Struth! Juvenile Boobies too much for Facebook

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says the Christmas Island Tourism Association and birdwatchers are crying foul over Facebook’s refusal to run an advertisement for the annual Christmas Island Bird & Nature Week that this year, according to the ad, “would feature juvenile boobies.”A horrified Facebook rejected the advertisement on the grounds that the site “did not allow the use of profane, vulgar, obscene or unlawful language,” despite the association’s protestations that “juvenile boobies” were simply the young of breeds of seabird, including some that nest no-where else in the world than on Christmas Island.

But while birdwatchers and Christmas Islanders were getting into a flap, Facebook remained unruffled: a spokesman maintained that the proposed advertisement “crossed the threshold we are comfortable with by using the reference to juvenile boobies – even if they were referring to birds” (and which STRUTH believes they should have clarified even further as referring to avian, rather than possibly, err, human ‘birds.’)

And when Facebook said it would agree to run the advertisement if the word “juvenile” was removed, it was somewhat too late: the week-long Christmas Island Bird & Nature Week, that’s held in the first week of September every year, had come and gone.

What a boo-boo.