China’s National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications has lashed out at condom maker Durex over a series of innuendo-laden ads created in partnership with bubble tea chain Heytea, warning they could “ruin the Chinese.”
The South China Morning Post reports that the censorship body posted on the social network Weibo that the ads — which feature not-so-subtle (and some might say sophomoric) sex jokes — were “more frightening than pornography.” (Let’s just pause for a moment to fully savor the disclosure that the Chinese government is frightened of pornography.)
One of the ads to draw the censors’ ire featured a milky droplet falling from an upturned Heytea cup and the tagline “Tonight, not a drop left.” Another, in an apparent reference to one of Heytea’s cream cheese tea toppings, includes the line, “We agreed from that day on, my cheese will always be on your lips.”
But the fuddy-duddies over at the ol’ National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications didn’t find the campaign very funny, saying they had “added such content to [the office’s] ongoing crackdown on vulgar content online.”
“We urge and guide all internet platforms to enhance discipline, establish standards and maintain a bottom line,” it added.
Heytea, for its part, apologized for any “discomfort” caused, while Durex tweaked one the ads to say, “Tonight, you are my nice guy” — the Mandarin phrase for “nice guy” being similar to the one for “cheese topping.”
The warning comes just two weeks after the anti-porn office announced an eight-month campaign to rid the internet of offensive content (yeah, good luck with that) in order to create “a clean and honest network culture.”
China’s war on vulgarity has been going on for some time now. Alibaba last year unveiled a porn-detecting robot capable of pinpointing videos of people getting it on in Chinese, Japanese, English, Russian, and several Chinese dialects, Xinhua reported.
As exciting as that technological breakthrough might be, however, spare a thought for the hardworking human porn censors put out of work by automation.
