Sprint Quickly Pulls Video Ad Calling T-Mobile 'Ghetto' (fiercewireless.com) 201
An anonymous reader writes: Sprint has pulled an ad in which it was calling its competitor, T-Mobile, "ghetto." The ad featured company's CEO Marcelo Claure. "I'm going to tell you a carrier name and I want you to basically tell me what comes to your mind," Claure said in the ad. "T-Mobile. When I say T-Mobile to you, just a couple of words?" Which is when a white woman chimes in, "Oh my god the first word that came to my head was ... ghetto." "That sounds, like, terrible," she says. "I don't know't know. There's always, like, three carriers; there's AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. And people who have T-Mobile are just, like... Why do you have T-Mobile?""We're sharing real comments from real customers," Claure wrote in the aftermath of criticism. "Maybe not the best choice of words by the customer. Not meant to offend anyone."
What a stupid bitch (Score:1, Interesting)
T-Mobile is by far the best carrier for the money. I don't frequently espouse that opinion because I consider them the "best kept secret" and don't want other people over-subscribing the network.
Maybe racism is just an elaborate ruse by wealthy white people to keep Jazz music to themselves?
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If you live in a big city, t-mobile is great. If you live in a smaller town... well, I lose signal when I go for a walk in the wrong direction. Still better than coverage than sprint though.
Re:What a stupid bitch (Score:4, Funny)
I disagree. I live in a small town, and T-mo was basically unusable, whereas Sprint is almost OK, but still very problematic.
But it's a lot better than Verizon because I don't have to trade my car in for a beater and move into a shack to pay the phone bill.
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What company is this?
I'm using Ting, which is a similar company that uses Sprint and T-Mo (but not Verizon). I like it; it's pretty cheap and their customer service is good. I guess they can afford lower prices since they don't have to support thousands of retail shops...
And yes, Carlos Slim is a telecom billionaire in Mexico, one of the richest men in the world IIRC.
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I used to have T-Mobile, and I found that my data coverage basically disappeared when I was more than 5 miles away from a major highway.
It seemed to be faster than AT&T when I was in an urban area, though.
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See, that's the thing with T-Mobile. When you're near a major highway, the reception usually fine even in rural areas. You get away from the highway and get into the boondocks, though... no coverage.
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T-Mobile is by far the best carrier for the money.
Agreed.
And, oddly enough, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear "Sprint" is "white trash".
Re:What a stupid bitch (Score:5, Funny)
And, oddly enough, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear "Sprint" is "white trash".
What's odd about that? Sprint is NASCAR's biggest sponsor.
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God, I hate advertisers.
"T-Mobile. When I say T-Mobile to you, just a couple of words?"
Which is when a white woman chimes in, ... ghetto."
"Oh my god the first word that came to my head was
"That sounds, like, terrible," she says.
"I don't know. There's always, like, three carriers; there's AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. And people who have T-Mobile are just, like... Why do you have T-Mobile?"
That woman is, like, stupid. When I see a huge company like Sprint take something like that and show it to other people, this is what it sounds like to me:
At Sprint, our customers are idiots. Are you an idiot too, like this customer? Then you should come to Sprint.
Just like the idiotic Toyota commercials which play on both radio and TV. "Hi, this is Pat! I can't answer the phone, because I'm a fucking idiot without a cell phone who changes the message on his answering machine every time he leaves the house. I like Toyotas!" Yeah, I really want to give my money to a company yelling about
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You know... In the 1980s, I stopped watching much in the way of television. Things like this? They make me feel good about that. I do kind of miss Nova and I've seen some Independent Lens stuff that was good. So, I'm mostly happy with that and, besides, the 'net has scads of documentaries uploaded.
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>Almost all jazz (and modern music) is based on the I-VI-II-V progression from "I've got rhythm", by George Gerswin
No it isn't.
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Some folks think that because some white guy defined what an octave means that all music was invented by Europeans. It's very close minded. Jazz is a combination of European and African music.
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I don't presume to know any good accounting for any national origin of aspects of music today. I do know that the diatonic scale and its modes appeared independently in different places and so did the pentatonic scales. Jazz is a broad thing. It's easy to identify tributaries from multiples genres in multiple places. The harmonic minor was common in European classical music, is rampant in Middle Eastern music and pops up all over the place.
Trying to claim some musical style or scale or chord progression is
Re: What a stupid bitch (Score:3, Insightful)
...but there were no negroes in the Hot Club in Paris playing with Stepane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt and their crazy gypsy buddies.
