This little guy's got the right idea. Yes it's a viral photo and yes it's probably got no validity in say The New York Times / Huffington Post world of journalistic arguments and intellectual rhetoric, but screw that! We know good stuff when we see it and this Panda is it. Black, white, spread love. End racist thoughts!
Product manager, feminist and advertising expert Teresa Valdez Klein knows a thing or two about the tactics online marketers use on unsuspecting Facebook users. As you would have it, the social media platform, in all its glory, is really just a tool that allows the marketing world to pinpoint exact demographics. So the question then becomes: What happens when this "subvertising" gets downright offensive and touchy for the user? Like when Teresa updated her online profile from married to single. The results were staggering! She points out how the marketers (automated or not) immediately flooded her with ads pertaining to weight loss, dating services, etc., all forcing her to believe that she was wrong and stigmatized for her reality. Thankfully Teresa was aware of the tactic and decided to take matters into her own hands. She purchased low-cost ads and advertised to her own female demographic about how their bodies were okay and life wasn't terrible. Go Teresa! Way to reverse the careless (and psychotic) advertising that really messes with our happiness.
Ladies, they're priming the pump with our lives. The marketers don't really care whether you're happy in your marriage as long as you buy a ring.
Photographer Frieke Janssens looks to shock and critique with his latest series titled Smoking Kids. The creative captures images of adult-like children going through the motions of smoke intake, be it a prideful cigar or lowly cigarrette. The juxtaposition of sullen children (as opposed to joyful ones) with the habit makes for some interesting debate, certainly the goal of Janssens work in the first place.
The aesthetics of smoke and the particular way smokers gesticulate with their hands and posture cannot be denied, but among the different tribes of "Smoking Kids," - Glamour, Jazz, and The Marginal - there is a nod to less attractive aspects, on the line between the beauty and ugliness of smoking.
We came across this local Kickstarter and just couldn't resist the pitch. Imagine that Spike Lee (Do The Right Thing) and Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill) work at a Martin Scorsese (The Departed)-owned deli and that's kind of what this project's about. TryBoro Productions wants to make their dark comedy-meets-slasher-meets-gentrification, Shankman's, come to life (and budget) and they need your help to do it! Peep the pitch and decide if you want to help them reach just $10K more to fund their wild indie flick.
Twitter and the internet were in an uproar yesterday over some supposedly racist knock-off pants. Word around the web was that clothing company, Abercrombie and Fitch, was selling a pair of brown cargo pants whose hue was described as "Nigger Brown." Turns out that the pants were being sold on a counterfeit Chinese site with no affiliation to the brand. So how did the "colorful" name exactly make it onto the product? Experts say it was man-made error of bad Chinese translation like what happened in 2007 case concerning a brown sofa.
A Chinese software company, Kingsoft Corp., acknowledged its translation program was at fault. When the Chinese characters for "dark brown" are typed into an older version of its Chinese-English translation software, the offensive description comes up. (The program's 2007 version does not produce that result.) The software had been programmed with terms garnered from a Chinese-English dictionary.
Our question is, okay it's a translation error, but surely that reference had to be referenced and programmed in from somewhere. Dictionary of "Amerikan" history perhaps?
We suppose that most of our readers already know this, but we here at República really love social commentary. Here's some that comes from our good friend, Jeff Lapaixx, who decided to take his frist stab at documentary work. We could spend time describing its context, but thought that it'd just be better to let the man himself describe it in his own words:
This is my first of several documentaries. It deals with various racial identity issues that Dominicans [sub]consciously deal with on a regular basis. Ideologies imposed on the caribbean by colonial power Spain, and enforced throughout history by Spanish elites, western european philosophies, and the entire Trujillo dictatorship
Enjoy and don't forget to thank Jeff!
Here's a chilling half-hour documentary that breaks down the use of media and mind-control to breed a culture of violence. The piece utilizes recent American military practices, popular videogame culture, reference to George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and commentary from a few thinkers like Noam Chomsky and John Trudell, among others, to paint a vivid picture of this sadistic reality. Deep!
You know those Amazon reviews where folks post their own small-minded opinions about products and nothing even remotely helpful for other buyers? That's what Least Helpful is compiled of--nothing but bad comments galore. From the very useless to the downright stupid! It's all there. Thanks. For nothing!
We came across this video and just couldn't resist posting. Why? Probably because of its equal parts of absurdity and honesty. This is a full-blown, raw, uninhibited, stereotypical, ignorant and truthful look at what a couple of white females think about black males. Fetishism, racism, distorted reality. All there. Worth a conversation or two. Or three...
So now that just about every single "Knick" name possible has made headlines for 22 year-old basketball phenom, Jeremy Lin, we thought we'd get the real deal from some of the world's most renowned critics--authentic New Yorkers--to hear what they have to say about #LINSANITY. From one of Uptown basketball's most recent hallowed grounds, Dyckman Courts, and beyond República proudly presents the hometown skinny on Linny:
