisement during last Sunday’s Super Bowl, which featured a GM factory robot who gets laid off, becomes depressed and then attempts suicide, our Foundation has been inundated with calls and emails about the offensive nature of the ad.

Our position is that this ad is insensitive to people who have lost a loved one to suicide. Further, while the commercial stresses GM’s “obsession with quality,” we feel the ad showed carelessness by portraying suicide as a viable option when someone fails or loses their job. This is the wrong message to send to adolescents in general, or to young people and adults alike who may be depressed and thinking that suicide is their only option, rather than seeking help.

We have expressed our concerns to GM in a letter to the company 's executives requesting that GM pull this ad and cease any further promotion and marketing of it, including taking the ad off the company’s website. Our Foundation also encouraged GM to issue a statement of apology to those offended by the ad.

Also, the Foundation issued a press release today publicly stating our concerns, and posted an article about the ad on the AFSP website homepage.

The link below will direct you to the AFSP website where you can read more about this issue, and also find a link to the GM website where you can send the company an email expressing your concerns. Read AFSP’s statement to General Motors.

It is important for GM to hear from families and friends affected by mental illness and suicide.

Thank you,
Bob Gebbia
Executive Director
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention*

This is grandstanding, not suicide prevention. I’d hazard a guess that laughter has prevented more suicides than it’s caused, and that for people with depressed outlooks, the darker the humor the better. Would the feelings of the survivors be hurt by such humor? Sure, but as I can testify, right after a loved one’s suicide, everything on TV fucking hurts to watch because…guess what? You fucking hurt. And guess what else? If they ran a quota of anti-suicide and homophobia and who knows who else was offended PSA’s during the Super Bowl, I still wouldn’t watch the fucking thing.

2

I thought the ad was a little squicky, not funny at all. Offensive? No effing way.

3

I’m not sure suicide prevention is actually doing a service anyway. It ain’t really any of their business unless someone asks for help. Even then, I can see where some people might be better off dead. It’s a judgment call, and not one I think should be defaulted to “No”.

4

I liked the website I went to that pointed out how great it was that this robot’s suicide was all a dream, because that would mean it would still be able to steal jobs from humans.

5

My brother killed himself, and I still agree with this. See, by any standard, his life blew chunks. His mental illness was out of control, he had lost his job and his home, he had nothing and no one, and there was no realistic reason to believe that was ever going to change. I don’t blame him a bit.

6

Offense mining has become an art form.

7

Has anybody seen that? This is getting ridiculous. It boggles my mind how sensitive these groups are. I’m at a loss for what to say.

8

I thought the ad was disturbing too. It was like they were trying to emulate the Ikea Lamp ad, but instead of just being replaced, the lamp is trying to hang itself by it’s own cord.

Creepy.

9

In the future, everyone will be outraged for 15 minutes.

10

That was exactly my thought upon seeing the ad.

11

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!? :mad:

12

I think it’s clear and I think it’s spot on.

It seems as if people just search for a way to interpret the innocuous as offensive.

13

:smiley:

14

If I used a sig, I’d borrow this one!

15

whoosh.

16

Seems to me that if some people had their way, all commercials would show a picture of a product and the words, “Please buy this product”. Is there a Yawn-smilie?

17

Gosh, and I thought it was controversial because the thousands of human workers recently laid off by GM weren’t feel much sympathy for the robot.

18

Ever since the dawn of time, humanity has coped by using dark humor. I don’t really see the problem.

I don’t think the company is saying suicide is something that shouldn’t be taken seriously. But more of a “humor is the oldest coping mechanism”. If you can’t laugh, what else can you do?

19

Huh - I thought this thread was gonna be about Prince’s phallic guitar.

20

I remember when I was watching this ad and knowing it was going to cause some sort of controversy. While I didn’t think the ad was particularly funny or even amusing, I certainly don’t see how anyone who isn’t “offense mining” would really find it offensive. Seriously, suicide is a fact of life, can we not even talk about it because it hurts people that it exists? Do these people really think that them mentioning it is going to push some suicidal teen over the edge? The exaggeration in their joke was clearly to show just how seriously they take even a minor screw up at their jobs. If anything, the fact that it was a machine and not a person seems to me to be a deliberate attempt to preempt any offense at suicide; that is, I imagine that backlash would be twice as bad if it were an actor throwing himself off the bridge.

Poor taste? Perhaps. Offensive? No. Effective? Absolutely… well, you’re thinking about them, aren’t you?