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‘Like, really, really shocked’: why are so many people riffing on this sheep’s sex appeal?

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‘Like, really, really shocked’: why are so many people riffing on this sheep’s sex appeal?

When a New Zealand bank tried to suppress sleazy comments about its virtual sheep mascot, it got a lesson in going viral and online censorship

Nick, this cute green cartoon from New Zealand is all over my social media. Why are people falling for an animated sheep?

This is a truly online story. A few months ago, Kiwibank, a state-owned financial institution, unveiled a new mascot: Buck, a green-wooled, brown-eyed emblem meant to embody the idea of “better paths, better possibilities and better outcomes” for customers.

A video of Buck riding the bus, drinking a flat white and getting her bangs trimmed made the rounds in the relatively nondescript way any brand campaign does.

Then came the confronting tweet, so far viewed by more than 4 million people.

“I WANT TO FUCK THE KIWIBANK SHEEP”, the post read, alongside a gif of Buck and her freshly trimmed fleece.

“Years of effort to convince the world New Zealanders don’t want to fuck sheep has gone down the drain in one tweet,” another user wrote.

Those messages began to ping around the globe, bringing Buck a type of attention Kiwibank very much did not want.

Sounds like a successful ad campaign to me. What did the bank do with this global attention?

The bank filed a series of copyright claims against the use of Buck’s image in the initial all-caps tweet and several others that featured drawings described as “sexy sheep art” by the New Zealand website the Spinoff.



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