Hey ASUS, I Fixed Your Incredibly Offensive Gamer Ad

ABOVE: ASUS' original, hastily-deleted sexist ad - see my new and improved version below!

ASUS posted a gem of sexist advertising on Twitter yesterday. Although they were pretty quick to delete it after a less than favorable reception, the internet seldom forgets. By the time they'd scrubbed their Tweet the gloriously bad ad (shown above) had already been saved to hard drives around the world. Including mine.

There are a lot of problems with this ad. The one that should hit you in the face immediately is that the "Hardcore Gamer" is male, and the "Casual Gamer" is female. In the context of gaming and general geekdom, the terms "hardcore" and "casual" are often used on clearly gendered lines. It's a tired old trope already, but it persists. I also have a hard time accepting the use of hardcore and casual to describe games themselves. The ad above defines The Sims as a casual game (and treats it like it's a game played in short bursts -- was this ad made by a fake gamer boy?) but I know people who are ten times more hardcore about The Sims than many fans of "true" "hardcore" games like CS:GO or DOTA 2 are. Any game can be hardcore or casual; it all depends on how you play it. 

Even if you're the most run-of-the-mill, advertisers-wet-dream male gamer around this ad should piss you off because yes, it's talking shit about you too. To ASUS, you're some bro who can't take care of his things, can't control his temper, and can't pry himself away from the glow of his monitor or hum of his console even for an instant. In short: This ad doesn't flatter anyone.

But hey, don't you worry your pretty little corporate head about this, ASUS. I've got your back. I made a few changes to your ill-conceived little ad, and I think they're all vast improvements...

First we have the simplest option, an old fashioned swap. While it doesn't eliminate all the problems with the ad, it's an easy start:

But why stop there? Here's something a little more subversive to remind you that it shouldn't matter what perceived level of gaming culture someone is in because those distinctions are useless garbage only used to harass and belittle:

Writer Samantha Allen has shared a wonderfully rewritten edit of her own as well:

I couldn't resist changing that horribly sexist ASUS ad that's been going around: pic.twitter.com/EjCfnZvyFR

— Samantha Allen (@CousinDangereux) October 6, 2014

Look, I can't really find a detached or professional way to sum this nonsense up. Every time this kind of thing happens my patience for dealing with it dwindles ever lower. What I'll say is this: Despite huge advances in the geek spheres, women (not to mention many other groups) are having a fucking rough time in the gaming community right now. You were right there to add even more dung to that pile, ASUS, so good job. Really well done.

(Edit: P.S. Basically everyone buys games for under $5 now, it's called Steam Sales, PS Plus, HumbleBundle, itch.io, etc.)

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Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.

Comments

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

What was ASUS thinking? Do they not know that there's a bunch of PC gamers who say things like "I only buy games for $5 on Steam Sales" and don't pay full price?

And LAN parties are for college aged gamers, they're the only ones with the time and inclination and have the schedule necessary to ferry equipment around to a LAN party. Everyone else is smart enough to avoid the hassle and play on the internet. Time spend lugging desktops and monitors around, traveling to a location and setting up/taking down is time NOT spent gaming.

[Iggy]

I'd say the male hardcore gamer needs to strap on 150 lbs, some blemishes, a ripped WoW T-shirt, and a thick coating of Cheeto-dust.

[Adeon Writer]

This discrimination must end: Cheetos are amazing.

[Janine/Iris]

@Iggy TBH that's just another unwelcome stereotype as far as I'm concerned.

[Iggy]

@Janine, I know. I just could not resist. And FWIW, I do love Cheetos in moderation.

[Janine/Iris]

@Iggy Saaaaammme. The crunchy ones in particular. <3

[Mikyo]

He was a punk.
She did ballet.
What more can I say?

[Jo Yardley]

There is no such thing as Cheetos in moderation.

[shirc desantis]

Acinonyx jubatus beats Cheeto

[Fancy Pants]

Clickbait is a pejorative term describing web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines to attract click-throughs and to encourage forwarding of the material over online social networks. Clickbait headlines typically aim to exploit the "curiosity gap", providing just enough information to make the reader curious, but not enough to satisfy their curiosity without clicking through to the linked content.

via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait

[Arcadia Codesmith]

ASUS makes motherboards and other peripherals. Along with anybody else whose lifeblood depends on the PC, they're facing huge setbacks due to competition from mobile devices.

Given that the advertising industry is curiously frozen in time at about 1952, and given the inherent animosity towards mobile devices, apps and games, I'm not especially shocked they'd release something like this. Disappointed, but not shocked.

PC gaming isn't going anywhere until those little time-wasters can do everything a PC can do, on the same scale. Therefore and thusly, it's a waste of time to rage against casual gamers, who have done nothing wrong except play games that appeal to them.

The power-mongers are trying to manufacture an astroturf schism in the player base for their own ends, and it makes me ill. I pity the fools.

[Pussycat Catnap]

I actually found this advert only mildly offensive.

