Posts Tagged ‘controversy’

“May you live in interesting times,” says the old Chinese curse. Somebody seems to have willed interesting times onto the X Factor of late and much of it is to do with the ubiquity of social networking.

Cowell’s money machine TV show has always trodden a fine line between seeking privacy for its big announcements and demanding that everyone talk about the show around the water cooler, be it real or virtual, but that need for word of mouth has come back to bite the show on the backside with a vengeance in the last week. Depending who you listen to, that is.

On the audience’s side, there widespread disgruntlement on the social networks at Cheryl Cole’s dismissal of Gamu Nhengu Read the rest of this entry »

Is there any need to reinvent the dating agency? It seems that there is in America, where a company have audaciously taken the process to its extreme, as a press release announcing the launch of Till-Death-Do-Us-Part.com, “The World’s First Dating Service for the Terminally Ill” proves.

Till-Death-Do-Us-Part.com claims to be “designed to cut through the superficiality and embrace issues we think are most meaningful – the desire and need for understanding, compassion, empathy and comfort between human beings” but it also offers to help terminally ill people to find others like them, who don’t mind they’re dying, to have sex with.

Are they trying to court controversy? Certainly, if the puns throughout the press release are anything to go by. The press release urges terminally ill people to “join us… if you are truly dying to connect” and promises to help them “to go out with a ‘bang’”.

The press release is spectacularly brazen, offering “the possibility for individuals to connect with other open, accepting minds who might better understand their unusual circumstances” and to help potential clients to find “a singing partner for your swan song”, as well as selling their ability to hook people up with sexual partners as desperate as themselves.

I’m astonished by the audacity of this release and the project itself. It is bound to cause a storm of controversy – all of which will no doubt make it a huge hit when it is launched on St. Valentine’s Day.

They’re quite extraordinary, these Americans.