In a move worthy of Mike Judge's Silicon Valley, the Daily Mail reports that a startup company has picked an unfortunate logo. In summary:
- Logo unveiled to derision earlier this week
- Thousands took to Twitter to point out it looked like a vagina
- Firm is 'working cooperatively to address this issue' with tech firm Automation Anywhere which has similar logo
One commentator has a Not Safe For Work explanation for what the marketers were thinking.
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Airbnb Hits Back at Ridicule over its New "Vagina" Logo
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:30AM
I really don't think it's *that* much like a vagina. I suspect this is a case of:
a - Some marketing company trying to drum up a bit of media attention for the company with the alleged ladypart logo.
b - The Daily Fail manufacturing outrage.
c - All of the above.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday July 22 2014, @03:58PM
I agree. It looks much more like the truck balls in the picture because the V part is shaped like: ^
The only way it works for vagina is if it is upside down, and the person has her vagina up toward her belly button, which make her anatomically unusual to say the least.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday July 22 2014, @06:03PM
Never seen a girl have wings on her vag? Its actually pretty common, especially if she's ever had a kid. That said i vote for the truckers nuts as i showed the logo to the wife without telling her anything about the "controversy" and said "what does this look like to you?" and she instantly said "its a set of balls" so...yeah its a nutsack.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by BsAtHome on Tuesday July 22 2014, @10:59AM
We humans are predestined to see patterns in everything. We all like to see something familiar in the patterns. We manage to let our imagination run away if we can have a "funny" association with a pattern. An attribute that makes us smile.
It may be far-fetched for some to see the same pattern, but once you push a person's pattern recognition in a direction it will recreate that automatically, regardless of the true pattern. As they say, "A dirty mind is a joy forever.". It is both funny and a shame to see how such an evolutionary system can be used and abused.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Wootery on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:09AM
Still though, it remains that the job of the logo designers is to avoid being bitten by this. They don't get to use the we see patterns in everything defence. Not if other companies manage to avoid these sorts of problems.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by NoMaster on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:32AM
Well, that's the other thing. Some other company didn't avoid that sort of problem either - and they didn't first .
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:43AM
Sure, the designer tries to avoid the "bad" pattern associations and also tries to encourage the "good" patterns associations. If a logo cannot be categorized as a pattern with the correct association by the reader, then it is a bad logo. However, that is a very broad and subjective path.
On the other hand, most patterns can be forcefully associated with something they do not entail. If you repeat an association often enough, then the brain will remember that (that is why annoying commercials work). That can be used for "good" or for "bad". You decide what is "good" and what is "bad" (again a very subjective interpretation).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday July 22 2014, @12:15PM
"Not if other companies manage to avoid these sorts of problems."
I'm a fan of the anatomical part in question. My eyes are just magnetically drawn to the real ones. They sure can be a lot of fun. I should be a great candidate to see that in the logo, but I'm just not seeing it. If you wanted to make a logo that looks like the real thing, there's plenty of examples on the internet to model off of. I'm sitting here thinking, and what species and weight did they use as the model for this supposedly obscene logo...
Its kind of like claiming the old 90s Lucent Technologies "coffee cup ring" logo is an obvious goatse, because after all it is vaguely circular and disproportionately large or ... stretched compared to the text off to the left side.
If you want an example of a logo that resembles something else, the 80s AT&T logo does, almost certainly intentionally, look hilariously like the star wars death star.
Usually when journalists dogpile on some company for no apparent reasons, follow the money, you'll find someone isn't spending "enough" on advertising. Who spends more on legacy media advertising, the hilton advertising chain or this airbnb place? Hmm, I wonder if journalists might possibly have a direct financial interest in giving a company that isn't spreading the wealth to their standards, a huge dose of BS. I suspect some rapidly signed advertising contracts could "fix" the whole problem for airbnb. Same deal with Toyota's cars that only randomly accelerate under certain circumstances of advertising contracts, etc. It is a highly corrupt business in general, so presumption of corruption in individual cases isn't all that bad of an idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @05:36PM
Remember, humans are the same species who managed to find the image of a man holding a sling in a pattern of 7 stars. And to propagate that image for 5000 years.
So yeah, it's not surprising that folks find a bilaterally symmetric image with a central ellipse vaugely vaginal. If it were more circular, it would be anal. And there's a whole other crowd who sees two downwardly convex semicircles and thinks, "balls."
The fact that there's an automation company been using the same image without any complaint for decades is pretty good indication how tenuous this "obscenity" is, though. And just think how much fun it must be for legitimate journalists to have a reason to write "vagina." That word is so taboo that you wouldn't even use it.
(Score: 1) by Wootery on Wednesday July 23 2014, @09:22AM
And here I was thinking all dirty minds were alike ;-P
(Score: 5, Funny) by hoochiecoochieman on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:27AM
That's why most geeks won't see anything when they look at this logo.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday July 22 2014, @12:20PM
Alternately, it could be what geeks see everywhere because they're so deprived of it, kind of like how thirsty people see mirages of water in deserts.
