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Unsuitable Advertisements In The Magazine (Fortean Times)

Are some of the adverts in FT unsuitable, and are you offended by them ?

  • Yes, I find a lot of the adverts offensive/in bad taste.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Most are OK, but 'Faces of Death' takes the biscuit.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • They are all OK.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • I don't care about the content of the Ads.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • The ads are mainly crud but 'F.O.D.' is also vilely offensive, possibly to the point of illegality

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    0
  • Poll closed .
Amended poll in line with Essy's suggestion :).

FOD is really much too far, IMHO.
 
I did look at that ad and wonder, but I thought surely it isn't some kind of execution's/ 'you've been maimed' style video nasty but the more I looked the more I thought this IS a real video.

Personally I can't think of anything worse. A pal at Uni thought it was great fun to make me watch a video clip of some bloke doing a lecture and then he pulls a gun from a brown paper bag and shoots his face off. not to mention the BBFC lecture with the Palestinian firing squad close-ups. Those video scenes have stuck in my memory for a long long time.

I guess though that there will be people who will want to see stuff like this and I guess it is unfortunate that we are seen as the kind of target audience. Maybe in Bizarre or FHM but, like I said, I couldn't think of anything worse.

Surely this kind of stuff is illegal anyway?
 
I thought that it might be illegal if it was real and trades decscriptions act if it was fake :D

Kath
 
They're legal, fod has been around since the eighties. I don't think they're much worse than watching the news everyday, its just set up in a diferent way. I actually think some people need to watch them, atleast the ones who take shite for granted. jmo
 
I'll reserve my wote till I actually get the issue of the mag :hmph:
 
I like the adverts, it's good to know where you can find alternative stuff and if you don't like what's being advertised you don't buy it. If nobody is interested in Faces of Death they're not being forced to buy it and so the magazine is receiving money for something that is essentially useless.
Personally I'm willing to put up with the odd full page advert that in my opinion wasn't offensive if it means we get the bigger magazine and the longer articles. After all it's not the actual advert you have the problem with it's the product that is on display.
Did you go looking it up or did you already know what it was?
Because in all honesty I thought it was an old 80s slasher flick that I'd never heard of.
 
River_Styx...
I already knew what it was. Some people used to get very excited about it when I was back at school (early 90's).
Lobelia...
The ad itself is not much to look at, like Styx says, it is the nature of the content of the product that I find offensive.
I am sure you could find out about F.O.D pretty quickly if you want to get Gen'ed up.
 
I knew..... not sure what that indicates mind!

Kath
 
I had heard of the Executions tape which went about in the 90s but never Faces of Death. I don't have any interest in watching innocent people being decapitated or whatever, the same can't be said where the guilty are concerned however.
It's strange that the photograph of a small viatnamese girl covered in napalm is now an accepted piece of anti-war propaganda and yet if it had been commited to videotape how would it have faired?
You see nothing less worse on the news most nights, in fact a lot of times what's presented is left up to your imagination to fill in and who can forget the nice, front page pictures of Saddam Hussein's sons splashed across almost every newspaper last year?
 
I must admit my main thought was "Who'd pay for a full page ad fo rhtta tired old piece of dross?". I largely ignore them as I don't care. The ads bring the price down and so more people buy it and it spreads the Good Word and so it must be a good thing.

I'd prefer it if the ads were for more relevant things but they avertise there because they clearly think it sells its products so someone is buying them.

I might complain if they advertised Bumfighting videos but FOD kind of things can be found on TV these days and so it has rather lost its edge. My main objection to it (like the Bumfighting videos) is that it is a clear sign of the decline of western civilisation but perhaps that is my being elitist ;)

Emps
 
Emperor said:
I might complain if they advertised Bumfighting videos....My main objection to it (like the Bumfighting videos) is that it is a clear sign of the decline of western civilisation...
Click to expand...

I know i'll regret this but wtf is bumfighting? :(
 
The Yithian said:
I know i'll regret this but wtf is bumfighting? :(
Click to expand...


They pay bums/tramps/hobos' to fight eachother and then film it. Such is my understanding of said "sport"
 
River_Styx said:
They pay bums/tramps/hobos' to fight eachother and then film it. Such is my understanding of said "sport"
Click to expand...

I'm relieved. We were having a 'divided my a mutual language' moment. Bum, as in tramp - gotcha. :)
 
The Yithian said:
I'm relieved. We were having a 'divided my a mutual language' moment. Bum, as in tramp - gotcha. :)
Click to expand...


I don't even want to know your definition of a cock fight.
 
