The radio version of these ads has been the bane of my existence this summer. They show up at least eight times an hour on SiriusXM and there's been only one version running since late spring. I've got in memorized and I'm pretty good at jumping up and hitting mute or changing the channel before the guy manages to get to the word "nose."
I get that this product is probably a worthwhile thing to use, and I get that it only makes sense for Navage to use The Current Situation to pitch it, but enough already with trying to get me to pay close to $100 for a freaking nose water vacuum. If I had money to burn I suppose I might actually head over to CVS and pick one up, but I don't have money to burn so I guess I'll just have to keep washing my hands with soap and water and wear a mask when I'm in crowded areas and use Flonase when I get sick as I inevitably will because I'm not buying one of these things. Please stop trying to sell it to me. I've had enough of your stupid smarmy voice and and being forced to visualize the workings of this device and it's ruining my summer and my life. Stop now. Right now. Please.
(And on that note, I'm off to the beach for a week. See you all next weekend- and until then, please enjoy the archives and keep that View number up!)
Just between you and me, with those obnoxious Indeed commercials on the radio and these Zip Recruiter ads on TV, I am so over the endless whining of small businessmen struggling to hire people so they can keep raking in the cash. Don't care about your problems, Mr. Heartbeat of America. Having trouble finding great candidates? Offer more money. Problem solved. Ah, but that's not the solution you're looking for, is it? You'd rather pay a headhunting agency to flood your inbox with well-qualified but also appropriately desperate and subservient laborers who would like to make a living but at the moment are willing to work for enough money to put food on the table, keep a roof over their heads once eviction moratoriums come to an end and maybe- if Boss Man is feeling generous (or desperate) enough, get a little of that Sweet Sweet Health Insurance Coverage which is tied to employment because America is Teh Dumb.
Here's yet another commercial for a luxury automobile which rides on the message that if you own a particular car you'll be able to travel places and see things. But not just travel places and see things- do all that while driving really, really fast in a car that makes you feel Important because Listen to that Engine as I Hit the Gas.
In a few days, I'll be heading to the beach for a week in an 11-year old Honda Civic. It will take exactly the same amount of time to get there as it would if I were driving a 2021 BMW, Audi, Lexus, or whatever. Because regardless of what all these commercials imply, driving one of these overpriced Overcompensation Toys doesn't make the traffic part like the Red Sea or grant you a special exemption from speed limits. Nor does it open up vacation spots unavailable to the Unwashed Masses who have to get from Point A to Point B in 11-year old Honda Civics. Seriously, Luxury Car Manufacturers: get over yourselves. Your products are nothing special no matter how many epilepsy-inducing images and VROOOM VROOM noises you throw at us.
1. No more watching you pitch The General Car "Insurance." You don't use The General, a company that aims it's "product" at people with crappy driving records and worse credit. Stop telling how awesome a "service" you wouldn't be caught dead using (I doubt O'Neill even KNOWS what car insurance he has, but it's most definitely NOT The General) is.
2. No more using a body double carefully photographed from the neck down to sell Gold Bond Medicated Cream. Maybe you use it- but that's not YOU using it in the commercial, no matter how much you want us to think it is- because you do NOT have the body of a 25-year old athlete. Not anymore. Not even close.
3. No more trying convince us that you give a flying damn what printer cartridges are the highest quality, what copying machines do the best job, etc. You aren't the least bit concerned about any of this because you're a former NBA star and now pimp for basically anyone willing to hand you a fistful of money to throw on the already-massive mountain of gold you already have. You aren't the least bit credible, Mr. O'Neill. Not anymore. Probably not ever- but certainly, not anymore.
Ok first of all, this is a commercial aimed at Japanese investors from 2017. I generally don't bother with ads written for a foreign audience- I know there are different social mores and expectations and what have you, so what seems absolutely crazy and maybe even inappropriate to an American might not even raise an eyebrow in other countries, but this one was too weird to pass up.
For two minutes, all we see is a bunch of scary athletes who seem determined to assault anyone who happens to be standing in their way as they run through the streets of Tokyo, including a pretty young woman who was just strolling down the street looking at her phone (normally, I wouldn't mind at all the idea of body-slamming smartphone zombies, but she's about one-third the size of the guy who barrels over her, and as I implied, she's awfully cute.) They just keep blasting through people who are just trying to go about their day. I think the poor, underpaid window washer who now has broken bones and a severe concussion because a 20-year old, 200 pound athlete decided that it was his duty to crash into him at 10 MPH (the commercial suggests he's going much faster, but I'm going to try to stay in the real world here) was supposed to be a special bit of comic relief because his washing rag is just stuck there to the window, like he was swept up into heaven in a "Left Behind" film. It goes from being weird to jarring to exhausting by the halfway mark- I mean, we get it; the producer is really really proud of this concept, so he's going to beat it into us. One or two people put into situations where they should be badly injured isn't good enough. Let's do this at least half a dozen times.