Nor would there have been, considering the club opened in '34 and jazz originated decades earlier in New Orleans... but thanks for playing. ;)
Re:What a stupid bitch (Score:5, Informative)
The Hot Club in Paris was founded in 1931. Django didn't even start playing guitar until 1928. King Oliver was playing jazz in New Orleans in the mid-1910s. But Buddy Bolden had already been playing jazz in New Orleans as early as 1905. That was before the term "jazz" was even invented, and before Stephane Grapelli or Django Reinhardt had even been born.
Buddy Bolden is considered by jazz musicians, historians and musicologists as having started the first band that played improvised music of the type later known as "jazz".
Now, don't you feel a little bit stupid?
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I honestly love the history of music lesson and telling a bigoted cretin to shove it, but I came here to learn more about what's wrong with T-Mobile.
But once I realized what was going on, I have to say the only way they could have done worst is record the commercial in Yiddish and air it in central Europe.
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but what Bolden was playing, "jass", was just a new orleans style of ragtime, really. rag was of course invented by blacks in the later 19th century.
song by one of rags big founders, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
which I link just to piss off you SJW psychological marshmallow types
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No, there are other, qualitative differences between ragtime and what Bolden was playing. They have the syncopation in common, but that's about where the similarity ends. Bolden added the harmonic substitutions, the iconic progressions and most important, the improvised solo voices that make jazz jazz.
I realize that your post was just an excuse to post a racist image, but I don't want erroneous information to go unchallenged.
Also,
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No, I'm trying to show that cultural appropriation is one of the best things that humans do, when it's done respectfully. And when it's not done respectfully, it's usually a disaster.
To take it one step further, did you know that at the turn of the 20th century, there was a phenomenon of black people imitating white people imitating black people? Early popular black musicians copied the over-the-top behavior of the racist black-f
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Power chord is 3 notes a 5th and an octave from the chord tone such as C,G,C this is common in rock guitar because the fingering pattern is simple and is the first three notes of a bar chord finger pattern but it is not the only fingering pattern to omit the 3rd interval of a chord that's common in rock guitar a 4th is also very common because it is even simpler than the power chord and only uses one finger {check out some Randy Rhoads}. When the guitar plays a 4th such as G, C another guitar, bass, or pos
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Awesome improvisational trolling. Biddly-bap-troll-a-bop-BOOM-BANG!
Blacks invented trolling. When the master's wife was on the rag, they'd hide under bridges.
They'd jam under there. Oppression doesn't stifle Slashdot. It enhances it.
Troll-a-boom ding,Ding,DING boom-diddly-bop-BANG!
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Wooooosh.
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Woosh-diddly-oh-bop-a-dop, Yeeeeah! All you hep cats.
Band 12 (Score:2)
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Sprint's customer service is ghetto.
Ting and FI are brilliant.
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For you maybe. For my family's 4 lines, it's far more than adequate for our usage, where we use it, and for the price we pay.
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Throwing your customers under the bus... (Score:2)
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Not to mention that the video shows HIM nodding and saying "yes" when she says that.
HE chose to go ahead with that video.
HE chose to include that scene in the commercial.
HIS company's logo is on that commercial.
No. It was not that woman. HE chose all of that. He could have left it out.
Now he's trying to blame her. Fuck him.
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Oh no, Sprint makes a bad choice of advertising approaches, and people chose to express their offense at it!
My word. Next people will expect TRUTH in advertising.
Seriously, what hoops did they have to jump through? It's not exactly hard to find another set of remarks to use if they want to say something negative about their competitors, tasteless though I think that is.
But hey, maybe we can call in the anti-PC police! That'll teach people to give feedback about something they don't like!
Ghetto = Didn't bend you over for the Feds (Score:4, Interesting)
As the only major carrier that told the Feds to get a warrant before they would provide access to all of your private data, Hero comes to mind before ghetto.
Re:Ghetto = Didn't bend you over for the Feds (Score:5, Funny)
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T-Mobile (Score:3)
Isn't that bad. I've been with them for a while (7 years), and prices/wifi calling and so on are pretty good.
The only issues I've had is coverage in remote areas (places that A&T/Sprint/Verizon didn't work well either) and inside buildings. Their new LTE
network is supposed to fix the inside building thing, and I've just used wifi inside.
I think some of the pay as you go (burner) phones are way more ghetto.
