Update: Hey, BenQ’s yanked the site! Serves me right for not blogging it this weekend.
Here’s something that they fail to mention in university: cultural insensitivity isn’t the sole domain of mighty whitey. Check out the promo site that Taiwanese electronic manufacturer BenQ set up for their MusiQ MP3 player:
“What, too soon?” Screenshot of BenQ’s site for the MusiQ. Click to see it at full size.
The text translates as “Even if the world is destroyed to dust, I still believe in music.” That’s just silly.
The real problem is the background image. It’s been darkened and they’ve photoshopped some spotlights in, but that’s unmistakably the rubble of the World Trade Center in the background.
That’s about as appropriate as these ad concepts I whipped up…
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I devise the following axiom:
“If there’s still a war being fought over it, it’s probably too soon”
Um… BenQ is a Taiwanese company, so I don’t think they would care too much about Tiananmen.
Well…
a) Taiwan is a Chinese-controlled territory. As Chinese government would love to tell you over and over again, “Taiwan is our bitch!” and its formal name is Republic of China (Taiwan).
(I’m ignoring the fact that the Chinese government would love to say that the massacre at Tienanmen Square never happened.)
b) I’m taking “poetic license” here — there aren’t any Taiwanese human-caused tragedies that folks in North America would relate to, so I picked a Chinese one, since technically, Taiwan is part of China.
Taiwan is not part of China.
YES IT IS HIPPIE
Taiwan is a part of China the way America is a part of England.