Artist Luciano Foglia’s app filled with circles, triangles, rhombi, rectangles and other geometric shapes was rejected by Apple recently because of “excessively objectionable or crude content”. That’s right: An app filled with geometry was considered too explicit and pornographic for the App Store.
Animal New York discovered Geometric Porn, the banned app that’s positively hilarious — if not exactly erotic — when you see it in action. Foglia recreates sexual scenes — insertion, relation, elation — with strategically placed shapes and thoughtful colour choices. But since Foglia considers Geometric Porn to be abstract art, and since it uses “visual geometry containing the non-explicit description of sexual organs or activity” (read: it’s just a bunch of triangles and circles), he argues that it shouldn’t be treated like apps that are straight-up porn. And he’s got a point!
You can see the app for yourself in the video above. It’s tasteful, not crude. It’s art, not explicit. But Apple disagrees and banned Geometric Porn for this reason:
Reasons for Rejection:
16.1: Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected. We found that many audiences would find your app concept objectionable, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.
Apple’s App Store rules have long been confusing; sometimes sexy time apps are banned, other times they slip through. And as more apps are being put through the filtering process, more crap eventually finds its way in.
But does an app this abstract deserve to suffer the same scrutiny as real pornography and/or nudity that’s in-your-face explicit? Couldn’t we just tag it with a mature rating and move on? Real penises bombarded a ChatRoulette app that got into the App Store, naked pictures are in multiple photography apps. If that’s OK with a warning, shouldn’t pink geometric shapes be OK too?
The app is funny. It’s revealing. It’s interesting. It ain’t Picasso, but it ain’t porn. Let it in. [Geometric Porn via Animal New York]