[There was a video here]

Reddit spent a good chunk of yesterday and this morning justifiably ragging on this Samsung ad for featuring "possibly the world's worst actors."

The ad itself is extremely weird and the actors are not believable as human beings, but that's not even the creepiest part of the 840 EVO solid state hard drive saga.

Eventually, one of the actors who participated in the ad came forward to provide some very necessary context (which some users had already pretty much guessed):

Hi. So I'm an actor/model living in Seoul, and im playing the 'businessman' in this promo. now, admittedly its not my best work lol, but most people arent aware of just how many factors go into making it this bad. Allow me to elaborate. They force us to speak slowly since this will be dubbed over in Korean, and even when it isnt, most people viewing it will be Korean. They ask us to exaggerate since many Korean people feel thats how we 'naturally' act (most people here are not very expressive). Ive worked many jobs where I tried to act naturally only to be told by the director to act more 'bright' (ie exaggerate). its how the director and client (in this case, Samsung), WANT us to act. the script is brutal. written by non-native english speakers, and sometimes the PD or director wont even take our suggestions to change some parts so they sound like something a normal native english speaker would say. its a promotional video, not a tv commercial, meaning it will be shown at conventions and expos and in-house. most of the people watching it are korean and thats why they make us do all of the above. edit: almost forgot, shooting took place from 730am - 3am the next day, and by the time they shot the scenes with the girl, she was literally falling asleep in her chair, hence the stoned expression and tone :)

Not long after he left the comment, "Damienf1" reportedly received a phone call from the booking agency for the ad telling him Samsung was livid and would pursue legal action if he didn't delete his remarks.

Fearing Samsung was serious — they have since deleted the ad from their YouTube channel, though copies naturally remain — Damienf1 had no choice but to comply (his comment, too, remains elsewhere).

That doesn't mean he was browbeaten into oblivion.

"I dont understand Samsung," he wrote in a follow-up comment. "They made a viral video. it went viral (granted, not for the reasons they may have expected). so today the agency i did that job through called me and frantically asked me to delete all my comments on reddit since samsung was threatening them with legal action if i didnt. apparently they really want to suppress it, though i cant understand why. Streisand effect makes a lot of sense lol."

[H/T: Reddit, The Daily Dot]