That time of year again- more fun with Liberty Tax

 

Here we get the heartwarming, totally relatable story of a woman who was already the owner/operator of two franchise locations of some business doing something and who was so successful at her career that she decided to wander into a just-opened Liberty Tax office and apply for a job during the busy tax season.*

She goes on to tell us that she really learned a lot during her time at Liberty Tax- not so much about preparing taxes, but about the business of selling the public on the idea of getting someone else to prepare its taxes.  She doesn't tell us so, but it involves lots of big blue banners promising rapid refunds and deep discounts if you accept the most expensive "service" - never mind that nobody in their right mind with any kind of complicated tax situation would hire a company that opens offices in abandoned stores or any other empty space on a month-to-month basis, 99 percent of said offices vanishing after April 15 of each year.  We also don't see anyone dressed in a Statue of Liberty costume waving a WE PREPARE TAXES REAL CHEAP FREE COOKIES FOR THE KIDS sign out front.  Nope- just a dignified-looking woman pressing buttons on a keyboard and smiling at the sucker who came in thinking that they were going to get their taxes done quickly and correctly and maybe get a free cookie on the side.

Eventually, this woman opened her own Liberty Tax franchise, which concludes her awesome story of success with Liberty Tax, I guess.  It also concludes this post, but don't worry, I'm not done with Liberty Tax quite yet.  There's plenty of snark left to be mined beyond this woman's story.  

*seriously, how successful was this woman's business if getting into Liberty Tax was a step up?  Come clean, lady- you were a "franchisee" in HerbaLife, right?  Or Amway?  Or DoTerra?  Was it Mary Kay?  You can tell me.  I won't share it with anyone beyond this blog- and very, very few people read this blog. 

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul is the "grown up" solution, according to SoFi....

 

"My relationship with my credit cards wasn't good...."  

Translation:  "I kept using my credit cards recklessly.  For some reason, this was the fault of a bank that offered me unsecured loans at my own discretion, and little pieces of plastic in my wallet."

"I got into debt in college...."

Translation:  "I bought pizza and beer, but because I also happened to be enrolled in a four-year post-High School institution at the time, I am going to mention 'college' so that your brain thinks I was using the money for books or some other investment in my future.  This is all about me painting myself as a victim, after all."

"...and because of the high interest, no matter how much I paid, it followed me everywhere."

Translation:  "It was so unfair that every month I kept sending the minimum, despite having a substantial office job and a nice house in the suburbs, but the darn principal never went down.  And no matter where I went, I owed that money, which of course it did but Shut Up you're supposed to be feeling sorry for me by now."  

"between the high interest and fees, I felt trapped!"

Translation:  "Despite my college education, I couldn't grasp the concept of paying down my credit cards to avoid interest, or making payments on time to avoid fees.  It's easier to just complain like they are 'unfair' or something.  Relatable, too- there are a LOT of deadbeats honest Americans out there just like me, after all."

"...so I broke up with my credit card debt, and consolidated it into a low-rate personal loan from SoFi."

And here's the punchline to this unfunny joke:  This asshat with a nice job and a big house in the suburbs was being held down by his freely accrued debts, which totaled the life-crushing amount of....$4017.24.  That debt didn't stop him from buying that house.  It didn't stop him from doing ANYTHING.  He just found it annoying.  So he shifted it to an online bank which offered him a lower interest rate.  Which is fine in itself- if he's been paying on this debt for two decades (he said it started in college, and he looks like he's at least in his late-thirties now, and if he's younger than that and owns that house I hope a meteor is on its way ahead of schedule) and he still owes on it, he probably should have refinanced a long time ago.  But come on, SoFi- if you want your commercials to make even the slightest amount of sense in the real world, either add a few digits to this guy's debt (and put him in an apartment, not a damn house- I thought that his debt was "following him around"- why didn't it follow him to that bank's loan officer when he bought that house?  If it was "following him around," it sure didn't prevent him from taking on much more, substantial debt) or make him someone living in a studio apartment with two other people whose life would actually be changed by lower interest payments on a lousy four grand.  Because this- this makes NO sense. 

I don't understand SoFi commercials at all....

 

"Little to no interest...." um yeah, that's been the case since like the 1940s.  Low interest rates for savings accounts are the price we pay for the security of our deposits.  Maybe you'd like to go back to pre Glass-Steagall when banks paid six percent interest- because they were as risky as any other business.  Personally, I'm kind of glad that I only see runs on banks in the annual showing of It's A Wonderful Life. 

And I'm sorry, but if you find yourself complaining about bank "fees" and how they "take and take," the problem really isn't the bank- it's your lousy spending habits.  The only "fees" I know of are for new checks (stop using checks.  Checks are dumb.  Checks are relics of the 20th century.  You are slowing down the line at the grocery store and everyone hates you.  Stop using checks) and overdraft fees (yeah, if you write a bad check or spend more on your debit card than you have in the bank, you are going to get dinged for that.  It's better than taking a hit on your credit rating, stupid.)  

All the bank does nowadays is provide you security and easy, 24/7 access to your money, plus the ability to move it around- also 24/7- whenever you want without leaving the comfort of your couch.  A fee because you take out more than you have?  How dare they. 

And if you really think that a bank that you can only talk to through an App or an Indian-based call center is an improvement over that awful awful brick-and-mortar building that was mean enough to charge you a fee when you failed to keep your checkbook balanced, well, you've got problems that switching to that bank won't solve.  Good luck with those.  

