Brazilian company O Boticário recently released an ad featuring same-sex couples celebrating Valentine’s Day.
View this video on YouTube
The ad shows different couples getting ready for Valentine’s Day, only to reveal some of them are gay.
The commercial has made a huge impact in Brazil over the last week. "It shows the diversity of forms of love," one comment on the video said.
Other YouTube commenters, though, like the one below, started trying to organize boycotts against O Boticário, as well as other companies advocating for marriage equality.
Earlier this week, the video only had about half as many likes as it had dislikes.
And has been fluctuating wildly since then. As of Thursday, however, it has three times as many likes as dislikes.
Twitter users began pointing out that the YouTube page and the video’s likes were being targeted by people on WhatsApp.
tem corrente no whatsapp pedindo pra dar dislike no vídeo do dia dos namorados do boticário porque tem casais gays
WhatsApp messages like this one, telling recipients to go to the video and flood it with dislikes and then tell their friends to do the same.
Outraged viewers even opened up a campaign against O Boticário on ReclaimeAqui. "I do not want my children to watch this propaganda. I have the right to preserve the family institution in my home,” a user wrote in the comment below.
O Boticário actually responded on ReclaimeAqui, saying it "believes in the beauty of relations" and that the point of the campaign is to ”approach with respect and sensitivity, the various forms of love."
O Boticário also opened up its Facebook page, asking users to share their opinions about the commercial. The status has since been shared over 4,000 times with 21,000 likes.
The supporters of the ad have been just as vocal. ”Let people love — the world needs more love and less intolerance. Long live love,” one user wrote.
"I also have two children and a mother and citizen, I feel compelled to teach them to love their neighbor," another user wrote.
