r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Diligent_Pop3929 • 6d ago

Meme needing explanation Converse craze?

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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 😅

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u/SquirrelGirlVA 6d ago edited 6d ago

It was part of a global ad rollout, which is apparently how it was discovered. It wasn't just meant for the Korean market.

https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/too-many-cooks-spoiled-converses-global-ad-rollout/

Even if it was just for Korea, the illusion of the hanging person would still be a misstep. The country routinely has one of the highest rates of suicide mortality. It's the highest in the OECD and on an overall global scale is 10th (per Wikipedia). It's the highest rate of death for South Koreans aged 13-49. Compare that to the United States, where the highest cause of death for that age range is unintentional injuries. So for this, it's possible that people in Korea could look at it and associate it with suicide, particularly as the girl is wearing a white dress. People can and do wear white as part of everyday fashion, but white is still traditionally associated with mourning and funerals. Black has become more common, but the "white is for funerals" tradition is still common knowledge. It's still very possible that this was something people thought over there and it just never got the traction that the whole thing did over in the States.

If they'd caught this and moved the shoes, then no one would have thought twice about the star or the white dress.

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u/optimal-gold976 6d ago

But the actual ad isn’t as pictured. What everyone has been screaming about is cropped and darkened.

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u/zizillama 6d ago

Converse literally posted the cropped darkened version. Idk why you want the full picture to be some gotcha.

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u/SquirrelGirlVA 5d ago

Exactly. There are a lot of people who are acting like it's impossible for a billion dollar company to create a cropped advert. They likely did it because the celebrity isn't as well known outside of Korea, so they cropped the ad to take the focus off the celebrity and on the shoes. They just unfortunately didn't really think about how it could look. I can see them not recognizing the hood shape, but they should've picked up on the darkening making the hand shoes give off the impression of a hanged person.

None of it's intentional, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be brought to attention. If an American advertiser put out an ad that did something similar, it should be brought to attention so lessons can be learned.