What is IKEA saying about the gothic / Dark Subculture Community?

What is IKEA saying about the gothic / Dark Subculture Community? (Pls Fwd)


Today, Catherine my fiancée, showed me this ad campaign from Ikea:
http://links.ikea-usa.com/servlet/Ma...NTQzNjcS1&mt=1



This is not a joke. It is an ad linked to the IKEA website and has been sent out in emails to those people subscribed to their mailers.

At first, this looks like a funny college / back to school ad, but when you look at one of the captions you will see this:
Brightens up your grad’s dorm. Unlike a creepy gothic roommate, who can be a bad influence.”

What does this mean and what is IKEA trying to say here?

There is no reason to make the comment “who can be a bad influence.” How is this helping to sell pillows?

The Gothic / Dark Alternative Subculture gets enough bad press and now having a company like this make a statement such as this one further propagates the misconceptions of the "gothic" culture.

If you are offended by this ad, I urge you to contact IKEA and express your feelings about this. I will be sending them something from Bats Day in the Fun Park. If this is their belief, then I will not purchase anything from IKEA ever again. Please keep in mind; this is a huge corporation, which has an enormous customer base.

Please let IKEA know about your feelings.
Noah Korda
Creator / Organizer
Bats Day in the Fun Park


customer_care@ushelp.ikea.com

1-800-434-4532,
or write us at:
IKEA North America Services, LLC
Attention: Privacy Notice
420 Alan Wood Rd
Conshohocken, PA 19428

USA press contact
Mona Astra Liss
+1-610-8340180-5852

I wondered why they never seemed to have their best-selling black bookcases any more.

Kinda dumb to expect that no one will find their kid going off to college and getting a "gothic roommate" creepy. Come to think of it, also makes very little sense to think that a bunch of black-clad people descending on a Disney theme park won't creep a few people out too.

I got an IKEA card as a gift from a relative when I moved out here. I did notice there were no black sheets. I got no sheets but did get a purple quilt covering and pillow cases. I'll put up a photo when I'm done renovating this place. Beyond that? All black. The one exception was large ceramic "glasses" for water, juice, etc. The white ones seemed sturdier. I would not have shopped there on my own, but it really wasn't that bad.

I doubt I'll shop there again but that is more due to not liking the store atmosphere and getting all dizzy in the damn Mall of America across the street (when I tried to find a damn wireless keyboard amongst 100 acre of grazing shoppers) bleh.

OEC

Wow. That's more like a stab at goths than anything else. But that's still damned hillarious.

Heh, sounds like one of those bad Japanese to English translations.

Noah's a nice guy..i wonder why he is picking a fight with Ikea..lol

I think its a joke.

It's not a joke, someone must have seriously thought it was a good marketing ploy, by alienating a possible portion of their customer base. (Think about it, how many scandanavian Death metal/goth bands have surfaced lately? For Goth's sake, an LORDI won the Eurovision Song Contest last year!)
I was really offended when I saw this, (on another forum) and am annoyed to think people will buy the horrendous pillows because of the offending remark.
But what do you expect from a company whose founder was a fascist?

For some reason, this one doesn't really bother me that much, I mean, the last big publicity IKEA got was when mobs of people were beating each other up in the stores to get super discount items. I guess if a store I enjoyed said something culturally insensitive it might bother me more, but this just blows right by me.

I do have to wonder how many other IKEA ads have been so widely reposted though.


(...and now I have a funny image of Noah Sharpton stuck in my head... ugh...)

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Originally Posted by ForrestBlack

For some reason, this one doesn't really bother me that much, I mean, the last big publicity IKEA got was when mobs of people were beating each other up in the stores to get super discount items. I guess if a store I enjoyed said something culturally insensitive it might bother me more, but this just blows right by me.

I do have to wonder how many other IKEA ads have been so widely reposted though.


(...and now I have a funny image of Noah Sharpton stuck in my head... ugh...)

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Agreed...and...now I have the image..ha..funny..if i wasnt so tired id photoshop something.

Ikea creeps me out

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Originally Posted by Mr Karl

Ikea creeps me out

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It is a creepy shopping experience (although in fairness I usually buy everything online and pay ppl to buy my groceries when possible). The shit is decent if you're a minimalist like me. I bought the basics and will do the real work myself. I would not recommend some of the wood products or furnishings beyond the bare minimum. Some of it looked a bit flimsy.