This is about as offensive as half the ads on TV that show a woman as a housewife or soccar mom, or a black male as an athlete or person in a hoodie.
- Mostly neutral, but evocative of stereotypes.

TV is often worse, like the old 'yo quiero taco-bell' adverts (from 15 years ago though, airing in between adverts featuring Jar Jar Binks... so sign of the times I guess...)

But the timing is horrible, given that it comes out in the middle of a bunch of a misogynist freaks going nuts against women with "gamer gate" / 4-chan / reddit craziness.

Given the timing... a more or less not-that-bad advert, does take on a whole new light...

Like if the NRA were to have sold 'NRA Hoodies' during Zimmerman's trial (a totally made up example to show how something pretty neutral would look a lot worse if poorly timed).

I guess what I'm trying to say here is the ad itself is not "incredibly offensive". The ad in context of the current events in the video game industry though... becomes offensive.

- which can also serve to help enlighten anyone who is still wondering why people object to the advert... You have to think of it in context.

[Somethinggoesherewhocares]

?

Harcore gamer ad: Specs. Stats. GPU Logo. The rest is almost irrelevant, but cool game like theme graphics with super detail and stuff in motion.

Casual gamer. Just mention all the cool social features and point out all the cool games. Maybe some slightly sexist, at least to me, looking game characters like Angry Birds.

Get it. Angry Birds. Angry Females! Females who are now gaming. So, what are these gals enemies usually?

Guy one: "What do women hate?"
Girl one: "Guys!"
All: Laughs
Girl two: "Well, pigs. Not nice guys, like all of you" smiles.
All: Laughs and smiles.
Guy one: "OH, all of us. I heard John here is a playah, a heart breakah lol"
John: smiles.

Ugh, do I need to go on? Guys put up walls, they DO NOT CALL BACK. OK, not all guys. Guys who are pigs. ALL of them. Forget Social Angiety Disorder and all those folks who have trouble with body language and got super depressed. Forget the guys who figure there is no point in the pain of listening, they just dodged a hormone fired bullet at thier marriage. They backed out of a possible cheating situation, they do NOT want begging or some women saying she doesn't care about the wife, they will work it out and doesn't mind cheating. Forget all that, the ARE pigs even if they are not or narrowely dodged becoming one OR discovered they aren't.

So little depth, so little thought. Angry Birds is insulting, but does it so well. So hidden, so subversion doesn't occur.

They should have used animals for this. Maybe a bird, as in twitter people...they like to communicate shortly, don't have time for long games because of busy social life beyond gaming because ALL people love games. Right guys? They are popular.

I am not sure this is even a real advert, it seems like someone wanted to put my mind into overdrive with symbolism. More mental abuse. Do you understand I spent almost an hour looking up things like this:

Payne Stewart, he wore argyle. Sounds like: Pain Steward, Stewards of pain.

Argyle is featured on coats of arms, heraldry is learned by some communications majors or becomes extra reading. The symbols on her shirt, they are also very similar to identification stuff in wars, used on coats of arms. This is a heraldry thing. Lords and dukes and such? Duke of Argyle!
Duke of Argyle's argyle pattern is black and yellow. Wasps.
WASP. An old marketing phrase! This is about marketing. I wonder what the other heraldry is called? I don't have time, enough. WASPS, a marketing demographic. White Angelo Saxon ProtostantS. Yes, this is demographic based maybe?
Oh, no. They both suck. They suck pop stuff. THey like what is popular, one slowely consumers through a "stream' that comes through the straw. The other has sucked longer, hardcore gamers are an older demographic! The casual gamers are dumb, blonde. OK, not really but they dye their hair, so just appear that way.
They are both in green. Both are in the green, they both have the cash to afford the laptop.
They both have NO neck. They have no neck to put on the line. That is insulting as well.
They both have similar eybrows. The women does not shape her eyebrows, or the artist was a man that never noticed this. Shame, an artist should have learned sexual dimorphism in art school. Wait, not a real artist. SHAME SHAME SHAME. SHAME ON YOU.
I can't stand it. To much ignorance, inferense and insanity, and that was just in reading back my own writing forget about all of you witch hunt and the crazy advert that is so far from communicating well it seems designed for exactly this sort of thing. OH how sad, was it like this when rome burned I cry into the shadows as I wait for a voice from the paste. Where the merchants so dumb as to not notice their markets could burn again? Did they do it on purpose, part of a hateful argument with the government that the government omitted in a conspiracy to make themselves look supreme and in control, though it failed? A horse for my senator, a senator for my kigdom or something about senates and horses and kings losing their kingdoms but not really because they are not really saying that but they might be and are just silly and dramatic. Homer would laugh, why are they not all yellow like regular people?

[FredTheGamer]

best comment.. ever..

[Estelle Pienaar]

Damn, I tought I could never agree with FredTheGamer. But I guess we agree on "Somethinggoesherewhocares". Sigh. And I have a really nice Nexus from ASUS, perfect for casual games. What were they thinking...?