A lot has been said about the incident in Boston last week where guerilla marketing was mistaken for a terrorist attack. Boston has been jeered for overreacting. The Cartoon Network has been chastised for bad judgment. The two slackers who put up the electronic devices have been alternately crucified and hailed by various factions.
All in all, I doubt I can add much to the frenzy of tempers and outrage and clucking that surrounded the (let’s be generous) misunderstanding. But I can highlight the most surreal moment of the whole ridiculous happening.
In case you don’t know, Cartoon Network attempted to promote its Adult Swim lineup staple “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” by placing crude LED signs (a sort of 21st-century Lite Brite) around ten cities. These ads went fairly unnoticed in nine of the metropolises but caused a major scare in Boston. Moreover, these signs featured the Aqua Teen characters Err and Ignignokt, both Mooninites (a pesky race of moon creatures that look not unlike rudimentary video game aliens such as Space Invaders). And they were depicted giving the finger. Of course, you can imagine how graphic a Space Invader would be flipping the bird – about as clear as a fuzzy UHF channel before cable.
Well, here’s where the real insanity begins. Some news outlets saw fit to not only obscure the extended digit on the signs (more of an extended line really), as if blurring out a wardrobe malfunction, but to photoshop the Mooninite middle finger out of the picture entirely!
Take a good glimpse and gander at the ludicrous obfuscation for yourself: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/31/boston_channel_photo.html
Yes. Stalwart members of the fourth estate sought to protect hapless citizens from the perils of a cartoon sign’s extended digitus medicus.
If they could only protect us from the likes of Marmaduke and George Will as well.
