UPDATED 01:14 EDT / JULY 07 2016

NEWS

Microsoft’s highly embarrassing attempt to be hip and woo interns results in apology

There’s nothing as cringe-worthy in the eyes of the young generation as watching their elders attempt to be hip, either by mimicking the slang of their generation, or perhaps asserting themselves on the dance floor doing moves they clearly have no right to do.

Yes, we’ve all winced from time to time at such a spectacle, and this week Microsoft had thousands of prospective San Francisco Bay area interns wincing, as the company sent out an embarrassing email pitch using language that clearly didn’t suit the Redmond tech giant.

The fun, and criticism, started after a Twitter user posted an email which he said his roommate had received from a Microsoft recruiter. The email contained the lines:

“Hey Bae Intern.”

“My crew is coming down from Seattle HQ.”

The email then explains there will be an after party with:

“hella noms, lots of dranks … the best beats …. Yammer beer pong tables.”

In case you’re wondering, or are out of touch with the apparent argot of the young crowd, here are some definitions.

BAE is an acronym, Before Anyone Else, or can generally mean something cool.

Hella just means a lot of, so in this case it’s an adverb of degree modifying the word nom, which just means food. There will be lots of food, might be the term a Microsoft recruiter would use if they weren’t being shamefully pretentious.

Drank is the past tense for drink, obviously, but it’s also been appropriated by fashionable young people to mean any kind of alcoholic beverage.

Out of its depth

Thousands of people commented on Microsoft trying to get down with the millennials, and the overall feeling was such an email made Microsoft look out of its depth. “I just cringed so hard I pulled a neck muscle,” said one Twitter user. “No way that whoever wrote this was under 50 years old,” said another commentator. Perhaps the cream of the crop was one person comparing the email to, “Old white church leaders trying to rap about God.”

The email very quickly became a laughing stock on Twitter, and later a news story. Microsoft was quick to react, responding with the statement, “The email was poorly worded and not in keeping with our values as a company. We are looking into how this occurred and will take appropriate steps to address it.”

This isn’t the first time Microsoft has had to apologize for its perhaps extreme attempts to woo the young. In March this year, scantily clad hired dancers at an Xbox after party didn’t go down too well.

Photo credit: mcclave via Flickr

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