Comments on: Swedish Court Misunderstands Memes (Guest Blog Post) https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2018/10/swedish-court-misunderstands-memes-guest-blog-post.htm Thu, 25 Oct 2018 14:58:00 +0000 hourly 1 By: big_dman https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2018/10/swedish-court-misunderstands-memes-guest-blog-post.htm#comment-2180 Thu, 25 Oct 2018 14:58:00 +0000 https://blog.ericgoldman.org/?p=19282#comment-2180 The photo is chauvinistic. And funny. Acknowledging that things can be chauvinistic and funny–and that’s OK–is the first step and obviates all the other analysis. But most of Europe has no real freedom of expression and has written political correctness into the law. That’s what we should be concerned about, not carving out exceptions for our favorite memes.

This meme works *because* everyone knows the boyfriend is treating his girlfriend as a object to be upgraded and that men do that. It doesn’t have any deeper meaning than that. If you were to translate the Bahnhof ad into writing, it would be, “Ditch your current job for Bahnhof like your boyfriend ditched you when a hotter woman came along.” Sure, that message is likely to alienate some potential applicants, but Bahnhof either isn’t targeting them or it’s aim is off.

The other memes work because for similar reasons and are equally chauvinistic. And funny.

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