(I did think it was funny when one guy jumps into the back of a car and there's a baby in a car seat there- and the guy doesn't tackle the baby.)
Near the halfway point of this three-minute marathon of pain, the entire team traps a young couple in their car and glares at them menacingly. Are they going to all gang-tackle this couple now? Are they going to murder them? What the actual hell?
Then we see that none of the people who were brutally slammed to the ground are hurt at all- they are being helped to their feet by the guys who rendered them horizontal moments before (I guess it's moments, but considering all that we saw, it's fair to wonder if all those mugging victims just stayed on the ground- perhaps waiting for emergency medical services- for a very long time, wondering if they would become crippled if they dared move their spines.) The situation is resolved with a smile- "It's fine that you ran over me and caused me to crack my skull on the sidewalk, you helped me back up after all so all good. No apologies necessary." I guess this is how countries with strict gun control laws deal with situations like this. In America, everyone within a city block would hear cursing, and probably gunfire, while a hundred bystanders live-streamed the event on their phones and searched for the right emojis to add.
So as I noted AIG is an investment service and this is all about staying "financially safe" with your money. And so I must add that this commercial certainly didn't age very well; in a few weeks Japan hosts its delayed Olympics amid mass protests over COVID concerns, concerns which have convinced the Olympic Committee to ban spectators at the events. As poorly as the United States has done in getting its population vaccinated against COVID, we've got it all over the Japanese, who are just about the very worst among Westernized nations in getting shots into arms. And Japan doesn't have the excuse of having half it's population living in a far right fever dream of fake viruses, autism-and-homosexuality-causing vaccines invented by people who hate Trump, and people who would rather die than take the advice of The Libs and Big Government. I bet they are just fine when it comes to keeping their money safe, though, especially with compelling, "hard-hitting" (sorry) ads like this to help educate them.
The only thing dumber and sadder than this commercial are the people who like it so much that they gush all over it in the YouTube comments. Seriously, do NOT read them on a full stomach.
Meanwhile..."dog tested?" Then dogs can buy them. Stop insulting me with this crap, Subaru. There are only two reasons why commercials like this exist: One, you don't have to pay dogs to "act" in them. Two, you know that the American Consumer is, on average, a drooling, easily-manipulated moron who just looks at this and thinks OOOOHHH DOGS I LIKE DOGS I WISH I HAD A DOG LIKE THAT OOOH THIS IS SO TRUE OF DOGS LET ME GO TO YOUTUBE AND TELL THE PEOPLE ALL ABOUT MY DOG.
Otherwise, this is just- Dogs. Posed in a crappy car. And very, very unappetizing-looking boiled hot dogs that no human would be interested in eating piled on a plate. Did the dogs eat the hot dogs? Who cares? Oh right- the people who gush all over this stupid commercial. The same people who, ten seconds after the commercial is over, will remember the dogs but not which car company made the ad. Seriously, this makes me miss the Subaru=Love ads, and THOSE made me want to claw my eyes out. Um, well done I guess?
I've looked around for YEARS to find just the right publisher for my life's work, and I've finally found it in Christian Faith Publishing. As the commercial says, only Christian Faith Publishing really reflects my views as a Christian; they are really into Crusading, Preaching, Book-banning, and Science-denying, but you could say that about MOST publishing companies. Christian Faith Publishing goes the extra mile by being against women controlling their own bodies, both pro-birth AND pro-death penalty (and anti-welfare) which fits perfectly into my very Christian perspective. Christian Faith Publishing also embraces the other values All True Christians embrace: they are anti-gun control, pro-censorship, and of course pro-Trump, and have no problem discriminating against anyone who makes a Lifestyle ChoiceTM which is obviously Un-Christian (Gay, Liberal, Socialist, all that I hate because Jesus does he told me so.) And I haven't checked yet but I'm sure that they are all for cutting family ties with Apostates through Excommunication (if they are Catholics) or Disfellowshipping (if they are Jehovah's Witnesses) or just plain Shunning (if they are Baptists, Mormons, etc.)
So obviously if I'm going to publish my thesis about the short life of an obscure political party in the antebellum United States, who ELSE would I trust than Christian Faith Publishing?
1. I'm sorry, but I find it really creepy that this guy is so thrilled at the idea of his family being taken care of financially (which is the only way that matters) should he kick off before they do. I mean, it's not as bad as showing his Significant Other being thrilled at the thought, but it's still pretty bad. I get feeling "comforted" at the thought that your family will not suffer (financially, which again...) if you die, but I don't get being so happy about it either. Calm down, buddy.