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So, we used to be hillbillies, and Verizon was the only carrier that worked worth a damn anywhere near our house.
Now that we've moved into the big city, we can get equal coverage from T-Mobile for a much lower price. Sure, when we go back out to the sticks T-Mobile still doesn't work out there as well as Verizon, but there's more than a few reasons why we left that life and we certainly don't go back and visit often.
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We put a booster and antenna on our house out in the sticks (we don't even get TV reception) and now our T-mobile works great. $30 for unlimited data.
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You know those coverage maps that show strong, moderate, etc. For T-Mobile, we were in the "you're 5 miles from the interstate and 10 miles from downtown SOL" zone.
rest of her comment... (Score:3, Interesting)
“I don't know't know. There's always, like, three carriers; there's AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. And people who have T-Mobile are just, like... well, you know, they’re like black and minorities and poor and stuff, and those people, like, live in, like, you know, the ghetto...”
Funnier still (Score:2)
Sprint is now the smallest carrier in the US. T-Mobile overtook them some time ago.
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I thought T-mobile originated in Germany, where ghettoes are where all the Jews lived. For black and minorities and poor and stuff, y'all be talking Boost and MetroPCS, dawg.
Gratuitous low-grade racism aside, I do notice that MetroPCS ads seem to feature more Hispanics. Anyone familiar with the relative performance and target markets of the secondary carriers (Boost, MetroPCS, Cricket, others ?)
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Dunno about their target market, but I'm a "single working professional" switching to a secondary carrier (Cricket) now that AT&T is doing away with subsidies in future contracts, and letting me out of my existing contract by increasing the unlimited data fee.
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Gil Scott-Heron - The Get Out Of The Ghetto Blues
https://youtu.be/j33VsAn0VtU [youtu.be]
According to my friend at Sprint... (Score:2)
Double Standard (Score:1)
"Don't do crack, it's a ghetto drug" -- Jesse Jackson
(and of course, not a single peep from anyone).
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Wait, what? You mean we can't buy, sell, or trade black people any more?
So does that mean I have to unchain those three fellers in the back yard or do I get to grandfather 'em in?
(I'm part black, by the way.)
Sprint customers must be inarticulate (Score:4, Funny)
So Sprint must be for self-absorbed inarticulate people, if you use their marketing example as benchmark.
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Actually I was on Sprint for over 10 years and moved to T-Mobile.
Sprint's network was useless. I had data rates that made a dialup modem look fast. I waited years for Sprint to fix the issues and left for T-Mobile.
I now have good LTE service in most places.
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Comment removed (Score:3)
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Speaking as somebody who frequently travels (both on business trips and pleasure ones) T-Mobile's free international roaming is a huge deal for me. Until another carrier offers that, or offers sufficiently-cheaper service to make up for the difference of adding that, I will most likely stick to TMo. Being able to get off the plane anywhere in the world and immediately have my phone work is just magical, as is being able to text my girlfriend without even needing to buy a new SIM and tell her the new number.
Three is, like, four. (Score:2)
There's always, like, three carriers; there's AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. And people who have T-Mobile are just, like... Why do you have T-Mobile?"
'Cause "like, three carriers" can actually mean four carriers - dumb ass.
[ I use Ting which uses Sprint (and Verizon) for CDMA and T-Mobile for GSM. ]
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Whatever happened to the big five?
You know att, verizon, alltel, sprint, tmobile.
I know verizon ate alltel but that was years ago what ever happend to this won't harm competition?
Wasn't some other company supposed to step up and be the new number five?
Ironically, around here... (Score:1)
Boost Mobile, the MVNO that targets the urban youth demographic, runs on Sprint's network.
Happy customer (Score:5, Insightful)
I love to see the look on the faces of my ATT friends when I tell them I only pay $50/month for unlimited text/calls/data (up to 2GB at 4g then throttled back after that). I also have rollover data, so what I don't use gets put on the next month's "allowance". They just sent me a text the other day showing I have about 6GB of 4g-speed data to use.
And recently they mentioned something about certain kinds of streaming traffic not counting towards your monthly allotment. I haven't really looked into it yet.
On a personal note, the attitude of that customer makes me sick. I have friends and family of different races. I know people who live "in the ghetto". They are not subhumans you can look down your nose at...what a bitch.
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Re: Happy customer (Score:2)
I'm on tmobile paying $40/month for the same plan as yours, except I get 3gb/month high speed data to your 2mb, and mine doesn't roll over.
