Playboy goes PG: It’s media Disneyification in the Facebook era

Oct15

by Sindy Cator on October 15, 2015 at 11:29 am

It sounds like an Onion headline but it’s actually the New York Times: “Playboy to Drop Nudity as Internet Fills Demand.” The fact that this news is reality and not satire speaks volumes about the extent to which brands must reinvent themselves in the digital age. Does Playboy going mainstream signal not simply a marketing decision reflecting changing tastes, but a new height of social media hegemony? How do we differentiate the cultural climate of our time from Facebook executives’ legal guidelines? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram are today’s arbiters of decency and indecency due to their sheer power in…