September and October are home to Hispanic Heritage Month, and as a result, there have been various videos across my TikTok feed that have to do with it. There have been various positive videos that go over culture, food, and more, and then there are a whole other side of videos that do the exact opposite. One person living in New York, in particular, however, won the Hispanic community over completely because of a complete mistake. What was the mistake? Accidentally putting a racial slur as the name of a product they were planning on selling. Well, you live and you learn!
The above video was posted by Juj Junction, an artist in New York who sells various items from postcards to pins, and more, in an effort to generate interest for physical mail. They’re also a small business that sells DIY carabiner kits. Carabiners are these small metal loops that climbers typically use to keep themselves stable while climbing. They are also popular accessories among those in the LGBTQ+ community for holding keyrings and other small trinkets. However, it’s what they decided to name this particular product that got the community talking: Build Your Own Biner Kit. Unfortunately, Biner is pronounced exactly as you might think it is.
It wasn’t long after the video was posted when people started to comment about the name of the product. Almost immediately, Juj Junction made an apology video correcting their mistake, but the damage had already been done: it got over to HispanicTok. One of the top comments on the apology video says, “As a Mexican, this is genuinely so funny 😭 happy Hispanic heritage month? Lmaooo.” Another pokes fun at just how genuine Juj Junction sounds, saying, “This is the first “influencer” apology video I actually believe.”
Fortunately, the whole internet came together to let Juj Junction know that they know it was a mistake. In fact, there is a sold-out listing for a Craft Your Own Carabiner on the Juj Junction website, meaning that they were able to rename the whole product and sell it anyway. What’s even funnier are the stray videos I’ll get every once in a while of TikTok users of color reacting to the original post with pure comedy. This just goes to show that people are willing to forgive your mistakes if you’re genuine about understanding where you went wrong and are willing to learn.
