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brian_d_foy (44)

brian_d_foy
  brian.d.foy@gmail.com
http://www.pair.com/~comdog/

Journal of brian_d_foy (44)

Wednesday August 01, 2007
11:05 PM

"Our servers won't go down on you either."

[ #33953 ]

There was a rumor going around OSCON that there was a risque ad in some magazine at OSCON. Flipping through the Linux Journal (August 2007, Issue 160), I found the QSOL.com ad on page 5. It wasn't a just a bad joke.

Most of the ad is a woman's face lit and shot directly from the front. To the right of her face in large, bold letters is "Don't feel bad, Our [sic] servers won't go down on you either." In smaller type under that tag are two paragraphs, starting with "We've all known disappointment."

Despite being crass and misogynist, it's just stupid. I've tried to figure out what the tag really means. I know that the message is that the servers will have high uptime, but that's the opposite feeling of wanting oral sex and not getting it. It is a catchy line, and although I know nothing else about this company, I know I don't like them.

QSOL.com aren't the only misogynistic assholes here, though. Linux Journal didn't have to run the ad. I looked through the rest of the magazine to find pictures of other women, and only found women in the background of other ads which showed conference photos. This is a magazine that uses a picture in the bylines for people such as maddog and Doc Searls. The only prominent picture of any woman in the entire magazine is a reference to oral sex.

Way to go, assholes.


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  • I had the same reaction you did. What a terrible ad.

  • Yeah, well... so surprised, not.
    --
    Kirrily "Skud" Robert perl@infotrope.net http://infotrope.net/

  • That's pretty impressive. In about fifteen seconds they went from being a company I'd never heard of to a company that I would never do business with.

    I suspect that wasn't the intention of the advert.

    • Oh, and sales@qsol.com is the email address if you want to let them know how much you appreciated their advert.
  • I thought it was funny.

    Every geek knows the stereotypical "no girlfriend" label that we have, and it's just a play on that. I think you're trying too hard to be offended.
    • Dude, you're *so* getting flamed...

      For what it's worth, I agree that if people are offended by this, they should probably grow thicker skins. While the stereotypes aren't the same, I don't think a version of this ad with a handsome guy (even shirtless) would offend me. Interestingly, the phrase "to go down on" is used for both, and seems to usually apply to the male-goes-down version; see e.g. here [urbandictionary.com]. So someone with photoshop skillz could easily test this hypothesis.

    • I'm not trying that hard to be offended. I heard about this ad from several people at OSCON who didn't like it and I thought it was a bad joke. I found the real ad, thought it was crass and don't want to quietly stand by while people continue to treat women like this, and I made this post.

      Perhaps you disagree, and that's fine. You can disagree without an ad hominen attack, though.
      • I wasn't trying to attack you. I prefixed it with "I think" because that was just a thought. I'm open to being wrong, and apologize if I offended you.
        • The problem in these cases is that people don't realize the effect of the things they support or say. You say that didn't realize that your post was an attack on me. Is it possible that you also didn't think about the effect of the ad on other people? These things are problems precisely because people do them without considering what harm they might do.

          Without thinking, you accepted the stereotype, endorsed its use, and then tried to undercut the person pointing it out. That is, of course, the exact proces
          • I see far too much political correctness in the world - fuck that. Stereotypes can be funny. See for example the comedy of David Chappelle.

            I thought the ad was funny - poking fun at the geek stereotype. I believe it's *far* better to think the stereotype is funny than to worry about it being hurtful to either sex.

            So I do accept the stereotype. And yes I did think about it, but feel free to throw ad-hominem attacks back at me - way to go.

            • I thought the ad was funny - poking fun at the geek stereotype. I believe it's *far* better to think the stereotype is funny than to worry about it being hurtful to either sex.

              The problem is, worrying or not, it IS hurtful. It's beyond mere political correctness. Getting respect as a woman, in this business in particular, is hard. And this sort of thing palpably makes it harder. It's a shame, but there it is.

              What really makes me boggle is that if there had been some ad geared toward Christians in the magazine, we'd be seeing a huge outcry about it. How dare they alienate atheists! But alienating women? Eh, that's funny!

      • If I thought that were the case I'd vehemently agree. But I see nothing in the ad that implies such a strong correlation.
          • (It's just Matt btw - Matts is just a hangover from my slashdot login)

            The ad is aimed at geeks with a sense of humour, male or female. Most female geeks I've met have a damn good one (you have to have one working with in such an environment). As such it doesn't ignore the presence of female geeks at all.

            That's like saying that David Chappelle's humour insults "white trash" because it ignores their presence in the ghetto.

            The ad is crass, there's no denying that. I just don't find it insultingly so.

            • The ad is aimed at geeks with a sense of humour, male or female. Most female geeks I've met have a damn good one (you have to have one working with in such an environment).

              It is a given that this ad offended a lot of people. They shouldn't not be offended (/me counts the negatives to make sure he got that right) just because it wasn't "aimed" at them. It's the other way around: the companies in question (both LJ and QSOL) should be prepared to accept the vitriol they caused by running the ad.

              That's like saying that David Chappelle's humour insults "white trash" because it ignores their presence in the ghetto.

              What you are saying is like saying the KKK can say whatever it wants to and no one should complain because their message is targetted at white supremacists, and not people who are off

              • Chris, the KKK produce a message of hate. Please lets not lower it to that level.

                • Chris, the KKK produce a message of hate. Please lets not lower it to that level.
                  Let's make a deal: I won't make the message of this ad out to be more serious than you think, if you won't trivialize it to be less harmful than others think.

  • That company ran nearly the same ad in Linux Journal in 2000. Same slogan.
    http://globalnerdy.com/2007/07/14/follow-up-on-qsols-our-servers-wont-go-down-ad / [globalnerdy.com]
    --

    -DA [coder.com]

  • but thanks for the support.... Of course, the ad should have pointed out that the chances of a woman, much less a hot woman like that, going down on some nerd boy reading their mag in the can while waiting for a raid rebuild is pretty remote. :) Fuckwads. Man, I can't wait until all the baby girls the lot of you have had grow up and the few who decide to be engineers will suddenly make my occasional rages seem tame. :)
    • Wait until Pudge's children grow up. In a few years they'll be old enough for their concealed carry permits and I bet I know what they are getting for Christmas!
    • Yeah....seven years later it seems that ladies tech group sure did scare the piss out of those guys, no? Few things are more useless in this industry than an angry women's tech group and huffy geek dudes who still jerk off to porn in the back of the server room and feign offense at the idea that treating women in this business like shit is offensive.
    • Yeah, Pair disabled the image pretty quickly because it got slashdotted/dug/whatevered. Maybe you can get that website to host the image themselves since it's no longer available from me. There is another website hosting it now, and I've updated the link in the original post.
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