Tearing Down Woke Subway Ads

Advertising is propaganda. We all know this, and many of us are perfectly fine with it, as long as it’s merely economic propaganda, such as the message, implied or explicit, that you should love and consume our products.

“Drink milk” is propaganda. So are public health campaigns to influence behavior, such as “safe sex,” suicide prevention, dental hygiene, or addiction prevention.

That’s right: it’s “propaganda” if it is messaging that aims to influence – regardless of whether the influence is harmful. If the influence is in fact harmful, the propaganda could also be called “manipulation.”

In other words, propaganda may or may not be harmful, and therefore may or may not also be manipulation.

Degenerate business advertising

When a successful business uses their considerable audience, resources, and advertising acumen to influence behavior in ways that are harmful to individuals, families, or society, I call that business “degenerate.”

By that standard, OK Cupid is certainly a degenerate business. OK Cupid is an online dating service founded in 2004 and currently owned by Match Group, which also owns many other popular dating sites including Tinder, Hinge, and Plenty of Fish. Their recent ad campaign saturates public spaces where even children will see the ads, such as multiple posters in NYC subway cars, massive posters that cover the entire sides of buildings, and billboards. The “DTF” campaign explicitly promotes degenerate values and behaviors such as homosexuality, promiscuity, miscegenation, transgenderism and the poisonous “cancel culture” idea that declining to date a man you otherwise like because he rejects the claims and values of feminism isn’t bigotry at all, and in fact is perfectly normal and healthy, rather than infantile and a little bit weak. (Feminists are the real misogyninsts; they hate femininity.)

Here’s a sample of the company’s “DTF” posters, from a Bing image search. You have to search very hard to find any “normal” relationships depicted here. (For you non-Moderns, “DTF” means “Down To F—.” It’s a dog whistle for promiscuity, and all the kids know it, even if the advertising agencies pretend not to.)

Bring back the shame

Not everyone is taking this public, perverted excresence lying down. A video posted to social media shows a young woman angrily tearing down OK Cupid ad posters in a subway car, while preaching to the (mostly cowed) passengers about the dangers of desensitizing children to perversion.

“This is propaganda,” she says. “This is disgusting… This is never going to go away until We the People say we don’t want this anymore.”

Courageous and brilliant. Someday, she’ll be a “Tiger Mom.”

Inspired by her example, I pledge to tear down degenerate business advertising wherever I see it.

I hope you will do the same.