In the military there’s a long-running joke about why people marry junior service members, and it almost always revolves around the benefits, mainly Tricare.
This weekend, the military health insurance provider decided to get in on the joke with a new Facebook advertising campaign.
The post, which went up on Facebook on Feb. 5, received an immediate and strong response because it plays on a common stereotype about dependents, which is that military spouses only marry service members for the financial and health care benefits.
Comments were split between those who thought the post was hilarious and cheered Tricare for actually having a sense of humor.
Others felt the post perpetuated negative stereotypes about military spouses.
On Feb. 7, after enough kick back from commenters and several iterations and edits to the original post, Tricare’s Facebook page updated the message, stating that their intent was to be humorous.
However, they admitted that for some of their audience, they missed the mark.
But not everyone was having Tricare’s apology. Quite a few commenters wanted the original status back, because, frankly, they thought it was funny as hell.
Whether it was wrong or not for Tricare to post a “dependa” joke, one thing is certain: Whoever runs that Facebook account has balls of steel to make a dig at military dependents when working for a health insurance company aimed at military families. Those steel balls might get this person fired very quickly, though.
With Tricare getting down on trolling, 2017 is going to be an interesting year.