Television Commercials and the Decline of Western Civilisation, Part 2
A couple weeks ago (has it been that long?) I went on a bit of a rant basically explaining how TV commercials are harbingers of doom for our society… the reasoning being not only are a lot of them incredibly dumb, but what they are selling is often even dumber. The combination of these leads me to the conclusion that there are an uncomfortably large amount of idiots walking among us – more than I’d normally care to imagine – and that can’t bode well for us on the whole.
Now, dumb commercials are pretty self-explanatory. You know one when you see one. The second part of the equation, what they are selling, is oftentimes just as obvious, but perhaps bears some explanation. What follows is a list, by no means exhaustive, of dumb things I have seen advertised.
1. “High tech” razors. I can remember back in the day – and I’m not that old – when the 2-blade razor was pretty much your only choice. Well, that or one of a few brands of electric razors, though I have no idea who actually uses those. Anyway, at some point the three blade razor came out, and I’ll admit it was a noticeable improvement. Heck, I still use one. Then, more recently, all hell broke loose. As if the razor gene pool was suddenly struck with a strange mutation-causing radiation, bizarre new configurations began to emerge. Four blades! Three made a difference so logically another must be in order, diminishing returns be damned! How about tiny bars over the blades? That’ll increase the safety factor, dramatically reducing shaving-related fatalities. OK, now put a vibrator in the thing, say that it’ll bring the hairs out or something… hell my facial hair is standing erect just thinking about it. And while we’re getting a little too suggestive, how about those razors that secrete a milky white fluid over your face while you shave? That’s an image I don’t need to see during an evening of television viewing. Finally (or most recently, I should say), we get the most shocking, groundbreaking innovation ever… there must’ve been a full month of teaser ads for this one, along with the requisite computer graphics and imagery of faux scientists working in their top secret location, lest the commies discover the latest shaving technology first, thereby winning the face race… and finally we get the big news, during the Superbowl of course, because the world must know… five blades! Actually that was rather anticlimactic. Predictable really. Wasn’t there an Onion story on that? Like, a year ago? Well, anyway, I suppose I should be glad the technology is finally here, seeing as no one had ever found it possible to shave their face before this.
2. “High tech” toothbrushes. Same deal. Often these ads come paired with a razor ad in the same break. Same ridiculously flashy kind of ad, lotsa CGI, probably some scientist-looking people in lab coats with clipboards or looking at some computer with a really cool 3-D representation of the new toothbrush, or if we’re really lucky a holographic projection. Yes folks, this is how science develops the amazing technologies we now take for granted! Just think, before computer graphics, we were limited to primitive toothbrushing methods like using our own wrist power to draw the brushes over the surface of our teeth. I’ve heard they still do that in some third world countries…
3. Anything advertised in an infomercial or “As seen on TV!”. It slices! It dices! It cleans dirt, red wine, rust, and blood stains, works your abs, never goes dull, folds and fits under your bed, and comes with a foolproof 30-day money back guarantee! Maybe it replaces literally every other household appliance/cleanser/exercise device/food preparation tool you have, or maybe it just has some obscure use like making folding clothes slightly easier or allowing you to cut your hair with a vacuum! How much would you pay for this item? First of all I gotta wonder about anything that they won’t sell you in stores… secondly I wonder how many people are as excited about these things as the people that are paid to be excited about them on TV, and how many get used as often as suggested in the ad or infomercial. But what I really want to know is how many people actually take all the products that are now supposedly ‘obsolete’, stack them together on a table, and then sweep them with both arms into a garbage can, just like they do in the infomercial. I am guessing it is a small but non-zero number. I hope I do not know any of these people.
4. Automated text-message services. These started popping up in the last year or two. I guess the technology is ubiquitous enough now, though I’m still managing to get by without a cell phone, let alone one with texting. Now, I can see that there is a purpose to texting and there might be some things that it’d be useful to get on an automatic basis. But the ones advertised… yikes. Texting to get a joke sent to you? I can’t see how this would be good… most likely they are the same lame jokes that you are sent regularly by that one friend of yours who has evidently just discovered email and thinks it has no greater purpose than for forwarding every single thing that comes into their inbox. Come to think of it, these are probably the same people who use these texting services. Only now they are paying $1.25 per use. Yeesh.
5. Singing plastic fish, and all variants. The original singing plastic fish was bad enough. You get some motion-activated piece of plastic crap that sings at you when you walk by, always the same song (maybe it knows two if you’re lucky), playing with absolutely terrible sound quality that is not supposed to matter because the thing moves its mouth and even turns to look right at you once in a while. Oh, wow. For the discerning customer this will of course get old in well under a minute, so you can only imagine who would actually buy one so that they may make it a fixture in their living room. Now, if you’re buying it for its kitsch value… you’re still an idiot. C’mon, is it really worth it to get a couple cheap laughs from your hipster friends? Answer: NO. Try harder. Now, the singing fish thing is mostly played out, thank god, but the concept itself is far from dead. This past holiday season my television was inundated with commercials for new products from a well-known card manufacturer, offering pretty much the same deal except that instead of the fish, they would perhaps have a snowman at a piano or something, and instead of “Take Me to the River”, it played Christmas carols. The commercials did their best to rub in the inanity by showing potential customers having bizarre fantasies about how all their guests at the Christmas party would be completely captivated by the device, and when you waited for the payoff when they realised “no, this is just a cheap gizmo that will get old so fast it will never need a second set of batteries”… it never came. These things are evidently designed for those with either an overblown sense of irony, or none at all.