Remember the fat-free chips frenzy? More fun from the archives of old commercials that didn't age well

 

No, you aren't watching a commercial produced by the Re-Elect Ronald Reagan campaign of 1984, though if you only watch the first minute and a half or so you'd be forgiven for thinking you were.   Instead, this is an ad for one of the most misbegotten products to come out of the first decade of the post Cold War world- a soybean-based oil that could be used to produce fat-free potato chips like Olean and Lay's Wow.

Remember those?  Well, if you were alive and in the United States in 1998, you probably at least tried them once or twice.  They were a very popular go-to for people conned into believing that scientists had stopped wasting time trying to cure cancer (or AIDS) and had done something truly valuable with their time- found a way to allow us to stuff ourselves with cheap, salty, crispy snacks to our - well, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to say "heart's content" here, so I'll more accurately type "to our dopamine center's content."  

Most of us thought the flavor was just "bleh" and went right back to eating good old vegetable oil-crisped chips, as G-d Intended.  But some people were so desperate to avoid eating right and exercise and above all Moderation that they ignored the off-putting taste and continued to chow down on these crimes against nature.  Maybe they thought  diet of Olean chips and Snackwell's cookies would give them Kathy Ireland's body- and back then, pretty much all of us wanted Kathy Ireland's body for one reason or another.  

Then we realized that this Frankenstein's Monster Oil was wrecking havoc on our gut microbiome and our digestion or, more likely, way too many of just didn't like the taste, and these fat-free chips vanished from the market.  

A quarter of a century later, the obesity epidemic that was in it's infancy in the late 1990s has become American's No. 1 health problem, because while Snackwell's themselves didn't pan out (they didn't taste very good) the concept that created them- replace fat with sugar to con people into thinking it's more healthy- is alive and well and actually stronger than ever in the American marketplace.  I imagine it's only a matter of time before another "miracle" oil is invented* that tricks millions of gullible, desperate Westerners into slapping down the money they don't have for fresh fruits and veggies, healthy fats and a gym membership for that magic pill.

*there actually is a fat-free frying oil already available out there.  It even predates olestra.  It's called hot air.  

From the archives of Ads That Didn't Age Well: Remember Snackwell Cookies?

 

These cookies were a product of the insane 1990s trend of stripping fat from snack foods and replacing it with something about 200 times more addictive and deadly- sugar.  So there is something especially disturbing about ads featuring crowds of fat women frantically hounding a company for more of that sweet, sweet sugar they think they can consume unlimited amounts of because, after all, it's non-fat.  

Thankfully the no-fat craze died a fairly quick death.  Unfortunately, it was not quick enough to prevent millions from becoming addicted to sugar and low-or-no fat, high sugar "healthy" products like yogurt and cereal and granola bars.  The women in these ads are fat- by 1990s standards.  They are slightly overweight by modern standards.  Snackwells are gone, but the problem they helped create is the No. 1 health issue in the Western World.  Thanks for nothing, American Snack Food Industry. 

Progressive's "Don't Become Your Parents" commercials are ageist trash

 

Notice that none of these commercials make fun of actual Senior Citizens,  I suspect because that would not sit well with the audience.  Fortunately for Progressive, making fun of middle-aged people- especially middle-aged white men- is perfectly fine because I guess it's seen as a form of punching up.  And the viewer is just supposed to ignore the fact that values usually associated with The Greatest Generation are constantly being assigned to Boomers.  

For example, we see several of these ads featuring Funny Stupid Fifty-somethings incapable of using a Smart Phone properly- never mind that middle class fifty-somethings have owned Smart Phones since they were in their thirties.  Were they clueless about the tech then?  Is there some reason why they were unable to adapt to updated tech along with their younger fellow Smart Phone owners?  Give me a break. 

We also see a lot of other behavior typical of people who grew up in small towns in the 1930s and 40s being attributed to people born in the 1960s and 1970s- introducing yourself to the waiter, or saving butter containers for leftovers, etc. etc. etc.  I'm sixty years old- I don't save plastic containers for leftovers and I've never introduced myself to my waiter.  Then again, I know how to take a selfie, so I guess I'm an outlier....?

And here's another thing- all those clueless middle aged people Progressive is talking about seem to have nice homes, obtained through decades of hard work and savings- but instead of being admired for their hard work, diligence and frugality, they are being subjected to what looks for all the world like Re-Education Processing because they "don't understand" how the world of their grandchildren - who, again, are using the same tech they have been using since they were in their thirties- are using.  

In short, Progressive, maybe you could stop pretending that people around my age are stumbling around a world they don't understand clinging to silly values that have no relevance in today's Superior Younger Culture and just admit that you want to make fun of people who have been on Social Security for at least a decade.  Consumer Cellular does it all the time; I don't know why you are being so reticent.  

Dr. Pepper's "Fansville" campaign has run out of ideas. So it will hang around for a few more years, of course.

 

Some jokes get stale and are thrown away.  Some are beaten to death.  Some are beaten to death, cremated, and then rise like a pigeon from the ashes (see the Geico Caveman.)

And then there are jokes like Dr. Pepper's "Fansville" ad campaign, which is entering it's sixth "season" (I believe the current title of the campaign is Ruining Your Football Viewing Experience Since 2018.)  The series that redefines the term "played" and necessitates me writing GO AWAY NOW in all-caps (the Mensa Squad from the Wendy's commercial will arrive at this level of played in 2024.)

Please, Dr.  Pepper.  ENOUGH ALREADY.  Yes, there will always be YouTube commentators who are willing to post how Hi-LARIOUS they find all this, but come on- those people like everything except finding things to do that don't involve watching tv or being online.  They should not count.  ENOUGH ALREADY.