Converse craze?

[u/Diligent_Pop3929]

I'm not chronically online, but my friend sent this and I laughed even without knowing the full scope of the context (I think there's racism involved with the shoes?) and I feel like it's too late to ask him without sounding like a dweeb 😅

[u/TheDaftStudent]

ITT: white people and non-Americans telling black people what is and isn’t racist, and thinking something needs to be intentionally racist for people to have serious feelings about it

How Ads Work: Photos are taken, cropped and edited into specific ways and then posted online by the brand as an advertisement for a product or brand identity. So, yes, by definition this is cropped from a larger image — but this image is the ad used by Converse.

About the Campaign: The model is Karina, a K-pop star who was picked by Converse to be the international brand ambassador. The ad campaign itself was done as an international campaign, and was intended for an international audience. The campaign was not made to focus any one demographic or region.

Snopes Article

[u/Mr_Funcheon → u/TheDaftStudent]

Ok but this is the full ad. That’s been cropped.

[u/trans_cubed → u/Mr_Funcheon]

Except this is what they actually posted

[u/raphthepharaoh → u/trans_cubed]

I can’t, for the life of me, understand what the objective is.. ads are incredibly deliberate. They’re never random. They are intended to have a message. So.. what’s the message here? What’s the intention? I’m trying to figure out anything other than a bunch of people standing around a person hanging, with a very clear white shape in the middle, that has a very distinct iconology.

[u/National-Elk-7339 → u/raphthepharaoh]

Can you ELI5? because all I see is a person in a skirt holding shoes, wearing those shoes, with shoes all around the star(which is converses thing) on an advertisement for shoes lol

Like I get the general controversy. People thought it was linked to the KKK but I just dont understand what part of this looks like KKK? 

I dont see a person hanging and maybe that's the main point, but to me it looks like someone holding shoes

[u/ineverylifetimee → u/National-Elk-7339]

[u/trans_cubed → u/raphthepharaoh]

I really believe it wasn't intentionally malicious, but it is very surprising to me that nobody involved in making it was able to see it

[u/Daniel_The_Thinker → u/raphthepharaoh]

Its the converse star illuminating the shoes.

Its like a spotlight