We all know the Internet is full of “dark alleys” featuring content that is clearly not suitable for children. In fact, an entire cross-section of software development is devoted to filtering the web, making it “safer” for the younger users out there, while giving parents some peace of mind. One thing the United States hasn’t done, at least not to my knowledge, is to create public service announcement about the dangers of children using the web in an unsupervised manner using some well-known pornographic memes.
Enter the Romanian group, Beneva.ro. A quick glance around the site indicates they are watchdog/protection agency for Romanian woman. A translated stanza from their site reveals as much, “Did you know that in Romania a woman gets beat four instead of receiving flowers?” As the “four” indicates, there’s still a gap between web translations and the intention of the copy editor, but the message still resonates. This brings us to the “protect children from the Internet” ads that showed up over at BuzzFeed.
Granted, the public service images were presented as children’s drawings instead of the actual pornographic scenes/images that inspired them. The campaign content, see if you can tell what they’re related to. The first one is easy, provided you were on the Internet during the “Two Girls, One Cup” phenomenon:
Any clue about the last two? If not, you may want to Google “lemon party” and “goatse,” but be warned, do NOT click anything BUT the Wikipedia link. In fact, just go read the Wikipedia “Shock site” entry to avoid any unwanted gross out sessions.
As for the ads, do they inspire you to keep your children safe? Considering the content they’re mimicking and the implications of the ads–that is, if you don’t monitor your children when they’re online, they could wind up visiting the kind of content that would make an adult uncomfortable–the message, while extreme, is an effective one.
You thoughts?