I’ve stopped saying—or even thinking— “Just when you think
it can’t get any worse/dumber/more bizarre/fill-in-the-blank.” Because it
always does. We are hell-bent on making it so. Or perhaps just Hell-bent. Case
in point: students at the University of California-Santa Barbara were recently
offered custom Valentine’s Day packages developed by fellow students in a
“Principles of Marketing” class, according to The Daily Nexus. The “Valentine’s Day Grams” included chocolates,
condoms and assorted sex toys. The students behind the project decided to
donate part of the proceeds from the VD-Grams to Planned Parenthood California
Central Coast (PPCCC).
The
marketing students had been instructed to create a “pop-up shop,” and elected
to build it on a Valentine’s Day theme. For just $3.95, students could get a
package containing “chocolate and gummy candies, a heart-shaped candle,
eggplant and peach emoji stickers and a hand-written tag.” I honestly had to
look up what eggplant and peach emojis symbolize. A penis and butt
respectively, apparently. I don’t want to know what the hand-written tags said.
For a
mere $6 upcharge, the young scholars could get a deluxe package consisting of
“a sex toy of their choice, ranging from dildos, vibrators, handcuffs or ‘pocket
pussies.’” How could they make a profit? The budding marketing
mavens offered the sex toys in part “to spare interested students the shame of
walking into a brick-and-mortar sex shop.” What about the shame of walking into
a clinic to abort your baby? Or the shame of having the money you used to
purchase a sex toy going to promote abortion? I guess shame is in the eye of
the beholder.
The Daily Nexus reported students in the
class considered their campaign a success, and not just because of the number
of VD-Grams sold. As one put it: “It’s another way you can feel good about
buying a product for a good cause. We’re trying to demystify and capitalize on
the [sex toy] market, trying to add to it to make it [as] least stigmatized as
possible.” What is the good cause, catering to the kid’s kinkiness or helping
to exterminate babies? What’s that, it’s a twofer? Yay!
A
better name for the class would have been “Unprincipled Marketing.” The
students used their “pop-up shop” to aid a (human) chop-shop. I can see them
holding up their heart-shaped candles as they stand in front of a Planned
Parenthood banner. If someone could “demystify” the love of aborting one’s own
baby for personal convenience for me, I’d be much obliged.
It is a
chilling fact that most college-age kids have an unfavorable opinion of
capitalism. It is even scarier to see that when they get a chance to utilize
market principles, some opt to traffic in sex toys and death. And “feel good”
about such a “good cause.”
No comments:
Post a Comment