Categories
Grave Satirical

low culture Exclusive: The Outrage Continues—Continuously!!!

cingular911_02.jpg
(Ground) Zero Tact: Another offensive Cingular billboard, Lafayette St. and Astor Pl.
On November 19, this website published a revelation so important, so earth-shattering, our comments database promptly crashed due to the overwhelming feedback we received.
I am referring, of course, to low culture Exclusive: An Outrage Grows in Brooklyn!!!, about Cingular’s insensitive Twin Towers-themed billboard on Fourth Avenue and 9th Street in Brooklyn.
Since then, the post has richocheted around the internet, spread like wild fire, grown like kudzu, and just kept going and going like one of those battery-operated toy rabbits.
If our comments were any indication, America was just as outraged by Cingular’s billboard as we were:

“so clearly … the twin towers”
“Advertising is subliminal. They want gut reactions.”
“… those are the Twin Towers…”
“…these are obviously … supposed to be the towers. i think anyone … can figure that out.”
“When the twin towers were still standing, they were the same size, which is why they called them the twin towers…”


And, most damning of all:

“i work for cingular and thought this was hilarious.”


Hilarious, huh? Well, apparently Cingular is upping the ante by putting up not one, but several of these offensive billboards on the corner of Lafayette and Astor Place, a few blocks north of the World Trade Center! Yes, it’s true: The outrage continues. Worse yet, the representation of the Twin Towers crumbling, falling apart, appears almost exactly where the towers themselves would appear when looking downtown. Out-freakin’-rageous!
Please, we urge you once again to boycott Catherine Zeta Jones, despite her endorsement of T-Mobile. Boycott her because she married that slimy Michael Douglas! This outrage must be stopped!
Earlier: low culture Exclusive: An Outrage Grows in Brooklyn!!!

14 replies on “low culture Exclusive: The Outrage Continues—Continuously!!!”

i cant believe all the folk’s who postered that singuler is not reefering to the WTC twin towres. First of all things anyone whose been on NY knows its totaly clear how the two towels wernt the same hite one was more taller as you can clearly be seen in this link and also too in this link. On the second hand why did the ad have flames comming from it if it wasnt suppose to be 9/11. Some people are just gullable about how much BIG CORPRATIONS want to MAKE MONEY I guess.

This is totally outrageous and unacceptable. I’m never buying Cingular’s products again, or watching any of their television programs, videos, or other affiliated or unaffiliated creations.
AT&T Wiresless would never stoop this low.

should i be surprised that Matt is enough of a moron to inaccurately state that Astor place is “just a few blocks north of the World Trade Center”.
try Yahoo maps next time.
it just takes a few seconds and people like me who work on that block every day won’t groan at your idiocy.

20-25 blocks can be a “few,” Farook. Then again, were the Twin Towers attacked and you were forced to walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge with thousands of other people and Cingular was mocking it and America and everything holy, then 20-25 blocks could be considered ‘many.’
But good looking out, man. You win today’s prize for reader with the best sense of humor. Then again, the competitors were relatively ‘few,’ if you get me. (Eh, you clearly don’t.)

uh,… no. its not a few blocks.
you are exaggerating the facts to add to your percieved outrage. i assumed you were not from NY and talking out of your ass, and the fact that you are is even more embarrassing.
the walk from the WTC site to Astor place goes thru the financial district..
thru tribeca…
thru soho..
and almost all the way to Union Square.
a walk from Astor Place to the WTC site would take 45 minutes in a generous estimate.
but don’t let the facts get in the way of trumping up your exhaulted stand against the man.
any New Yorker who heard you state that Astor Place is a mere “few blocks” from the WTC site would look at you like you were retarded.

Farook, you’re awesome. The “few blocks” description is the only suspect part of this post, huh?
Where do you work on Astor Place? ‘Cause I used to work near there, too, on Cooper Square. Doesn’t that big, curvy building look awful? And do you get fake chicken salad sandwhiches at Karen’s? I could go for one of those right now.

These posters are also up on the approach to the Holland Tunnel – I had to sit and stare at them while waiting in traffic to go into the tunnel. coming back to the city from Thanksgiving…

I seem to recall Matt not merely working around the corner from Astor Place, but, in fact, being evacuated from said workplace due to an anthrax scare circa Oct. 2001.

Has anyone looked into the possibility that these Cingular ads are a signal from Osama Bin-Laden to sleeper terrorist cells in New York? Is Tom “not on MY watch” Ridge’s sudden, out of the blue, resignation from the Homeland Security Chief post somehow tied to these insidious billboard ads? Why is Cingular’s service so shitty in Atlanta? AMERICA NEEDS ANSWERS!

Ted, AT&T Wireless would indeed stoop so low–and it has! This is not simply a Cingular billboard. It announces the merger between AT&T and Cingular–and their joint hatred of New York and the former World Trade Center. Long live inoffensive tin can telephones.

Oh for fuck’s sake, lighten up. This is just an ad. Those are just bare breaking through the top of the border. There’s no corporate conspiracy here. Of course, Low Culture could just be spoofing us with all this EXCLUSIVE! OH MY GOD! OUTRAGEOUS bullshit.
It’s a fuckin ad.

Damn it, if only there were some way we could tell when these tricksters at low culture were spoofing us or not! If only they let us in on their little jokes.

Thank goodness I have Sacrasm-o-meter 2000 installed on my computer. I mean, anytime someone uses that many exclamation marks and the outrage is so… outrageous, surely they have to be serious.

From an informal survey of fellow designers, it’s pretty much agreed that anyone with a visual background (artist, architect, photographer, graphic designer, communication designer, advertiser, etc) would see the connection right away. The towers don’t have to be the same height to invoke the twin towers. (In photographs, in real-life perspective views, they almost never looked the same height) If it has been one bar or three flaming bars, there wouldn’t be this controversy.
Someone very carefully crafted this ad with two bars. It’s extremely doubtful that the designer of the ad was not conscious of this imagery. I would love to get my hands on the the internal notes and memos on this ad campaign. Someone will eventually get fired or lose an account for this.

Comments are closed.