2. This commercial is seven years old. At the rate that AIG Insurance customer counter is going up, I estimate that there are roughly 3 billion more AIG customers than there are people on the planet. So do they provide life insurance for dogs, cats and goldfish, too?
1. If you believe that any of the people in this ad are related, well- I guess you are the reason the producers felt confident in just picking three random available wannabee actors to appear in it. There isn't an ounce of chemistry between any of them, nothing to suggest anything other than that they are total strangers who met at the studio five minutes before filming.
2. If you are rooting for that noxious little brat to do anything but fall on her face during the recital, you are a much, much better person than I am. This is a level of nastiness that can only be bred in a ritzy suburb by that parents of a single child who have settled into the role of butler, maid and chauffer for this smarmy little creep. It might sound cruel, but a pratfall* resulting in absolutely NO prizes would be very good for her in the wrong run and something she desperately needs if she's going to avoid turning into an absolutely impossible adult.
*why a pratfall and not a very good performance that is just slightly less impressive than that of another kid? Because you just KNOW that these are the kind of people who will file a lawsuit against the judges if their Perfect Precious Darling wasn't recognized by those Nasty Meanies for what she is- the VERY BEST PERFORMER BY FAR. After all, the only place Entitled Brats come from is Entitled Parents.
(Or Boomers are already spoiled enough already. Or I'm not dying to make some damn Millenial's life a little easier. )
Here we have an old couple lamenting the fact that they spent thousands of dollars on what turned out to be Worthless Life Insurance because they didn't die as anticipated. And they are about to pass that lamenting on to their children and grandchildren when those miserable selfish spawn of the Nowhere Near Greatest Generation find out that they'll gain absolutely nothing when the old people FINALLY pass on. And all because Mom and Dad decided to be selfish and cash in that life insurance policy instead of continuing to make increasingly high premium payments so Sonny could buy himself a Tesla....um, to deal with the grief. Yeah, that's it.
Watch these old codgers sell the family homestead and leave the money to some charity next. There's no limit to their lack of consideration for the Lesser Generations, after all.
(After all, it's far and away the best "actor" in this commercial.)
I gotta love the way the old guy reacts to learning that a 76-year old neighbor who likes running marathons has dropped dead "just like that," though I do find it a little creepy the way he immediately guessed that his wife was saying he died and not that he got injured running or something else. He's so stunned that he pauses in bringing that cookie to his mouth.
And I also gotta love the way he reads his lines- "we aren't going to have that talk about needing life insurance again, are we?" It's so convincing. And then it's off to the races with "the $9.95 plan," which is the only way EITHER of them refer to the Whole Life Insurance policy she has now decided they are done talking about and are definitely going to buy, today,* before one of them (preferably her husband, who just enjoys holding cookies rather than eating them) kicks off. Which could be any moment because after all, if a 76-year old neighbor can go "just like that," how much warning are too loathsome, death-obsessed weirdos living on cookies going to get before THEY fall into the abyss?
*because a life insurance policy you can buy for $9.95 a month after the age of fifty is going to provide SUCH a great payoff. I mean, come on. You'll be lucky if you can buy a box of cookies for the settlement amount.
I mean, at least we all recognize Joe Namath. When Joe Namath picks up his ill-begotten paycheck for pimping this crap he can take some comfort in the fact that he didn't have to decorate the background with Extremely Un-Subtle Reminders of who he is so that the elderly people watching this nonsense didn't wonder who was trying to pitch them "extra" Medicare "insurance."
Poor Jimmy Walker has to remind us that we knew him as "JJ" and for a really dumb, best-forgotten and certainly unsung and unwept punchline that was all the rage for fifteen minutes back in the mid-70s. Like Jimmy Walker himself. I wonder how much this company paid him to screech "Dinomite!," considering he's probably been willing to do it for free for the past forty years for anyone willing to pose with him, ask for an autograph, and otherwise acknowledge him as a flash-in-the-pan one trick pony whose time ran out before I graduated from eighth grade. That GEICO gig didn't come through, huh, "JJ?"
The Good Times are over, and they ain't comin' back, Jimmy. And nostalgia ain't what it used to be, either.
One of the people in this ad was born in 1968. Another was born in 1970. I don't know when the third was born, but she looks like she's maybe 60. But because Consumer Cellular is trapped in the 1990s when it comes to thinking about anyone over the age of thirty, we are told that one huge benefit of Consumer Cellular products is that they are super-easy to use and therefore should be appealing to anyone who has reached an age where anything more complicated than a microwave is befuddling Fairy Tale Magic or something. It's like Consumer Cellular thinks that if you're over thirty, you might as well be Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer without the slightest idea of how all these fancy do-hickies like Personal Computers and Phones You Can Carry Around With You What WILL they think of Next actually function.
