#boycott codedecoded

No, you have to convince them that what you're doing is not oppression and that you have a perfect right to be doing it.

And that, Code Decoded, is what you are doing.  You are attempting to forcibly define queer identities according to your blockheadedly limited standards, and then telling your proposed customer base that you're doing a public service.

You take the rainbow, which from its inception as a queer symbol was supposed to represent diversity, individuality, and room to be a unique person not forced into the rigid conformity of a bigoted society, and you turn that rainbow into coded inhumanity: A bar code, a finite set of RGB values corresponding to artificial stripes, 10 rigid ways to be "acceptably" queer--and 4 of those 10 aren't even codes pertaining only to queerness!

You designed your codes to be incapable of expressing diversity.  A 3x3 matrix.  Even if you expanded your artificially limited color palette, or stopped trying to insist that each sexuality correspond to a "stripe" in the rainbow flag, that size matrix is too small to produce diverse codes.  Even a 4x4 grid does significantly better; 5x5 would not be much bigger and would also allow a center square.

See?  Here's one (of about 6 I did before I got bored):

This is what I think might be the start of a decent trans* code.  It's 4x4, is based on the actual flag for that specific GSM minority, has design features that represent the particular minority as more than just a monolith, and is big enough to allow for actual shading and design.  The watermark is not an actual part of the design; it's more like those special plastic boxes that stores use to protect particularly large flash drives and so on.

This took me about 5 minutes on MS Paint.  Half of that was getting the lines for the grid right; after that, I just picked the colors and used a paint bucket tool.  So much for "labored to create the source code."  The only "labor" you guys had was "Uh, what do we come up with for the 6th stripe?  Does the T mean "transgender"? How do we spell that?" and figuring out how to see colors on a computer monitor while simultaneously having all your heads stuck up each others' asses.

Then, after creating an absurdly limited number of codes which by their nature were highly problematic, for reasons I have extensively discussed elsewhere, you went and advertised them in just about the most racist, sexist, culturally appropriative, slut-shaming, and cishet-pandering manner possible.  The only worse things I've seen are FUCKH8's videos (so far, you guys don't have the money to pay little kids to gratuitously yell "fuck" for you yet).  Apparently, making these atrocious and/or impossibly inane ads took up all your company time, since you then proceeded to dick around for 2 years, making lots of ads but never actually producing a product until a few weeks ago, and still none of the promised "make your own code" app in sight.

So, you've made a useless product, you're bigoted scum, you're a bunch of lazy, incompetent dicks, and your company could easily be surpassed by a college sophomore if ze wanted to put the time in to make an indiegogo campaign.

Your codes, with any kind of competent handling, could have reached customers a year before they did, and could have actually had an option for vegans who are allergic to nickel.  (It's there on your site; wearing options are a black leather cord and a nickel-plated chain.)

Any half-competent java programmer could have written a "make-your-own-code" app in about 3 days.  I have not yet learned the GUI interfaces yet, but what's a computer science department for?  Or, I could allocate a couple thousand dollars (that I would have fundraised) to hiring a programmer.

I could actually create codes for pansexual, asexual, and demisexual people (and others) that aren't arbitrarily assigned colors and are more than a vague nod of "yes, I have heard rumors that you exist," which is what your putting a question mark over a blank code box says.

I could certainly create ads that don't shit on everyone except white cisgender straight and straight-acting gay people.

So, mycodedecoded, either shut down, or hire me as CEO.  I could use the help paying my tuition.

Until then,

Fuck you, Code Decoded.

Fuck you for glorifying straight allies more than the queer people who have to teach them how to be allies.

Fuck you for glorifying half-hearted allies more than the queer people who have to put up with the straights who are the opposite of allies.

Fuck you for posting this at a time when a lot of queer people, closeted or out, have to spend extra time with families who are actively homophobic and even go out of their way to be so.

Fuck you for how you're going to say that I don't have the right to be angry at you for your erasure and backstabbing and appropriation.

Fuck you with cayenne pepper lube.

