I had blogged a few weeks ago about the ‘Make Me Asian’ app available in Google Play. Well, that app has now been removed:
“Google has not responded to requests for comment, and it is unclear why the apps were removed. But Peter Chin, a pastor in Washington, D.C., who started a petition on Change.org calling for Google to stop selling the Make Me Asian and Make Me Indian apps, says he is pleased. … In a recent conversation with NPR’s Allison Keyes, columnist Jeff Yang of The Wall Street Journal said he wasn’t surprised that the app didn’t raise the sort of objections that apps about other ethnic groups might have. “There is less inherent social and political power associated with these groups,” he said, so the consequences often aren’t as serious “if you parody, satire or mock or offend these communities.””
As I had commented before, if a ‘Make Me a Jew’ or ‘Make Me Black’ app was released, I’m sure we would have heard a bigger outcry. From that standpoint in terms of equal outcry, I’m for such actions. There are plenty of apps ideas which could probably be pursued with greater monetization than these somewhat offensive and stupid apps.
h/t: Cynthia
About John
I'm a Taiwanese-American and was born & raised in Western Massachusetts, went to college in upstate New York, worked in Connecticut, went to grad school in North Carolina and then moved out to the Bay Area in 1999 and have been living here ever since - love the weather and almost everything about the area (except the high cost of housing...)
