There are apparently some things Facebook isn’t OK with advertising on its platform, and that now includes an ad for a Gris, seen above, that was deemed “sexually suggestive”. Now, I don’t want to kink-shame Facebook employees or whatever algorithm determined this, but it’s hard to imagine what about the moon or a silhouette suggests that it’s time to get hot and sweaty.
In Facebook’s advertising policies page, it states that ads must not contain adult content, including “nudity, depictions of people in explicit or suggestive positions or activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative.”
It doesn’t need to be overt nudity, either, and even the implication of nudity is banned. The ad doesn’t contain any of these elements, however, but at a push I guess someone could mistake the silhouette for a naked silhouette. It's still a stretch.
I got rid of Facebook last year, so I’m not sure what kinds of ads pop up now, but I certainly used to see plenty that blatantly violated Facebook’s rules. They made it a lot easier for me to cut it out of my life, but mostly I did it so I could be insufferably smug about not being on Facebook.
Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail undoubtedly has it right.
While obviously not sexually suggestive, Gris is certainly a striking game, though its visual flair sometimes gets in the way of its exploration of grief. Take a gander at Pip's Gris review.
"It’s too self-conscious, and too wrapped up in being aesthetically pleasing. It’s too tied to the idea of a neat conclusion. It’s so caught up in the language of recurring motifs and visual continuity that it doesn’t seem to notice when the emotional arc loses clarity and continuity.
The overall effect for me ends up being elegant but detached. A slightly muddled compendium of the picturesque sides of grief."