09/02/2020
CW: Genocide, images and footage of genocide, slurs, s**tty business practices.
Here's a take on the WTFBBQ from AK lately. The company has been backtracking and attempting to scrub their marketing via footage of genocide recently, so it's a little tricky to tie it all together and get full context as that context is being actively removed.
So basically AK put together a book of tutorials on how to make dioramas depicting various human suffering by using their products. And to promote it they used actual footage of genocide coupled with edgy graphics, commentary, and an insinuation that it was making modeling into art because it dealt with hard topics. On some of their marketing posts for the product they also went so far as to make statements from the perspective of the Third Reich on ''Jews, gypsies, and g**s'' and how to deal with them, coupled with photos of the ovens used to kill them en masse.
AK revealed the product they were promoting through advertising with posts like the aforementioned earlier than they initially stated (likely due to the s**tstorm they unleashed on themselves by their marketing campaign). Initially the product could be bought with a bundle deal packaged with various busts and model sets with titles like 'A New Dose', 'The Miserable Gas', and 'Vietnamese Girl'.
It is worth noting that they stated a portion (not a hard percentage, mind you) will go toward NGO for relief aid. On the first publishing. Which seems to be an attempt at distracting from what they're doing, which is a (in my opinion, obviously) a blatant attempt to profit off of the suffering of others - even going so far as to use footage of humans being slaughtered and bodies of the victims of various genocides (The Holocaust, Rwandan Genocide, Cambodian Killing Fields) to promote the product. If this (the product) was done as an art piece and not something that the company ultimately profits from and that further pushes other products in their various product lines, and something that spoke to the issues in a contextualized manner or at least made some sort of statement without profiting off it would be cool beans. It's important to remember this s**t. That's what art, historical documents, and museums are for though. The way they went about this, using footage of genocide for shock value to hype a product that essentially profits off the mass suffering of others, is not so much cool beans. It's actually rather s**t beans.
They have actively deleted criticisms of their actions, along with the content they made to promote the product. They made an attempt at deflecting blame earlier via a rather false apology, and ended up deleting that as well after actively suppressing critiques there.
I don't know what's going to happen with this product, or what will happen in the fallout of AK's actions. But as we in the industry of scale modeling, miniatures, dioramas, and tangentially tabletop gaming in general proceed: For f**k's sake, make sure to cover these things tactfully and in a way that treats genocidal events - especially ones not even so far in the past - with some degree of tact and with the reverence deserved for those who have died in those events as well as those who survived them and have to live with the results of the traumas they suffered.
Attached is a (again, CW: genocide, images and footage of genocide) video for context that gives more coverage of it as it (the promotion of the product and the way AK went about it) happens.
I recorded events as they unfolded last night... which were when Spanish model company...
