Subscribe for every post
Say hello on Twitter
Like us!
Watch our vids!
An unusually serious post coming up but I think this needs to be said. Over at US Resistance they cover a story where Metrolink staff in Manchester covered the PSP ad “Take a running jump here” on one of their platforms because they deemed it inappropriate. US Resistance jokes:
Apparently, an ad urging subway passengers to jump onto the rails is a bit too persuading for the English. Whereas the people of most other nations might say, “Oh, another shitty video game ad,” London citizens think, “A good idea.”
Now, I’m not a fan of censorship but in this particular case I can understand why they did it. Don’t know about the US (or Manchester) but on some London Underground lines at least two or three times a year you would be greeted with the announcement “Sorry, this train will be terminating at the next station due to a person under a train at [insert station here].” Or even worse, “a body under a train at “. When I lived at Upton Park they closed the station down for a day due to a suicide and when it reopened there was an ominous pile of sand on one of the tracks that was obviously there to soak up a lot of reddish brown fluid…
It happens more often than you would expect. Extract from this morning’s free newspaper Metro (print version only):
“The mother of a former EastEnders star committed suicide by throwing herself under a Tube train, an inquest found yesterday. Bernadette Lordan, 62, jumped under a Victoria line train at Highbury and Islington station, North London on March 24, a week after taking a drugs overdose…”
How would her daughter feel if she saw an ad saying “Take a running jump here” at Highbury and Islington Station, even read in the context of an unrelated idiom? :(
See the other ads in this PSP advertising campaign here.
Edits: Added link to idiom for those unfamiliar. I would also like to make it clear that the offending ad was covered up in Manchester, not London, as some websites seem to be reporting. I haven’t seen this particular ad in any London Underground stations.
US Resistance has me puzzled. I don’t know whether to be annoyed about them copying UK Resistance, or whether it’s a clever ploy by the UK Resistance people to make everyone think that some stupid Americans have gone and copied their format, thus making it a brilliant and ironic move.
just down from my road theres a ps poster which is, i think, trying to promoe the GPS functions, i’ll see if i can take a pic. i think itsaid “find out how you got here”
I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize for US Resistance (actually, I had not heard of before) as a US citizen. In return, I only request readers not to take some immature journalist as representative of the US (despite the site name).
Brin: Would be a rather bizarre sort of irony, no? It’s registered to some guy in Michigan if that helps you any.
Rav: Cool, send it in if I don’t find it before you do ;)
Pat: No worries – I’m sure most people don’t generalise to a country of 300 million on the basis of one blog. Well, I hope not anyway! :)
Well, you should come to Japan; the Chuo Line is delayed maybe twice a week due to suicides, and that’s just one line out of dozens (though the one with the highest suicide rate).