If you’ve spent any time surfing the Internet, you’ve seen more than your fair share of banner ads. The advertisement that is constructed from an image that appears all over the net and varies considerably in appearance and subject matter. Banner ads are usually relatively simple pieces of hypertext link code, instructs a Web server to bring up a particular Web page when you click on a certain piece of text or image. Their presence on the Web and their importance in Internet-based business is immense.

There seems to be an offensive ad running loose around the net called “Shoot The Rapper!” The advertisement features an animated rapper that resembles 50 Cent and a photographer whose camera you have to position to “shoot the rapper.” If you can, “You will win $5000 or 5 ringtones guaranteed.”

Actually, this is not the first time this has appeared. During the horrific events at Virginia Tech earlier this year, the ad was frequently spotted on MySpace, alongside the profiles of Virginia Tech students who happen to have lost their lives in that horrific tragedy. Peter Krasilovsky, on his “Local Onliner” blog was the first to notice this in his post about the Virginia Tech shootings.

Krasilovsky began complimenting the New York Times for its interactive feature about the victims until he noticed the banner ad on one of the student profiles on MySpace.com.

I was looking at one student’s MySpace profile, and noticed the rotating banner ad: “Shoot the Rapper, win $5,000.” I hope MySpace deletes the ad soon.

Shawn Gold, Chief Marketing Officer for MySpace, told Online Media Daily that said he was “unaware of the regrettable placement and that its occurrence was completely random.”

“That’s a random network ad that runs throughout our site, and it’s not connected contextually because we don’t place banner ads contextually on MySpace,” said Gold.

Added Gold: “It’s inappropriate if the ads are running on those profiles, and we can eliminate them from our network if that’s the case.”

During that time, there was an outcry for websites like MySpace to become more responsible with their advertising. On Poynter.org, Peter Zollman stated that “media should have advertising standards” in order to prevent instances like this from happening again.

The time has come for a company with the global reach and influence of Fox Interactive Media to set some real standards in advertising, and send advertisers with such a delightful message as “Shoot the Rapper” into the trash heap. Or make them choose a better message. Or a worse Web site.

The Internet has become a vast network of information that offers users a sense of connectivity in addition to multi-media content. In this manner, the social nature of the Internet has become the latest rage, with the increasing use of social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, owned by NewsCorp and the deep pockets of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, available not only for personal use but for professional networking as well.

It is not a secret that Wall Street are cashing in on this phenomenon, according to eMarketer, MySpace and Facebook will account for 72% of U.S. social network ad spending in 2007 and an ever greater 75% in 2008. It is estimated by 2010, spending will hit $2.15 billion. It seems that advertising is a major problem with social networking sites because many advertisers rely on “contextual advertising.” This is where ads you view on a web page are delivered based on the content of a web page that’s being viewed. In other words, the ad system sees what you are viewing on any web page because it has already examined the words on those page or through other factors. The system then delivers up in some fashion an ad that’s related to that topic.

What makes this ad very disturbing are the cross hairs that are supposed to look like camera but it seems pretty obvious as the African American cartoon figure walks across the red carpet, while they are ducking and dodging at the same time, the goal is to shoot the rapper. The crux of the matter, many remain ignorant of the true nature of this issues - the attack on the hip hop culture.

Hip Hop music is a product, produced by giant corporations for mass distribution to a carefully targeted and cultivated demographic market. What the public sees, hears and consumes is the end result of a process that is integral to the business model crafted by top corporate executives. The artist, the song, the presentation - all of it is a corporate product.

So it is not surprising to see that this ad did not go over very well within the hip hop community. Hip-hop artist, Rasheeda, told A-list Magzine about the “hypocrisy one deals with living in this country every day.”

“[This is] a perfect example of the hypocrisy one deals with living in this country every day. They fire Don Imus, then say Hip Hop is to blame. We grow up watching action movies and then are told Gangsta Rap is bad. We have shows like ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ and then wonder why kids don’t want to work at McDonalds…It’s only a matter if time before Anderson Cooper is interviewing Jim Jones about MySpace, watch and see.”

The anti-social aspects of commercial hip hop are perceived as a “Black” problem, rather than the entertainment corporations that created and profit from them. However, let it be understood, this truth DOES NOT EXONERATE sexist hip-hop from its shameful contribution to the debasement of women.

According to Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report, the major record labels actively suppress positive hip hop by withholding promotional support of both the above- and below-the-table variety. Ford revived how one of the corporate labels conducted a study that discovered that “tweens,” the demographic slice between the ages of 11 and 13, were the most “active” consumers.

Early and pre-adolescents of both genders are sexual-socially undeveloped - uncertain and afraid of the other gender. Tweens revel in honing their newfound skills in profanity; they love to curse. Males, especially, act out their anxieties about females through aggression and derision. This is the cohort for which the major labels would package their hip hop products. Commercial Gangsta Rap was born - a sub-genre that would lock a whole generation in perpetual arrested social development.

It is a multibillion-dollar industry, accounting for one of every five records sold in America. Although the faces of hip-hop are predominantly Black and the Black community the real power-players are Universal Music and Viacom who are pushing on what gets produced and promoted in hip-hop. It is also part of the existing domestic/neo-colonialism in which the which mass media is playing a leading role.

Like Latina/os, African Americans must also sell their labor cheaply and be willing to conform themselves to the needs and will of an elite in order to “succeed.” The pervasiveness of violence, misogyny, conspicuous consumption, and product promotion in hip-hop is the systemic need produced by the music industry. In our society today, ethnic culture is used as a form of social control, that which becomes “pop culture” in that it suddenly becomes the norm. Dr. James Peterson, founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC and assistant professor of English at Pennsylvania State U. at Abington further explains how the banner ad is an assault on African Americans culture:

“The mainstream media are doing everything they can to assassinate the character of our culture…The ad takes on more popularity now because of the backlash and the systematic attempt to kill Hip Hop by scapegoating it for all of the ills of American society, including gun violence, misogyny and racism….We need to redress Anderson Cooper, Jason Whitlock, and Oprah Winfrey. These folk are taking out rappers for real - not in some animated advertisement.”

The fact is, this banner ad is bordering on of eliminationism by using coded language to mask its true intent, definitely an underhanded advertising tactic. Eliminationism, according to Dave Neiwert of Orcinus, is behavior that is meant to shut down any type dialogue for the purpose of “outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination.”

Even though a camera is used to “shoot” the rapper and not the “gun” one would expect, the desired effect is to trigger a perception in which the person assumes a weapon would be used if they click the ad. Considering a camera is used when they actually play the game, the advertising company actually played on an average person’s own prior conditioning and frame of reference with the use of the cross hairs, which is the trigger that actually fools the person. The advertising company is able to get away with it because to the paparazzi photographer viewing the page, it is nothing more but a reference of taking the rappers picture.

It is these malicious tactics that we must focus. As people criticized MySpace, nobody actually questioned the company that made the ad. As a result, the ad continues to float around. One could compare this ad to the internet video game “Border Patrol” that was also floating around the Internet where the object of the game is to “kill as many ‘wetbacks’ as possible as they cross the US border. If we are really want to make a change in our society, we must not be afraid to go after those who are making and pushing this poison on us.

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