But what is the big deal? I am a pathological vagina addict and I don't see anything wrong with the logo. It looks like a fucking stylized "A". The "clit" isn't even in the right place, the whole thing is inverted. People are honestly making a big deal about nothing.
If any male says that the logo looks like a vagina, it's a sure sign that his nuts haven't dropped yet.
(Score: 1) by caffeinated bacon on Tuesday July 22 2014, @01:31PM
Your a vagina addict and you have never seen one inverted?
Hmm something seems fishy here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @02:53PM
> inverted
We usually call that "laying face down". Maybe you could try something other than missionary next time you have sex?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:33AM
Those who didn't see patterns in the savannah landscape were retreated earlier from the gene pool (if you see a lion pattern and no lion is there, all that happened to you is an unnecessary run for the closest tree. The consequences are harsher if there is a lion but you failed to see even something that resembles the pattern of one).
I suspect seeing patterns it is not unique to humans; even though it may be only humans to look [tumblr.com] for patterns [buzzfed.com] in the clouds [imgur.com].
(I think I'm going to need a brain-washing session, clearly reading SN tends to soyl this mind of mine. See you at the meeting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:17PM
Thus sprang religion.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by whathappenedtomonday on Tuesday July 22 2014, @08:15PM
Pareidolia [wikipedia.org] (the pattern seeking mechanism in our brain) is what makes the Rorschach inkblot test work. Whether people have a "funny" association with your new logo or not should be quite easy to find out. Hey, it's science, not rocket science!
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
(Score: 3) by Konomi on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:26AM
When I first seen their logo I didn't think "That looks like a vagina" at all, maybe I am finally maturing? Or is the world just full of perverts who like to read into everything too much? Looks like a bent paper clip shaped into an aerial to me...
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday July 22 2014, @11:54AM
The other week I was at a large marketing firm that was designing a new logo for Jackson Hewitt. At the end of the day one of the partners of the company was talking to us about the new logo and pointed to one that looked like a stylized middle finger. No one but her looked at it like that and once you see it, you can unsee it.
And that is what happened here. One person said it looks like a vagina and now everyone thinks it looks like a vagina even if it really does not.
(Score: 5, Funny) by hubie on Tuesday July 22 2014, @01:39PM
Kind of like the Chicago White Socks poncho giveaway [bustle.com] recently.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Tuesday July 22 2014, @12:00PM
Is everyone 12?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by kwerle on Tuesday July 22 2014, @03:46PM
On the internet? Yup.
(Score: 1) by chewbacon on Tuesday July 22 2014, @12:33PM
I don't think I'd see it as a vagina if I didn't read this first. Not as obvious as the Starbucks logo looking like a girl with her legs behind her ears.
(Score: 5, Informative) by tdk on Tuesday July 22 2014, @02:56PM
Actually the starbucks logo is a girl with her legs (rather twin tails) behind her ears.
http://colleenanderson.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/starbucks-and-the-censored-mermaid/ [wordpress.com]
Take back your internet [squte.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @03:08PM
Well, the Starbucks logo is a girl with legs behind her ears. Except that she's half fish.
Current Starbucks logo [wikimedia.org]
Original Starbucks logo [wikimedia.org]
Inspiration for original logo [flickr.com]
Apparently two tails was some sailor/artist's solution to the mermaid problem [tvtropes.org]. (Warning! TVTropes link!) And, yes, she's tucking her tails/legs behind her head.
You can be forgiven for thinking it's a dirty picture when it's literally an adaptation of a dirty picture.
(Score: 2) by Ken_g6 on Tuesday July 22 2014, @02:15PM
Any logo designed to look like a heart is necessarily also going to look like a butt. (Arse for those thinking cigarettes.) Because a heart shape isn't designed to look like an actual heart...
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday July 22 2014, @02:25PM
> a butt. (Arse for those thinking cigarettes.
Do you mean a fag?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:31PM
a heart shape isn't designed to look like an actual heart
Completing the circle here, a cardioid is designed to look like an engorged vulva.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by sl4shd0rk on Tuesday July 22 2014, @04:03PM
i wonder which company is going to adopt a pecker-shaped logo
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tramii on Tuesday July 22 2014, @04:18PM
It's already happened. https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/230/508971193_0b0c3234ae_z.jpg [staticflickr.com]
(It's from some martial arts studio near my house)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday July 22 2014, @07:35PM
Oldsmobile used to have a "rocket" logo. For that matter all the classic space-ship designs don't make much sense (unless you worry about streamlining for something that's spends almost all it's life in a hard vacuum). OTOH, they did look like a V2, and for the V2 it does make sense. This is sort of a form follows function kind of thing. Anything that needs to penetrate a resistive medium will be shaped about the same. Look at dolphins and fish.
The thing is, people are predisposed to see certain images, and force anything relatively similar into the same category. They also favor familiar images. The result is that sometimes things that are only slightly similar still get forced into the same category.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by strattitarius on Tuesday July 22 2014, @09:15PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOQsvOkkLq4
br Joe G: well theres no way I can argue with that
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