This is not okay.  I'd come to expect sexism, fetishization, and racism from Code Decoded, but not this level of unironic commoditization and disrespect for history, though I suppose I should have.  Even FCKH8 doesn't quite do this.

Code Decoded, you have taken a symbol of liberation, of resistance, and turned it into a symbol of corporate enslavement.  God knows you're not alone in selling the pride flag, but to take a trademarked symbol and proclaim it the new pride flag is hubris and disrespect almost beyond comprehension, and is frankly obscene.  To put it in perspective, look at this:

Yeah, I thought so.

But here, Code Decoded, you're not just mocking a flag.  You're mocking Gilbert Baker, the man who created it, telling him that his work to create a symbol for queer liberation was inadequate.  You're mocking Harvey Milk and all the people who flew rainbow flags in his memory.  You're mocking Matthew Shepherd. You're mocking every member of ACT UP who lobbied the FDA to allow development of AIDS drugs.  You're mocking all those activists who worked to enact laws that make it so you guys can be out and maybe even marry.  You're mocking every single queer person in the world except those complacent enough to drink your pixely Kool-Aid--no, you're still mocking even those, by virtue of your existence.

You have turned a symbol of hope into a logo, a dollar sign.

Boycott disrespect.

Boycott ingratitude for and ignorance of our history.

Boycott the sale of a debased form of our emblem.

Boycott appropriation.

Boycott erasure.

Boycott commercialization.

Start a new Queer Revolution.

Apparently I am equivalent to Barilla pasta.

No.  Barilla is selling slightly homophobic pasta.  Code Decoded is stealing and selling the identities it claims to represent.

"In order to achieve this balance we’ll first need to level the playing field and attain gender equality."

via codedecoded

Code Decoded, you need to stop.  I'm all for gender equality, but you're going about it the wrong way.

First, you're representing a binary gender system.  How do you represent the LGBT+ community if you don't represent the "T+" and barely even the L and B?  You don't, that's how.  Go sell a white cismale hanky code 2.0, but at least advertise it as such.

Second, you don't even try to attain a gender balance in your own products.  All your terminology is based on white cismale gay culture.  "Versatile," for goodness' sake.  I think most other people use "switch."  Not to mention that that code appropriates asexuals' colors.  You could have found out what purple meant with a google search.  Then on top of that, two of your codes reinforce the active/passive split in traditional gender roles.  It's been a year of customer complaints, and you still haven't fixed that.  (And you also haven't released your promised app, which someone with a year of college computer science could write in less than 12 hours.)

Third, there's the semantic issue of equity vs. equality, and assimilation instead of acceptance and respect of differences.  That is a topic that should be addressed in an independent post.  For now, suffice it to say that your feel-good messages completely leave out pretty much any queer who isn't white, monogamous, middle-class-to-rich, and either cisgender or at least binary trans* and passing--i.e., at least 75% of the actual queer community.

Fourth, you need to source your damn art.  Unsourced art is stolen art--for goodness sake, you learned about citations and plagiarism in 8th grade.  (Or you would have, if you hadn't been staring at that hot teacher's butt.)  There are 2 possibilities here.  One, you've blatantly stolen art and photoshopped your logo onto it.  I consider this the most likely.  Two, you've either hired an artist or it's a fan submission, and you're being incredibly rude by not sourcing it.  Either way, it's completely inexcusable.  I want a bibliography, now, and if you can't produce one in one (1) week, I'm reporting your blog.

BOYCOTT BINARISM

BOYCOTT HYPOCRISY

BOYCOTT ASSIMILATION

BOYCOTT PLAGIARISM

And that's just insane.  I am taking an intro computer science course this semester, and I can pretty much guarantee that by January I'd be able to write the "rough draft" of a program that could do this, and write it in less than 12 hours.  Heck, I could probably write most of it now, I just don't know how to embed an interactive color selector.

So Code Decoded basically has two choices:

Admit they're bullshit and shut down, or

Hire me as CEO/Head of both R&D and Marketing so I can make their company halfway legit and intersectional.