Did Rihanna just cause the downfall of Snapchat? First, the app’s redesign drove away tons of loyal users. Then it was criticized by Kylie Jenner, driving away even more. Sure, none of that really meant Snapchat deserved to be canceled; the app’s developers just made some poor interface decisions. But surely, after the way Snapchat treated Rihanna, there is definitely an argument to be made that it deserves to be canceled.
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You may have heard the news in the last few days about a remarkably tone-deaf, offensive and damaging ad that was run on Snapchat for the game Impossible Choices, asking users, “Would you rather slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown?”
Is it just me, or is this ad that popped up on my Snapchat extremely tone deaf? Like what were they thinking with this? pic.twitter.com/7kP9RHcgNG
— Royce Mann (@royceforatlanta) March 12, 2018
Connections were quickly made to the ways in which the ad referenced the domestic violence incident that happened between Rihanna and Brown when they were dating in 2009. Brown allegedly assaulted Rihanna in a car, leaving her with multiple injuries, and he served time prison time for charges related to the attack.
Rihanna was quick to condemn the ad on her Instagram story, not that she needed to because plenty of people were able to see that it was appalling. However, her words were pretty damning.
https://twitter.com/Ioveonthebrain/status/974307908514172930?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
“Now SNAPCHAT I know you already know you ain’t my fav app out there!” she wrote. “But I’m just trying to figure out what the point was with this mess! I’d love to call it ignorance, but I know you ain’t that dumb! You spent money to animate something that would intentionally bring shame to DV [domestic violence] victims and made a joke of it!!! This isn’t about my personal feelings, cause I don’t have much of them…but all the women, children, and men that have been victims of DV in the past and especially the ones who haven’t made it out yet…you let us down! Shame on you. Throw the whole app-oligy away.”
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Snapchat has since apologized, saying in a statement, “The advert was reviewed and approved in error, as it violates our advertising guidelines. We immediately removed the ad last weekend, once we became aware. We are sorry that this happened.”
Still, it’s not enough to save the app from the wrath of RiRi’s fans, who have been deleting it en masse, causing a massive hit to Snapchat’s stock value.
After Rihanna instructed her 60,000,000 Instagram followers to delete Snapchat, the company's shares plunged- causing the it to lose about $600,000,000.00 in market cap in a matter of hours. pic.twitter.com/KewHFSaDDZ
— 🇬🇾 (@chRIHssy) March 15, 2018
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It’s probably safe to say Rihanna got the last word here, and she fully deserved to. RIP, Snapchat.
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