Proud Olympic sponsor Coca-Cola, recently implicated in the detention and arrest of a gay rights advocate in Russia, has a new problem with the worldwide gay community. It seems that Coke’s social media campaign, “Share a Coke,” is only designed for heterosexuals.
The site, which permits Coke fans to enter their name (or a message) on a virtual can of Coke, bans the word “gay.” It does not, however, ban the word straight.
When you type in the word “gay,” here’s the messsage that Coke gives you:
“Oops. Let’s pretend you didn’t just type that.”
Yes, wouldn’t Coke like to pretend that the gay didn’t exist at all, considering the backlash Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and other Olympics sponsors
have been facing over their refusal to speak out against increasing
Russian human rights violations. McDonald’s, for example, just saw gay
rights advocates, led by Queer Nation NY, steal and neutralize its new
“Cheers to Sochi” Twitter hashtag.
In the case of Coke, the soft drink giant was already in hot water with the gay community for permitting Olympic security personnel to wear the Coke logo while they arrested a gay Russian dissident.
Coke even had the temerity to publicly defend the arrest of the gay rights advocate for waving a rainbow flag during the Olympic flame relay.
Here are some screen shots showing the Coke social media campaign
tool in action. First, you type in the word “straight,” and Coke makes
you a nifty little Coke can that you can send around the Web to all your
straight friends:
Next, you type in the word “gay.”
Rather than get a nifty little gay can to go along with your
straight can, you instead see a rather insulting message from Coke
telling you that we should pretend you didn’t just attempt to type the
word “gay.”
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