Company Decides to Market a Translator Gadget By Having Skeezy Dude Try to Kiss Girls

The folks behind this admittedly pretty cool wearable translator chose what might quite possibly be the most disgusting way to promote it. In the video, a random dude walks around the streets of Japan asking if he could kiss the girls he meets using the translator, called “ili.”

There’s a point in this video where the guy actually reaches out to try to touch one of the random girls despite her body language all but shouting that she’s uncomfortable. And then he laughs about it. The entire video is really futzin’ cringe-worthy, and I still find myself asking how anybody ever thought this could be a good idea.

It’s a real shame because the translator itself seems like such a rad device. It can damn near instantly translate the English you speak into another language. It’s tiny and nondescript, which makes it super useful for travelling. But… really. This commercial is absolutely 100% skeezy grossness that just overshadows how neat of an invention this is.

In all honesty, I don’t care how cool an invention might be. If you decide making a commercial dedicated to being a sleazebag, then that’s going to take a lot of attention away from it.

This is what I imagine it’s like to hire a pickup artist to do your promotional videos for you. The takeaway here? Don’t do that.

Ugh. I’m going to need a shower.

(via GaijinPot)

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Jessica Lachenal

Jessica Lachenal is a writer who doesn’t talk about herself a lot, so she isn’t quite sure how biographical info panels should work. But here we go anyway. She's the Weekend Editor for The Mary Sue, a Contributing Writer for The Bold Italic (thebolditalic.com), and a Staff Writer for Spinning Platters (spinningplatters.com). She's also been featured in Model View Culture and Frontiers LA magazine, and on Autostraddle. She hopes this has been as awkward for you as it has been for her.

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