Twitter turmoil: Razer offends almost the entire internet

Laptop company flounders after mean tweet

By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor

Tech giant Razer is in hot water after a promotional tweet landed them on the wrong side of the internet. On November 2 Razer responded to Apple’s press release regarding the new Macbook Pro laptop with a tweet stating “You call yourself Pro? S my D.” The intent behind the tweet was to put a playful spin on the fact that the new Macbook will not have an SD card reader, a feature that previous models have all had, and that Razer also features with many of their laptop models.

Well, it didn’t take long for the internet to ring out with accusations of sexism, claiming that Razer’s attitude was proof that the gaming and technology industries are a boys’ club that promotes hostility towards women. Initially, Razer responded in another tweet explaining the joke, and claiming that they were just proud of their commitment to the advantage of maintaining the SD card slot reader as a means of adding an external storage option for their users. But after further backlash, both this and the original tweet were deleted. Instead Razer issued an apology—again, via Twitter—that said “We apologize for the SD reader joke. To those who were offended, it was intended as a lighthearted turn of phrase that missed the mark.”

This apology put people up in arms again, this time claiming that the company was cowardly for apologizing to the social justice warriors of the world.

In the end, Razer seems to have situated themselves nicely in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” kind of situation. The SD reader joke was in poor taste, but in even poorer taste were all the people jumping on the bandwagon to accuse the company of sexism, when assuming that only women suck dick is slightly sexist and incredibly homophobic unto itself. If we are to examine the history of the “suck my dick” slur, as YouTube user Joe Tacke did in his response to the situation when it was reported on by Youtuber and Razer associate, Phillip DeFranco, we would know that the slur has its origins in homophobia, as opposed to sexism, especially in gamer culture. Does that make the initial joke any better? Not really. However, it does shine a negative light on all those people quick to judge Razer’s marketing team for their mistake. If you’re going to be offended, at least know what you’re offended about.