The billboard claims that, "HIP HOT ROTS YOUR BRAIN." This was created by the Coalition of Responsible and Attentive Parents. The billboard tries to suggest that hip hop music will ruin your brain. Hip hop music today has many emotional lyrics that some people, especially teenagers, can relate to. These emotions can overwhelm people and possibly motivate them to do things that they might regret, but so can can hard rock and other types of music. .
The irony is this billboard is sponsored by the Coalition of Responsible and Attentive Parents, the acronym being CRAP-- and that is exactly what I think of this ad. There is no empiric proof that hip hop rots one's brain. There is no supporting evidence. This billboard is trying to make an emotional appeal in the hopes that the viewer will overlook its unproven message.
The billboard is a red herring fallacy (a red herring introduces irrelevant facts to distract from the question). The billboard only claims that hip hop rots your brain. They use this to distract the viewer from reasoning if hop hop actually does rot a person's brain. The phrase is catchy, however. It is sort of analogous to the old ads that said that dope rots one's brain. The ant-dope ads had some success so possibly the creators of this billboard thought they could piggyback on the success of those anti-drug ads.
This billboard was not successful because viewers are just to smart to be tricked by ads with specious reasoning. The billboard might have been more successful if it said hip hop is a waste of time: read books. The only thing this billboard was able to achieve was get me to giggle because of the acronym of the group supporting the billboard.
Do you think they chose that acronym on purpose? The fact that the Responsible and Attentive Parents think that their kids will pay attention to a sign that says "Hip Hop rots your brain" somehow makes me think they aren't as attentive as they say. And definitely not responsible. I would think that their responsibility as parents would include making sure their information is accurate. Are they targeting kids or parents of kids? Either way, I agree that their acronym is very accurate.
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