September 25, 2021
-New York Post
UNBELIEVABLY BASED (Pt.1) pic.twitter.com/TcBZWmchBC
— Unbelievably Based Asian Lady (@DamnNobueno) September 22, 2021
More like “Ok Stupid.”
A fed-up New Yorker tore down lurid subway advertisements for the dating app OK Cupid.
“All of this is gross. For kids to be looking at this, is that OK??” she said in viral videos posted to Twitter on Wednesday.
The woman walked up and down the D train car, ripping the ads down — while ranting about COVID-19 and communism — as silent, masked straphangers looked on.
It’s not clear just when the video was recorded. The colorful ads began to appear on subway trains over the summer.
“Nicely done,” another woman told her. “That’s what bravery looks like. Say ‘No’ to propaganda.”
The provocative ads target “non-monogamists,” monogamists, “pansexuals,” potheads, “bears,” fetishists, and just about every other group.
One aimed at “submissives” features women trampling an epicene man, who reaches out to grab one’s foot.
Another directed toward “introverts” shows two people of indeterminate sex, one kneeling before the other in a pose suggestive of oral sex.
There’s also a threesome, and one up-close image of two tongues slithering into one.
“If fondling your partner while she sits on what appears to be a quiche is your thing, by all means go for it. I would just prefer not to have to spend half an hour sitting in the room where you’re doing it,” one beleaguered commuter, who declined to give his name, griped to The Post.
“Ok Cupid’s ads make me into a nonconsensual participant in the sex lives of strangers twice a day, every day. It just skeeves me out.”
Netizens slammed the campaign online.
“You realize kids ride the subway in NYC right? imagine having to explain ‘pansexual’ ‘S&M’ or ‘submissive’ to a curious, impressionable child who is too young to understand those concepts properly?” one tweeted at the company, which did not respond.
“Insane to me that okcupid, a dating app company, has put up a bunch of ads in the nyc subway that seem like they’re marketed at 5 year olds,” another said.
A rep for the MTA, Eugene Resnick told The Post: “The MTA is subject to the First Amendment, which limits the restrictions that may be placed on which ads to accept. There is a review process for subway advertisements, the OK Cupid ads went through that process and were determined not to violate MTA guidelines.”
However, the supposedly content-neutral agency has in the past rejected pro-life spots.
With regard to the vandalism video, Resnick said: “Customers are free to express their disdain with subway advertisements, but they are not permitted to destroy them. Riders who violate that basic principle are subject to prosecution.”
The agency refused to say how much it made from the ad campaign.
Ok Cupid’s chief marketing officer, Melissa Hobley, said “many” have contacted the company to praise the ad campaign. “A much smaller few have had shockingly vitriolic reactions to it; but these reactions only serve to make it even more clear that we must continue to champion people who are historically underrepresented. Whether you’re a non-binary person, an environmentalist, a vaccine advocate, or all of the above, you deserve to find what you’re looking for on OkCupid,” she said.
Past ad spots for the data-hoovering company have included posters saying: “IT’S OK TO CHOOSE MR. RIGHT BASED ON HOW FAR LEFT HE LEANS,” and “IT’S OK TO CHOOSE TO ONLY DATE SOMEONE WHO’S PRO CHOICE.”
The promiscuity-promoting app also recently turned out a pro-choice “profile badge.”
After Texas’s “heartbeat bill” went into effect early this month, Ok Cupid’s parent company, Match Group — which also owns Tinder — said it would pay for Texas-based employees to get out-of-state abortions, according to Bloomberg.
CEO Shar Dubey told employees then that the company generally avoids political stands “unless it is relevant to our business.”
