The powers that be at Snapchat learned two valuable lessons today:
1. Domestic violence is never even remotely funny, and
2. Don’t mess with Queen RiRi.
The folks in charge of marketing for the social media app made the bizarre decision to run the above ad today.
We likely don’t need to remind you that Rihanna was assaulted by Chris Brown in 2009, as who could forget such a revolting incident?
Of course, as freshly horrifying as the attack remains for her millions of fans, no one but Rihanna knows just how traumatic Brown’s attack truly was.
And so it’s not surprising that the outspoken music icon was quick to let Snapchat management know just what she thought of their latest ad campaign:
“SNAPCHAT I know you know you ain’t my fav app out there! But I’m just trying to figure out what the point was with this mess!” the singer wrote in a statement posted – where else? – on Snapchat.
“I’d love to call it ignorance but I know you ain’t that dumb. You spent money to animate something that would intentionally bring shame to DV victims and made a joke of it.”
Rihanna added:
“This isn’t about my personal feelings, cause I don’t have much of them…but all the women, children, and men that have been victims of DV in the past and especially the ones who haven’t made it out yet….you let us down!
“Shame on you. Throw the whole app-oligy away.”
Snapchat was quick to issue an apology that many users have since derided as insincere – and flat-out lame:
“The advert was reviewed and approved in error, as it violates our advertising guidelines,” the company’s statement reads.
“This advertisement is disgusting and never should have appeared on our service. We are so sorry we made the terrible mistake of allowing it through our review process.”
The statement concludes:
“We are investigating how that happened so that we can make sure it never happens again.”
“We are so sorry we made the terrible mistake of allowing it through our review process. We are investigating how that happened so that we can make sure it never happens again.”
Of course, it might be a matter of too little, too late for the controversial social media platform.
In response to Rihanna’s call for fans to delete the app, shares of Snapchat were down a whopping 4.7 percent at the close of trading today.
This comes on the heels of bad press (and a consequent market plunge) stemming from Kylie Jenner declaring Snapchat “dead” back in February.
So the bad news is, Snapchat officiallt sucks.
The good news is, we live in an age in which influential young women can make waves on Wall St. and leave billionaires quaking in their boots with a single social media post.
