Asianspotting: Asian Guy's "Upshirt" Scene Edited From Microsoft Kin Ad
Microsoft's Kin ad has sparked a bit of a controversy.
The scene: a hipster hoedown.
The people: young, fun-loving, and socially networked. Primarily white and heavily bearded, but it's a hoedown after all.
The one Asian guy: sexting?
The public's verdict: creepy, just plain creepy [1].
The ad briefly features a young Asian man lifting his V-neck tee and flash-photographing the goods below his plunging neckline. He smiles, handily flips his Kin open, and texts his self-portrait to a special girl. She appears to be quite charmed.
After Consumer Reports [2] called the ad "downright creepy" and said it "comes uncomfortably close to advocating sexting [3] -- as in the sending of nude photos via cell phone." Microsoft has edited the "upshirt" shot from the ad on its Kin [4] site.
This isn't the first time Microsoft's gotten in trouble for its advertisement. Engadget [5] recently called Microsoft Poland out for its "racist" and downright terrible Photoshop job in replacing a black man in a stock image with a white man.
While the Kin ad wasn't quite as inflammatory and embarassing, Microsoft has since apologized. According to Mashable [6], a Microsoft spokesperson said, "Microsoft takes the issue of sexting very seriously and it was never our intent to promote it in any way," and that the texting sequence "did not come across in the spirit with which it was intended."
Here's the original ad -- what do you think?