Just checking that you're aware of this cheaper plan?
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I've seen UK plans that I wish I could sign up for that would give be a better deal roaming all the time in the US than a domestic US plan.
Real Comments = REALLY NEED to be checked (Score:2)
They do understand that neo-nazis, rascists, anti-semitics, bigots, etc are real actual people, not fiction.
Did they think they just existed in the movies? That liberals were just lying when they claimed we needed civil rights?
The fact that you found and interviewed a real slime bag, does not excuse you for sending their views out into the world.
That was her second answer (Score:1)
The first time they asked, she said, "Walmart!" ;-)
I've been with T-Mobile since the beginning (Score:4, Interesting)
I am one of T-Mobile's earlier customers. I signed up with them shortly after they formed in 1999 because they were the only carrier in Metro Detroit that offered GSM, and I thought it would be useful to be able to use my phone in Europe where I worked for a week or two once a year. Indeed, I used my phone in Europe sparingly. Thanks to number portability, I've had the same phone number for the entire 17 year period.
We've had our ups and downs, but for most of those 17 years T-Mobile was the cheapest option, sometimes by a large margin. Their data service is fast, but only if you get a 4G or 4G LTE signal. You don't want to be stuck on their Edge network for longer than brief periods. Edge is not much better than 1999-era GSM.
I haven't gotten a 3G signal in many years, except where T-Mobile has a roaming agreement with another carrier. In these roaming areas, they give you a tiny monthly allocation of data which I normally exhaust in a few hours. You can still make calls and send text messages as normal. This leads me to conclude that while other carriers have wider deployments, T-Mobile has done a great job at providing coverage where their customers actually live and work. Unfortunately, when you go camping and you have roaming coverage instead of Edge coverage, you will quickly not be able to use the Internet at all, rather than have to settle for slower speeds.
I live, work, and mostly travel where T-Mobile 4G LTE coverage is good. Programs like Waze are much better now at dealing with networks like T-Mobile where speeds can go from 4G LTE to no coverage within ten miles by behaving like you would expect. I used to have problems with apps thinking that everywhere the app is being used the bandwidth will be the same, or the developer naively assuming that their offices in Silicon Valley have similar coverage to places like rural Illinois.
To summarize, if you are a rural user, do not use T-Mobile. If you are a(n) (sub)urban and cost sensitive user like me, go with T-Mobile. You won't always get good coverage in rural areas, but you can at least store your pictures and videos and immediately crush the first 4G LTE tower you encounter once you get within range on your way home.
opposite (Score:2)
"Sprint -- oh, you mean you still live with your parents?"
T-mobile has some of the better international roaming-included and no-contract cancellation policies around. And they are significantly cheaper than ATT and Verizon.
That said, I'm also one step away from moving over to Google Fi.
Sony's ghetto (Score:2)
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To be fair, that wasn't a comment made about a *specific* product or competitor, even if in practice there was only one meaningful competitor. But yes people have become more concerned with not just casually writing off large groups of people as lesser than everybody else. I'm very OK with this...
Trying to shift blame (Score:2)
"We're sharing real comments from real customers," Claure wrote in the aftermath of criticism. "Maybe not the best choice of words by the customer. Not meant to offend anyone."
It doesn't matter if it wasn't the best choice of words by the customer. Somebody at Sprint or their ad agency thought it was okay to run it. The real story isn't that some customer said that, but that Sprint thought it was acceptable to air it.
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Ironic (Score:2)
YouTube link (Score:4, Informative)
This should've been linked in TFA/TFS somewhere:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Thanks for the link. That was pretty funny how right after she said it she was embarrassed. The actual video wasn't as bad as the picture I had from the article above.
Re:YouTube link (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, to me the word in common parlance just means something that's shoddy or low-quality. There have been all kinds of ghettos in history, some identified with a single race or ethnic group and some not. I know in our hyper-offense-sensitive culture people love to throw a fit when they think it will get them something, but this ad just falls under the 'stupid' category. (as with many or most of Sprint's ads)
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Geez, I for the days of NOT that long ago, when the only words you couldn't use on TV were the George Carlin Famous 7 [youtube.com].
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Re: Ghetto Blaster (Score:1)
It's not that you can't use the word, it's just not a smart thing to call people when you want their business.
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But the person on the ad was not calling anyone "Ghetto"...she said the word to describe T-Mobile, a competitor, was Ghetto.
Thinking of the broad definition of the word, things like:
the poorest part of a city...
a situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity....
