British pop band Duran Duran, which hit the peak of their fame in the mid-1980s with hits like ‘Hungry Like a Wolf,’ and ‘Save a Prayer,’ faced backlash after posting a moody picture of band members Simon Le Bon and John Taylor next to a Tesla Cybertruck.
The post, captioned "You'll never forget your first Tesla Cybertruck,” got heavy criticism on Threads, Instagram’s X competitor, which is a hotbed of anti-Elon Musk sentiment.
All that criticism led to the band taking the post down, with posters celebrating the success of the ratio.
“Duran Duran deleted their cyber truck post…” said @thesarkastiklover. “Wait, our parents and teachers lied to us, bullying does work!”
The original post was quickly hit with complaints about Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, and his rampant right-wing political presence, as well as the perceived shoddy quality of the Cybertruck.
“You’ll never forget it because it’s garbage,” posted @stupefaction in response. “The comments raking Duran Duran for posing with a piece of junk are pretty funny.”
“Never forget,” posted @guillecummings over a screenshot of the now-deleted post.
The post drew plenty of lame Duran Duran puns, with some people calling the affair “A View to a Shill,” a riff on the band's 1985 song 'A View to a Kill.'
Joked one person about the band's other famous song, "Her name is Rio and she can’t drive in the sand."
“I love DD,” noted @petershankman, “but this was a major lapse in their judgment.”
And while plenty of people dragged the band for the post, Duran Duran’s social media manager jumped in to defend them, saying the post had been what was supposed to be a harmless joke.
“They stood in front of a friend’s truck because they thought it was funny. It wasn’t theirs. They didn’t get paid to post it. We certainly misjudged how strong the reaction would be,” posted Katy Krassner, who manages the band’s digital footprint.
Krassner didn’t immediately respond to questions about why exactly they took the post down or who the friend was.
But posters on Threads relished their influence over one of their original cultural influences.
“If I could go back in time and tell my 13 year old self that I would, at some point in the future, troll my favorite band on something called the internet because they were driving an anti-semite's ugly ass futuristic sh*t can, I would say you were crazy and then cry over my Rio album while clutching a scrunchy,” wrote @manifestationlockets, summing up the whole affair.
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