No matter your age, whether you grew up in a time when there were 2 or 3 channels and the day ended with the National Anthem before broadcasting stations signed off, or you have no idea what I am talking about and you have lived your life through streaming video services, you have been subjected to commercials.  For many years and even to this day, they have been mostly a blight to television viewers and similar video streaming options online. From the car commercials that try to make you think you are going to have access to a closed course alpine wonderland of driving (and if you had this access you would surely perish in flame) to the credit card ads that don’t explain you will make a snap purchase and end up paying $50,000 over 20 years for a $700 ping pong table.  I am sure it was worth it, Steve. You sir, are a master of the mystic paddle arts. The ads have hounded us like a plague that affects the eyes.

So today I would like to focus on the commercials that are a complete waste of our time and the money spent by companies to create and air these totally unnecessary bits of poodoo. (where my nerds at?)  Here is a basic example. Companies that sell beer internationally and makes millions of dollars inundate (yes, I went to public school) us with advertisements for their products which have been around for decades.  They didn’t change anything, occasionally a label or they have a special promotional can/bottle, but otherwise we are all very familiar with their products. We already know they taste like carbonated, diluted, urine cocktails.  And me throwing shade on them will have zero effect on people who drink these beverages. They have been drinking them forever and will probably continue to do so. Whatever commercial they come up with is not going to bring over the people who don’t already drink their stuff.  But if they didn’t spend the money on ads, they could do any number of things including but not limited to: paying their workers more, reducing the price for consumers, paying for a ridiculous retreat for their upper management folks, giving to charity, investing in the development of better tasting products, or funding a group of real experts to find Bigfoot.  

What else is there?  Oh, I have more. Thanks for asking.  Not so long ago, in this very galaxy, I saw a commercial multiple times within a single television show episode for Etsy.  Are there people who don’t know about Etsy? Do they know about the internet? I can’t even imagine someone just sitting around watching this commercial and it being completely new information to them.  How far removed from society would you need to be in order to be unfamiliar with Etsy? If you were so far removed, would you be likely to use such a place to purchase goods? Do you think that’s really air you’re breathing?  

Then we have those advertisements for products you have known about since birth.  Things like Doritos. Have they done some funny commercials? Sure. Were they worth the cost in order to show during the Super Bowl?  No. We all know that they exist. We all know what they taste like. If we were buying them before, the ad didn’t change anything. No one was sitting at home with a sack of bland corn chips during the game and when the Doritos commercial lit up their sad life they ran to the store and bought a bag for the first time.  That is what we civilized folk call poppycock.

We don’t need the ads with the fantasies about driving a new car down the street that literally causes people to turn their heads or for a beautiful woman to suddenly show interest in a man who is below her standards.  No one who has driven a typical Mazda has ever described the ride to be like flying out in the open wind over mountains and fields hanging onto a balloon. And I don’t think that lady’s grip strength could have kept her safe for that stupid journey.  Unless you are in a super car or better, the lesser vehicles are never going to give you the thrill the commercials depict. And if you have a super car and try to live out one of these fantasy rides, you are about to be pulled over. Why don’t they show a commercial for a Ferrari that is true to real life?  The guy buys the car, puts it in his garage and never drives it because he is too scared something might happen to it, his wife resents the purchase, they get divorced, the car is never driven.

Two new ads I recently watched are for AmazonBasics.  They didn’t explain what that meant, but they did decide to depict some “realistic” events that might happen in the home with their Smart home tech.  One involved a coffee carafe sitting in a sink and a lady off screen asking the future A.I. overlords to fill the thing with water. So, let me get this straight…you are going to put an empty carafe in the sink basin instead of just filling it up when you put it there in the first place, have Alexa do it for you and you still have to walk back to get it out of the sink anyway?  I am pretty sure most sink basins are like my sink basin, nasty. Is it ever clean? Yes. Once every hundred thousand years or so when the sun doth shine and you know the rest. Even when it is clean, I typically don’t sit things in it except to wash them. And all the effort you have to do to set the whole thing up and get it out is not worth the time you save having Hal run the water for you.

The second ad was quite similar.  Someone heats up a burrito in the microwave for a late night snack because they want to be woken in the morning by unstoppable diarrhea.  He tells Alexa to heat up his laxative. Just to be clear to this point…he had to get the burrito and place it in the microwave, and he didn’t have the determination to hit a couple of buttons.  He was only capable of giving voice commands after shutting the door. This whole thing would be bad enough if that is where it stopped. But no. He touches the hot burrito and withdrawals his hand as the magma sears his hand, reminiscent of what will occur in the morning to his more personal zone in back.  He reaches in again and slides the burrito out by the paper towel it is on and slides those onto a plate. Then he squeezes a bottle of hot sauce in one spot on top of the burrito like a caveman. The paper towel is still on the plate under the food. What kind of sociopath eats a burrito on a paper towel on a plate?  They spent money on these ads!

If these examples did not strike a chord within you, I am afraid you are either lost to the soulless corporate masses or in a state of blissful ignorance.  Or you were looking at your phone during the commercials instead. Way to go, you and your short attention span. Did you even finish reading that last sentence?  If by some fluke chance a person of importance in the marketing world is reading this, I implore you to see reason, Cornelius. Voldemort is back. And he has placed his many souls in video advertisements.