Mindshare Strategy

While my brother was in town last weekend, we decided to go see a movie together.  It was an R-rated comedy that, while inappropriate for most settings, we found mildly entertaining.  Both before and after the movie, though, my brother made a keen observation.

I got carded!

They asked him for both his college ID and his driver’s license at the door – one to make sure he was qualified for a discount and the other to make sure he was allowed in to an R-rated film.  After Babyface got over the shock of being carded for the movie, he started looking around at the obviously much younger people in the crowd.  ”Wow, I wonder if they got carded, too…”

This comes from the fact that the middle-aged father at the window to the right was also carded.  Oddly, I wasn’t.  Maybe this is a subtle statement about my age …

In any case, after the movie my brother pointed out that, if you had to be over 17 to see this movie you should be at least 21 to walk through downtown Portland.  ”You hear worse language and see more nudity downtown.  I think we should card people on the street outside MAX.”

He has a point.

We are so desensitized to violence, nudity, and profanity that most of it is assumed to be commonplace when we’re in town.  It’s shocking when you realize that a home video of a family trip to Saturday Market might not make it uncensored on prime time television.  What kind of message is this?  Does it mean we accept too much in public?  Does it mean we reject too much in private?  What is the source of the disconnect between our sense of morality and propriety in one setting and in another?

You see at the bottom of all my websites a little check mark from the ICRA.  This is an organization that monitors content tagging and labelling on websites.  I tag the content on my website for the same reason the MPAA tags movies – to let people know what level of acceptability the content has.  Some of my posts in the past used very adult language.  I’d rather take extra steps to label my content than have the wrong person stumble upon a post.

But my experience this weekend makes me question that.  Am I really protecting anyone if they will hear worse language on their front porch?