Who is pandering here?

A writer for SFGATE is upset over the fact that Haagen Dazs ice cream is catering (via tongue-in-cheek humor, obviously) to people who have to write computer code for a living. She accuses the advertisers of (gasp!) pandering:

Haagen Dazs takes pandering to the next level with awful tech-themed BART ads

When marketing meets Silicon Valley, we all lose.

Commuters at the Montgomery St. BART station were recently greeted by this monstrosity of a Haagen Dazs ad, targeting tech workers with its desperate attempt at making ice cream high-tech.

The vanilla ice cream ad breaks down its ingredients into a sort of ersatz CSS-type code. It’s best not to think too hard about it though; it will destroy you a little inside.

Commenters do not seem to be terribly happy.

sfgate writer takes pandering to haters of tech workers to an asinine level.

and…

it involves tech which is apparently “cool” to hate, so sfgate must *pander* to that crowd.

and…

Hates tech, writes an anti tech article using tech, distributed by tech, so readers can read it via multiple types of tech.

and…

“It does not need to pander to tech workers.”

and…

Most advertising panders to sex, violence, racial stereotypes, stupidity, greed, and over-consumption. That is of course fine with SFGate, but target techies as a sub-market and off with your head.

and…

Like a pimp filing a pandering charge, on another pimp?

Yes, the “in” people in San Francisco have decided that it is cool to hate tech workers, and to pander to those who hate them.

Sad social commentary.

In case anyone was wondering, here’s the offensive ad in question: