Dear Steinberg Marketing Department:
Normally, I buy the latest Cubase upgrade every year, even if just to support further development. But not this year. For one thing, as a Cubase Pro 9.5 user, I don’t see enough significant benefits in version 10 to interest me. But I would buy it anyway, if it weren’t for this: When I watched the marketing video for version 10, what I saw was not appealing: It prominently featured a woman with a half-shaven head. For me, that’s ugly, but that’s not the point.
I suppose her haircut might seem fashionable if I hadn’t already met a shop girl with the very same haircut – last year!
So if this is last year’s fashion, then why is Steinberg using it now? Does this woman represent an important new target market for Cubase? Well, my wife and I both use Cubase, but between the two of us, I am definitely the one more inclined to tackle the technicalities. And I think that’s true of most men and women. For example, statistics show that, in the STEM fields, women tend to study biology, while men predominate in mechanical engineering. Women have different brains and different hormones, and they think differently.
That said, if Steinberg really believes young women are it’s main target market for Cubase, then fine, go for it. Sell it to them.
However, I don’t think that what’s going on here. The real problem is that this video promotes a political ideology that dishonestly denies biological reality. Prominently featuring the young woman – while the man barely shows his face – this video pretends that women are more naturally inclined to use this highly technical software than men. This is dishonest. Moreover, the woman’s sexually ambiguous half-shaven head implies that women can be men. Sexuality is subjective, it implies. The sex chromosomes we have in every cell of our bodies are somehow irrelevant and inconsequential. This nonsense is consistent with the post-modernist Cultural Marxist rot that is tearing our society apart. And I won’t support it.
Certainly, Steinberg marketers, you are welcome to your own personal opinions. But you are not welcome to politicize your product. I would gladly buy your software, even if just to support further development, but your politicization of Cubase has made it so distasteful and repellent that, this year, I will spend my money elsewhere.