I'd think it would be somewhat of a appropriate word. It isn't even remotely ref
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> People, just get over it...pretty soon, NOTHING will be able to be said.
Oh, please. There is no never-expanding-list of things you can't say. It's merely an matter of respect. This article is a perfect illustration of that. The word itself isn't the issue, it's the interpretation of what the person meant. To most it is doubtful that that person pored over a dictionary trying to find the best most accurate word to use. Instead they probably thought the person had a particular picture in their head
Re: Ghetto Blaster (Score:3, Insightful)
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If there is anything the latest series of the x-files has taught me, it is that words can have weight.
http://geekdad.com/2016/02/the... [geekdad.com]
If there is another thing I have learned from news and social commentary - it is that the western world is getting heavier. perhaps this is what is happening to our words also :)
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But the person on the ad was not calling anyone "Ghetto"...she said the word to describe T-Mobile, a competitor, was Ghetto.
I'm trying to figure out how they thought it would be beneficial to them to say this in the first place.
Cellular companies are just service providers. If a cheaper service provider meets the customer's needs then why would the customer spend more money than necessary?
Insulting another company through pejoratives that don't have a technical meaning probably does more to galvanize that company's subscribers against the person making the statement than it does to solicit those subscribers, as it is basi
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People, just get over it...pretty soon, NOTHING will be able to be said.
Simply not true. Things drop off the list as other things area added. And "colored" was on the list long before CP Time was said by a white person for a laugh.
Re: Ghetto Blaster (Score:4, Informative)
But no...everyone has to attach a racist tag to it.
Well, that is sort of the origin of the word [wikipedia.org]: a segregated neighborhood of the city. Usually jews, but more recently for black neighborhoods in the US. They don't even have to be all impoverished but generally are as groups that have economic power usually aren't force to live someplace. To somebody that's never been told where they have to live, it might have a more generally meaning, but as that red-lining [wikipedia.org] is still going on, it might have different meaning to those who actually have to live there.
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Re: Ghetto Blaster (Score:5, Insightful)
The broad definition of the word isn't "the poorest part of a city" - it actually means the area of a city that is set aside for a minority, and carries some connotations of that place being poor. People aren't just attaching a racist tag to it; the very definition of the word is inseparable from race. The fact that you think "ghetto" simply means a "poor area" suggests that you've been exposed to a lot of casual racism in your life, and you haven't noticed.
For example, during the Nazi era, the Jews were gathered into ghettoes. They weren't called ghettoes because they were poor, they were called that because they were areas that were set aside for Jews.
When I was in high school, a lot of kids would say "that's gay" to refer to anything they didn't like in general - imagine if the woman in the ad had called T-Mobile "gay"! It's similarly offensive to people who actually live in ghettoes, or are part of races that have historically been forced into ghettoes.
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The goal is to make people realize that they don't want to be "ghetto dwellers" or "settlers" or whatever, and that they can solve all their social and technological problems by simply buying the service or product being advertised. That's called "advertising."
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We will get better, in a few hundred years (Score:3)
Abraham Lincoln: [interrupting] What a charming negress. Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know that in my time some use that term as a description of property.
Uhura: But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, in our century, we've learned not to fear words.
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Uh, you do realize your entire quotation is just the opinion/agenda of a random (and I guarantee you WHITE) TV writer in the 60's?
Irrelevant to today's situation (or even the situation back then). Not sure how "in the future blacks won't care when they are insulted" is in fact progress...
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That makes no sense. If a 40 year old or a 3 year old called me "doo doo head", obviously I wouldn't be insulted since those words have no meaning behind them other than "things 3 year olds say".
If a 40 year old or a 3 year old called me a "goddamn piece of shit" then, well in the first case, yeah, I'd be insulted, and the second, I'd question what the fuck the kid's parents have been teaching.
Words matter. But that's not even the point. My point is quoting a writer from the 60's really says nothing. I'
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Only people in the ghetto can use the word ghetto. Just say "the G word" instead.
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Their latest promotion... Amazon Prime for $10.99 a month on your bill. I'll let you do the math in your head real quick. Sprint has totally lost their minds.
Unfortunately, most Americans will find that preferable than paying for it all up front. Especially when they see that $10.99 $99. It's our public education at it's finest!
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You're thinking of Boost Mobile.
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You're thinking of Boost Mobile.
My first thought.
Boost Mobile: "Whea you at?"
Hey, it's a market, can't fault them for going after it.