Helsinki: Where casual sex and geo-tagging meet
“You and 24 others have been here lately.” The social networking geolocation symbols in the Finnish AIDS awareness campaign are used to indicate how many people have “visited” a particular genital. The campaign promotes the use of condoms.
Bill Johnson and 19 others were here. (Yes, "there.")
Such is the caption below a photo of a woman in underwear, with the geo-location symbols pointed at her private parts.
The point the Finish AIDS awareness campaign is trying to make is an obvious one – your Johnson might not have been the only one visiting Susan lately. And hinting that it most probably isn’t.
Borrowing from geo-location sites such as FourSquare, the campaign – created by the Helsinki agency McCann – comes in two other variations.
One portrays a man with the symbol pointing at his penis and an another man with the symbol pointing at his anus. The caption is always a variation of the same: “Adrian Bruce and 26 others were here.”
The posters are aimed at encouraging people indulging in casual sex to always use condoms.
What a fun and creative – if slightly disturbing – way to illustrate the realities of today’s dating! I am just hoping that the general idea of “genital geo-locating” doesn’t take off in real life.
Imagine where this could go, with the coming advances in predictive “friending“:
“If you liked Susan, you might also like Kim.”
“Thirteen of your friends recommend Richard.”
What can the next generation look forward to?
Actual tagging of genitals? Or, even better, genital recognition software?
I don’t envy today’s teenagers.