Rihanna just ended Snapchat pic.twitter.com/3BEXgMqhVk
— Trashvis (@Trashvis) March 15, 2018
Rihanna, mogul, Grammy winner, and witch with the ability to turn trash looks into Haute couture, had to take Snapchat to task for a terrible ad they had on their platform. The ad in question, as shown above, is for a game called “Impossible Choices” that asks you to pick between two choices and featured is a question that asks if you would rather “slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown”?
Now, the ad space on Snapchat was bought by the people behind the game, and Snapchat has already removed the ad, but it never should have made it through their oversight process in the first place—not to mention that it should’ve never been created, period. In a statement to the BBC, the company said, “The advert was reviewed and approved in error, as it violates our advertising guidelines. We immediately removed the ad last weekend, once we became aware. We are sorry that this happened.”
Bad ads are a problem across the internet (including here) and can be difficult to deal with, but massive success must also come with massive responsibility. Despite recent struggles, Snapchat has reached many millions of people, which definitely includes victims of domestic abuse. That’s what Rihanna’s biggest grievance with the issue as she shared on Instagram stories, saying, “Now SNAPCHAT I know you already know you ain’t my fav app out there! But I’m just trying to figure out what the point was with this mess! I’d love to call it ignorance but I know you ain’t that dumb. You spent money to animate something that would intentionally bring shame to DV victims and made a joke of it.”
It is not just about her; it’s about every man or woman who’s been a victim of DV. The tackiness of the ad is disgusting, and I hope that whoever created it gets a huge amount of backlash from it, but let’s be frank about the incident in question.
The violence Chris Brown inflicted on Rihanna was not a slap. Chris Brown beat Rihanna, badly. It is an incident that has followed both artists throughout their careers, and while it marked the beginning of the series of massive screw-ups on Brown’s part, it has been something that Rihanna has worked through to become a sexually liberated businesswoman and recording artist.
None of that erases the fact that this incident will follow her throughout the rest of her life. It was a public event that brought both sympathy and victim-blame to Rihanna’s doorstep when she was 20/21 years old, with someone she loved. It doesn’t erase that there are people to this day who say that she did something to provoke Brown beating her.
That shouldn’t be made light of, and it sure as hell shouldn’t be a shitty question in a shitty game.
(via Trashvis on Twitter, image: LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP/Getty Images)
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