Must admit I don't pay much heed to adds but having had my attention drawn to it, I find it offensive that we should be deemed fair game for such crap.
 
I hate the ads. All the "herb smoking" stuff (so radical , man, get your counter culture at this PO box ) , the "calculated to offend " t shirts etc . Does anyone with a mental age of over 12 actually buy this stuff? I really don't feel part of these advertisers mythical demographic group.

As Howard Devoto once sung:

" My mind ain't so open, that anything can crawl right in"
 
If it's any consolation, most of the footage in Faces of Death is faked. It's not a snuff film.

Not my idea of entertainment, but the ads are easily ignored.
 
I had a quick flip through and couldn't even find the ad so its obviously not that grabbing! You can get allsorts of pics and moving clips of gruesomeness for free on the net anyway if you like that sort of thing.
 
I remember about 2 years ago the bbc news ran a story about a building that had colapsed dureing a wedding reception in Israil. They showed footage taken by one of the guests camcorders as the floor colapsed... that was bad enougth... can't understand why anyone would wan't to see anyone blowing their brains out.
the only people I could think of that would watch something like that by choice would be neds, NRA members or serial killers... none of which are FT's target audience.

At least they've done away with the pornographic chat line numbers.
 
I seem to recall David Sutton (or perhaps it was Bob) explaining that the FT is often tied by advertising space purchased as a block with Bizarre and Viz.

I'm unsure as to how much direct control the FT team have over the advertising in the magazine.

Personally, I don't give a monkies. Advertisers surely only pay for the adverts if they get a decent return. Its all well and good people saying "I'm insulted to be within the demographic" - but the fact that there are repeat adverts from the "funny" t-shirt manafacturer and all the drug emporiums suggests that their demographic exists in significant numbers within the FT readership.

If nobody bought the stuff - it wouldn't be advertised. So, someone is buying it - perhaps have a pop at them instead of the FT management?

An advert cannot hurt anyone - commercial reality would suggest that if nobody buys FoD - it will not be advertised again.

I just hope nobody buys it.

Following on from that - I do wonder what the demography of readership actually is? I don't recall a question on the annual questionairre relating to my taste in "funny" t-shirts and drug taking.

In any case, it seems fairly obvious that the FT readership demographic is not of interest to manafacturers of People Carriers, 4x4 school run vehicles and Magnet kitchens!

This is all reminiscent of the complaints about game reviews. It is fairly obvious that the game review section (1-2 pages maximum) allows advertising space to be filled with game adverts - inoffensive and perhaps lucrative. Yet, the complaints about games reviews continue... (for the record - I do not play computer games - have no interest in them - and do not read the reviews - but it is only 1-2 pages!).
 
i would much much rather be seen as an advertiseing target for Porn lines than for death vids....




that add made me feel that perhapse i was readig the wrong mag nowdays...one with no real morals.
 
I don't want to sound sanctimonious, but the "Strange Deaths" thread is one of the most popular on this message board, and the deaths on that thread aren't faked. Maybe the general interest in the macabre is the reason they ran the ad.
 
The fundamental difference between Strange Deaths and Faces of Death is that the Strange Deaths column is not promoting the death if human beings as pure entertainment.
It is interesting, in terms of the bizarre sequences of events which cause many of the deaths in the column, and is sobering and refreshing to be reminded of ones own mortality by such incredible stories, portayed in a totally non-sensationalist way.
Not so for the video tape, I fear.
 
Plus,
a. these 'strange deaths' are normally accidents, not acts of murder or execution.
b. reading about a death is very different from buying a video about is and seeing it happen.
 
But most of Faces of Death is faked. The rest is newsreel footage. The authors of the interesting book Killing for Culture call the film "ridiculously pitiful" and I have no cause to doubt them. Personally I have no time for sites like Rotten.com, but plenty of people visit them, some of whom are Fortean Times readers, I'll bet.
 
I have to admit that I ignore most of the ads in the FT (and the banners here), with the exception of the crude T-shirts which I often find amusing...

So I didn't notice the faces of death and I'm not going to look for it now. That said if it funds the FT and Uncon then so be it.
 
It's a question of marketing. I look at the ads in the FT and think, there's not a solitary thing here that I'd buy. :(

How can a magazine be so right editorially and so wrong in other ways? Answer: the 'reader profile' is wrong. Probably has been for some time.

This doesn't bother me as my job doesn't depend on it. ;)
 
I suppose if the Ad upsets me so much I can always just put my new T Shirt on, bosh a few mushrooms, and go out into the street with my Highlander replica sword...
 
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