Outraged People Just Got 'Sexy Buses' Banned from Cardiff, Wales

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Who among us has never wanted to fuck a bus? Not seeing many hands. Because such is the truth, the nib of human nature: Everyone, in some little way, wants to fuck a bus. Who has not seen a bus sashay its way through some gray and miserable gridlock and thought: I really want to be in that bus? Who has not looked at a bendy bus and gone: It would be like doing it with sexy twins? The answer is "nobody." Buses… there is just something about them.

Good, then, that Cardiff's New Adventure Travel (NAT) has put topless human people on the back of their buses. The topless men and women in the ads hold up signs saying "RIDE ME ALL DAY FOR £3," a message that serves two purposes: to make us aware of the affordable new day-saver ticket tariff, and also to drive us all so wild with desire that we run behind the bus, panting with raw human sexuality, roaring erotically, howling until our loins explode.

Unless you are a person in Cardiff, that is, or Wales, or just any person with a normal sense of how sexually charged bus adverts need to be. Because after outcry on social media, at 11:30 AM on Monday, May 11 in the Year of Our Lord 2015, the bus company vowed to pull the adverts, literally hours after debuting them.

They did this after a social media campaign from tweeters such as Georgia Lubrani, who took time out from her Literature and Philosophy degree at Cardiff University to tell NAT that yo, buses don't have to be sexy. "The idea that sex sells so much that it ought to be used to sell bus tickets is just ludicrous," she told me via email. "This advert is a shocking indicator of how commonplace it is for women to be objectified and degraded in today's society. Women apparently can't even ride the bus these days without being reminded that society values them only for their function as a sexual being."

Lubrani, who was one of the key people in getting Dapper Laughs banned from performing at Cardiff University, added: "It's great that people are using social media to speak up about adverts such as this. Although they seem like small victories, hopefully we are beginning to convey the message to the media that senseless, mindless objectification is not OK."

Experts call this "doing a Protein World," a new advertising method whereby companies, for literally no reason at all, use aspirational human torsos and the vague smell of sex to sell something like a 25-minute bus journey into the city center of Cardiff, or a special powder for bodybuilders to eat. Then there is a public outcry, and the advert gets banned, but not before it's done what its creators always intended, which is to make people aware of the product. Who now is not secretly thinking of doing a full loop of the X1 route around Cardiff on a £3 travel saver? Who could not now go for a cool, smooth protein shake while taking in the sights of Canton? And thus, the advertisers have done their jobs: got inside your sweet little head, touched your memories, made you want to buy a travel saver, and a £40 tub of protein with a bad font on it. Advertisers: Even more evil than you initially thought they were.

NAT have apologized: "Firstly we have stated that our objectives have been to make catching the bus attractive to the younger generation," they said in a statement. "We therefore developed an internal advertising campaign featuring males and females to hold boards to promote the cost of our daily tickets." You know how it is, you young people. Just horny as hell, every single second of every day. No way you're getting on a bus that doesn't have some nipples on it.

"The slogan of 'ride me all day for £3,' whilst being a little tongue-in-cheek, was in no way intended to cause offense to either men or women and, if the advert has done so then we apologize unreservedly. There has certainly been no intention to objectify either men or women." Is this the first recorded instance of a bus company citing the "it was just banter" defense?

Anyway, the adverts will be pulled in the next 24 hours, proving once and for all that Britain is not yet ready for its buses to be sexy. Back to the depot with you, sexy buses: go and frolic in the bus-washing machine together, getting all sudsy, before parking yourself in a garage overnight wearing nothing but a few dabs of Chanel No. 5. The world is not ready for your particular brand of arousing practicality, but one day it will be. One day.

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