“Writing microcopy is hard, but also, some people are just stupid.” — pretty much explains it.

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This is fucking ridiculous. Even the reason given is ridiculous: they bought drapes to permanently hide two statues of which one has a bare boob, *because they were sick of hiring drapes at two grand a pop every time they held a formal event*. Well how about you *get the fuck over it & let the boob show?* Purile fuckheads.

Basically, “get over it” is an aggressively dismissive phrase & tends to provoke angry responses. Sticking “Some people are gay. Get over it!” on the side of a bus was always going to bring out the straight supremacists. I myself agree with the slogan entirely, including the dismissiveness, but seriously, some people are going to be offended & retaliate with an opposing message. Get over it!

The homophobic ad read “Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!“, & was banned on the grounds that it was discriminatory. Stonewell has said that it shouldn't have been, for which I applaud them: I'm generally a fervent supporter of US First Amendment–style free speech, & believe that no level of repugnancy disqualifies an opinion from public expression.

Note however that I wrote _generally_ fervent: I make a single principled exception, namely, that freedom of expression does not apply to intentional factual claims which are incorrect. This is a slippery slope, a *very* slippery slope, so it could only be legally implemented in a country where the judiciary has interpretive leeway (i.e., a common law system) & where science is enshrined in constitution & even in the very principles of the law. Without judicial interpretive leeway, someone could easily find themselves on the wrong side of the law just by stating an urban myth as though it were true on a TV show, which would be horrific. Without science & rigorous scientific thinking being woven into the fabric of society & the legal system, it would be too easy for policy mistakes like the food pyramid or the danger of saturated animal fats to become legally inviolable, yet at the same time allowing kooks to that claim homosexuality is a disease, that AIDS *isn't* a disease, or that there's no such thing as anthropogenic climate change. Scientific validity isn't reached through popularity, not even popularity with scientists. It's reached through rigour: thoroughness, replicability, hardiness in the face of earnest falsification attempts, predictive ability, & a number of other factors.

Aaaanyway, the point of that little tangent was that while I don't believe the ad should have been banned for the reason it was, I do believe it should have been banned. It implicitly but clearly makes the claim that being gay can be cured. Once we didn't know how homosexuality worked, & that would have been a fair & defensible claim; now we do, & it's not. Being ‘cured’ of homosexuality isn't just rare, it simply doesn't happen. The anecdotes from insane Christian extremist “Camp” alumni turn out to be cases of repression & re-closeting upon close inspection, & most of the high-profile ‘cured’ gays have been revealed to be frauds to boot. There is simply no scientifically credible evidence that homosexuality can be trained, pep-talked, willed, prayed, or hypnotised away, & there is reams of coherent, mutually consistent, large- & small-scale scientifically credible evidence that it can't. STFU with your proven falsehoods; your culture, religion, beliefs, moral convictions, or daily fucking horoscopes can't stand up to science, & it doesn't matter how you try to justify your shit or discredit the truth, the weight of scientific enquiry will always beat you.

Auto-generates business/social-media douchespeak

As the subtitle says, "C'mon, we all know you're not really going to delete it.". Or at least almost all these people will move on to another ethically identical product or come back to Instagram in the future. Finally, these people are posting this on Twitter...LOL. And how many have a Facebook account they use more than once a month? of these people

Article says "When people write critically about Facebook, they often say that “you are the product being sold,” but I think that by now we all get that...Thus it is a critical choice of any adult as to where they will perform their free labor. Tens of millions of people made a decision to spend their time with the simple, mobile photo-sharing application that was not Facebook because they liked its subtle interface and little filters. And so Facebook bought the thing that is hardest to fake. It bought sincerity."

This is complete BS. As commenter, TEDPAVLIC, states, "wasn't the original (sincere?) point of Instagram was to be bought by a company like FB? They weren't making any money. They were just developing good mobile software (whose web presence depended on _other_ websites) that could be easily plugged into a larger beast. Seems to me like they were begging to be bought. I'm guessing there was a decent return on that investment. So is Instagram that "sincere?" Wasn't Instagram meant for exactly this?"

Ugh

Comment thread encompasses all that is stupid with people and companies. As one of the comments says, "everyone fancies themselves as a hipster". You can't be using Instagram or Hipstamatic and claim you're too hip for Facebook.

The reddit discussion thread with over 1000 comments relating to The Guardian's decent, but still pandering or conservative article about Liam Stacey. Ridiculous that this guy is going to jail in a first world country like the UK.