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Bud Light is getting rid of its labels that sound like date rape ads

GhosX9/Reddit via NPR

It's not hard to see what the people at Anheuser-Busch were trying to conjure up when they decided on "the perfect beer for removing 'no' from your vocabulary for the night" as a slogan for a Bud Light label: the promise of loosened inhibitions that would lead to, say, harmless tipsy antics, hysterical laughter, and maybe dancing on tables.

But it is difficult to understand how the other possible interpretations of the sentence didn't occur to anyone in the room.

"The perfect beer for removing 'no'" might have worked if sexual assault weren't a huge problem, if rape didn't so often involve alcohol, and if "no means no" weren't the expression most closely associated with communicating to men that they should not assault women.

But unfortunately, all of these things are true — and well-known. And all it took was one Reddit post for people to notice.

NPR reported that the slogan was one of several that Anheuser-Busch printed on beer labels as part of its #UpForWhatever ad campaign, and that the company stopped making it and acknowledged — after being thoroughly slammed for the choice on social media — that the "removing no" version "missed the mark."

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