Give me a break. Those people who were born in 1968 and 1970 were using PCs in college, and have been online since they were in their mid-20s. They probably got their first cell phone before they reached the age of thirty. So how did using a cell phone and dealing with cell phone bills (we know how disorganized Middle Aged People are when it comes to managing bills, don't we?) become super-complicated and waaaaay over their heads? This just stinks of Old People Are Clueless ageism, and man is that bar for what counts as "too old to handle tech" getting lower by the minute.
And in the meantime, can we go back to showing actual old people in these ads? I know Consumer Cellular wants to expand it's market, but I'm really not ready to see people YOUNGER THAN I AM going for Easy to Understand cell phone services and phones with Big Uncomplicated Buttons Because Everyone Knows Your Brain Stops Working When You Reach That Age. I'm seriously feeling triggered right now- that's the phrase the cool kids are using these days, right?
Yep, I'm going to rag on Facebook Portal a little more. Sue me.
The tech for video phones existed back in the 1950s, but we didn't get them because of lack of demand. That's right, good old-fashioned Capitalism killed the video phone because for decades people didn't feel the need to see the person they were talking to- in fact, didn't want to see the person they were talking to, and didn't want the person they were talking to see them, either. In a way, it was about maintaining privacy- I'll talk to you but I'm not going to invite you into my personal space, and I'm not tidying up my apartment or making sure my background is pleasing to the eyes just because I need to talk to you on the phone.
Then we got the ability to see who we were talking to on our phones- and the vast majority of us preferred not to use that feature. In fact, we seemed to do a lot more texting than talking, because it seems safer and less formal and (best of all) we can just stop texting and don't have to go through any awkward "well, I better get going" moments leading to "goodbyes" when we can mercifully hang the hell up and get on with our lives.
Well, Capitalism is all done waiting for us to want to use the tech it invested heavily in. You can talk to people through Facebook Portal while on your laptop, but that's not good enough, either- so here's a camera you can attach to your 60-inch HDTV, now instead of watching that baseball game you can talk to a huge version of that person you just (maybe) wanted to talk to for two minutes in glorious MassiveVision in your living room. And that person can see your entire living room while you talk. And if you thought "well, gotta go" was slightly awkward over a regular phone, and significantly more awkward in a Zoom call, how do you think you're going to pull it off while talking to someone who looks like they are standing right in front of you? What are you going to say, "it's been fun but I really want to do something other than be in front of this camera, and there IS this baseball game on I kind of want to watch....?"
Sorry, Capitalism. I can't even begin to describe how very uninterested I am in buying into any of this. In fact, this makes texting look better than ever.
It's also why YouTube Prime is totally worth it. I feel badly for anyone who finds himself ambushed by this horror of a commercial featuring squeaky morons laughing over....something...anything....I don't care what. No power on Earth can make me turn up the volume and make me actually listen to this crime against humanity.
What's the tagline, by the way? "Facebook Portal: Because there are people who don't know what an idiot you are. Yet." Or "Facebook Portal: Look what the opportunity to be in a commercial can do to people." It sure as hell isn't "Facebook Portal: This will make your life better in any way, shape or form."
Hey, wait a minute. I know what the tagline is: "Facebook Portal: Ready to buy YouTube Prime and skip the ads yet? 'Cause this garbage is just going to keep coming..."
All of these stupid "gutter filter" commercials are exactly the same in at least one respect: they all feature smiling old people who just seem to enjoy the company and attention of charming young people who are genuinely interested in talking to them (unlike their ungrateful, neglectful grandchildren who never call.)
In this ad, we see an entire gaggle of Seasoned Citizens who have gathered to pass the time with a young person who seems to have a nice job (I wonder if they are hiring; each of these old people has at least one grandchild who would be great at this, whatever it is!) plus is providing coffee and sticky buns and all he's asking in return is for a little of that time. And that young person is SO nice, answering all of their questions without even once rolling his eyes or getting impatient, he actually seems to be listening and appreciating the Wisdom of the Greatest Generation.
This group of grinning geriatrics asks a few questions of the Nice Young Man and is quickly SOLD on the idea of installing whatever he's offering to install, or buying a time share, or adding "supplemental insurance" to their Medicare, or whatever it doesn't matter because he's so very Nice and is such a good Listener. Just as long as it means they get to see him or some other Nice Young Man in the future, installing those gutters or telling them where to sign or even in court because this is all just a Scam. It's still better than sitting at home waiting for that phone to ring which it never does because most people in this generation are so Ungrateful, they could all learn so much from this Nice Young Man with the coffee and sticky buns and patient manner.