Well, look at that. I’m already well over 1,000 words and I’m not sure I’ve made a dent in all the products I want to berate. There is no shortage of material… perhaps I should just get rid of my TV (Yeah, I know. Wasn’t that in the Onion? Like two years ago? Well, good luck finding it, smartass.). I guess I’ll just have to keep a quick thumb on the remote once the commercial break starts. Or suffer through it.
Now, dumb commercials are pretty self-explanatory. You know one when you see one. The second part of the equation, what they are selling, is oftentimes just as obvious, but perhaps bears some explanation. What follows is a list, by no means exhaustive, of dumb things I have seen advertised.
1. “High tech” razors. I can remember back in the day – and I’m not that old – when the 2-blade razor was pretty much your only choice. Well, that or one of a few brands of electric razors, though I have no idea who actually uses those. Anyway, at some point the three blade razor came out, and I’ll admit it was a noticeable improvement. Heck, I still use one. Then, more recently, all hell broke loose. As if the razor gene pool was suddenly struck with a strange mutation-causing radiation, bizarre new configurations began to emerge. Four blades! Three made a difference so logically another must be in order, diminishing returns be damned! How about tiny bars over the blades? That’ll increase the safety factor, dramatically reducing shaving-related fatalities. OK, now put a vibrator in the thing, say that it’ll bring the hairs out or something… hell my facial hair is standing erect just thinking about it. And while we’re getting a little too suggestive, how about those razors that secrete a milky white fluid over your face while you shave? That’s an image I don’t need to see during an evening of television viewing. Finally (or most recently, I should say), we get the most shocking, groundbreaking innovation ever… there must’ve been a full month of teaser ads for this one, along with the requisite computer graphics and imagery of faux scientists working in their top secret location, lest the commies discover the latest shaving technology first, thereby winning the face race… and finally we get the big news, during the Superbowl of course, because the world must know… five blades! Actually that was rather anticlimactic. Predictable really. Wasn’t there an Onion story on that? Like, a year ago? Well, anyway, I suppose I should be glad the technology is finally here, seeing as no one had ever found it possible to shave their face before this.
2. “High tech” toothbrushes. Same deal. Often these ads come paired with a razor ad in the same break. Same ridiculously flashy kind of ad, lotsa CGI, probably some scientist-looking people in lab coats with clipboards or looking at some computer with a really cool 3-D representation of the new toothbrush, or if we’re really lucky a holographic projection. Yes folks, this is how science develops the amazing technologies we now take for granted! Just think, before computer graphics, we were limited to primitive toothbrushing methods like using our own wrist power to draw the brushes over the surface of our teeth. I’ve heard they still do that in some third world countries…
3. Anything advertised in an infomercial or “As seen on TV!”. It slices! It dices! It cleans dirt, red wine, rust, and blood stains, works your abs, never goes dull, folds and fits under your bed, and comes with a foolproof 30-day money back guarantee! Maybe it replaces literally every other household appliance/cleanser/exercise device/food preparation tool you have, or maybe it just has some obscure use like making folding clothes slightly easier or allowing you to cut your hair with a vacuum! How much would you pay for this item? First of all I gotta wonder about anything that they won’t sell you in stores… secondly I wonder how many people are as excited about these things as the people that are paid to be excited about them on TV, and how many get used as often as suggested in the ad or infomercial. But what I really want to know is how many people actually take all the products that are now supposedly ‘obsolete’, stack them together on a table, and then sweep them with both arms into a garbage can, just like they do in the infomercial. I am guessing it is a small but non-zero number. I hope I do not know any of these people.
4. Automated text-message services. These started popping up in the last year or two. I guess the technology is ubiquitous enough now, though I’m still managing to get by without a cell phone, let alone one with texting. Now, I can see that there is a purpose to texting and there might be some things that it’d be useful to get on an automatic basis. But the ones advertised… yikes. Texting to get a joke sent to you? I can’t see how this would be good… most likely they are the same lame jokes that you are sent regularly by that one friend of yours who has evidently just discovered email and thinks it has no greater purpose than for forwarding every single thing that comes into their inbox. Come to think of it, these are probably the same people who use these texting services. Only now they are paying $1.25 per use. Yeesh.
5. Singing plastic fish, and all variants. The original singing plastic fish was bad enough. You get some motion-activated piece of plastic crap that sings at you when you walk by, always the same song (maybe it knows two if you’re lucky), playing with absolutely terrible sound quality that is not supposed to matter because the thing moves its mouth and even turns to look right at you once in a while. Oh, wow. For the discerning customer this will of course get old in well under a minute, so you can only imagine who would actually buy one so that they may make it a fixture in their living room. Now, if you’re buying it for its kitsch value… you’re still an idiot. C’mon, is it really worth it to get a couple cheap laughs from your hipster friends? Answer: NO. Try harder. Now, the singing fish thing is mostly played out, thank god, but the concept itself is far from dead. This past holiday season my television was inundated with commercials for new products from a well-known card manufacturer, offering pretty much the same deal except that instead of the fish, they would perhaps have a snowman at a piano or something, and instead of “Take Me to the River”, it played Christmas carols. The commercials did their best to rub in the inanity by showing potential customers having bizarre fantasies about how all their guests at the Christmas party would be completely captivated by the device, and when you waited for the payoff when they realised “no, this is just a cheap gizmo that will get old so fast it will never need a second set of batteries”… it never came. These things are evidently designed for those with either an overblown sense of irony, or none at all.
Well, look at that. I’m already well over 1,000 words and I’m not sure I’ve made a dent in all the products I want to berate. There is no shortage of material… perhaps I should just get rid of my TV (Yeah, I know. Wasn’t that in the Onion? Like two years ago? Well, good luck finding it, smartass.). I guess I’ll just have to keep a quick thumb on the remote once the commercial break starts. Or suffer through it.
posted by Druski at 10:20 p.m.
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