As to their message: I just can't get too excited about it. I won't go there again, but it is fairly predictable (and has an almost quaint feel you'd expect in some 80s commercial). Fuck em. We get the joke, that's all that matters.:thumb:

OEC

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Originally Posted by Velvet-Tongue

I think its a joke.

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:yeeaaahh:

For the record... if people buying their kids IKEA pillows so they can go off to school and study Business Administration are freaked the f*** out by me and my friends and people who dress like my friends and 19-year-olds who buy my books?

I'm kinda stoked about that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thomasroche

For the record... if people buying their kids IKEA pillows so they can go off to school and study Business Administration are freaked the f*** out by me and my friends and people who dress like my friends and 19-year-olds who buy my books?

I'm kinda stoked about that.

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Mind you, we're not just talking about the sort of people who are "buying their kids IKEA pillows so they can go off to school and study Business Administration;" we're talking about people who are buying orange pillows for this purpose.

I am totally with you.

Aw man, I have seen this on every internet forum I belong to. I can imagine Ikea is getting a ton of hate mail.

Someone did a Goth Macro of it...

http://pics.livejournal.com/pat_man_ta/pic/0001tx0r

I kind of always was a bad influence, though.

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Originally Posted by inox

I kind of always was a bad influence, though.

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Inducing people to get into all sorts of mischief. Perhaps even people whose parents thought orange pillows might ward you off.

Orange is fun to throw revolutions is. It is probably the only t-shirt I can find in the dark. Seriously, though, is a gothis aesthetic really that spooky and subversive these days? These parents need to grow the fuck up. They would be surprised how many of those "spooky gothic roommates" ended up in medical and law school. My law librarians, professors, several doctors I've had etc etc you'd be amazed who is really into it.

Jackie T.

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Originally Posted by Jackie T.

Orange is fun to throw revolutions is. It is probably the only t-shirt I can find in the dark. Seriously, though, is a gothis aesthetic really that spooky and subversive these days? These parents need to grow the fuck up. They would be surprised how many of those "spooky gothic roommates" ended up in medical and law school. My law librarians, professors, several doctors I've had etc etc you'd be amazed who is really into it.

Jackie T.

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Are you saying intellectuals are not subversive? :drolleyes

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Originally Posted by ForrestBlack

Are you saying intellectuals are not subversive? :drolleyes

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No. I just think the aesthetic is being overplayed here in terms of roommates in college. An intellectual may well not go to school and may wear hawaiian shirts. The correlation implied by the ad is just silly. That's why it just makes me laugh.

Jackie T

My biggest problem with it is that it's really badly worded. Also fairly absurd. Judging from a lot of the college kids I know it's more likely that the the Goth kid isn't the bad influence, it's probably more likely the binge drinking dude down the hall who's the bad influence.

... i live in sweden.. the very heart of the evil ikea corporation, here they have all sorts of gothic things, or atleast a skull craze that knows no end....
in fact, they even have a room with just skully things!

i think that we can all agree on that "bad influence" is a very personal thing, it all depends on how you want your kids to be. and to our great dismay, some parents have a compulsive disstaste for subcultures.

i dont blame them, but then again i wouldn't mind if they were hit by a car,driven by a veeeeeeeeeeeeery intoxicated binge drinking bill :P

I lol'd it didint seem like a nasty hurtful thing. a wise man by the name of Joe, first name Bazooka once said " he who laughs last , obviously didint get the joke"

:clapping: i LOVE it.... very very very very good good joke ikea!... :lol_hitti there should be more of it. the trenchcoat kiddy mafia can expect a good bashing from me as long as they don't see me first. if this isn't funny then one of us is a sap. don't be vara vresig. anything swedish ok by me:gruntbad2 ... like "abba" or "In Flames" or their awsome hot ones:thumb: c'mon this is hilarious!!! they must have a good organisational culture there at ikea... not bad for one of the richest goobers in the world. i want to apply for a job there now haha.

varning för hungrig björn!!

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Originally Posted by Amelia G

Inducing people to get into all sorts of mischief. Perhaps even people whose parents thought orange pillows might ward you off.

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Hah! A feeble hope, at best. :D

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Originally Posted by Amelia G

Inducing people to get into all sorts of mischief. Perhaps even people whose parents thought orange pillows might ward you off.

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lol just got the image of a girl in a pink polo shirt and capris holding an orange pillow out and a goth guy hissing and retching away.