Nobody is "alive" in this Xfinity ad

 

Trigger Warning:  Boomer Rant Coming Up!

When I was a kid, any "streaming" involved wading in the local creek.  If I walked through a dark house and saw everyone in my family lying around, it meant that everyone was reading or listening to music.  If everyone was in one room, we were probably watching tv together.  Note that last word- together. 

Now we get "what a time to be alive" from a dead-eyed kid wandering around a house noting that every single person in that house is becoming a potato while staring at their own personal glowing screen.  I'm not at all sure why any of them are in the same room- they certainly aren't interacting.  Hell, they are barely breathing.  Nothing must interfere with the inert consumption of whatever is on those screens.  

For some reason, this commercial is supposed to appeal to the people who pay the bills in houses like this and encourage them to make it possible for their families to "enjoy" a level of "accessibility" offered by the ad.  Because it's an amazing "time to be alive," we should be spending as much of that time splayed out on couches in dark rooms wasting our youth, encouraging our brains and muscles to atrophy.  Truly a triumph of the modern age- not high-speed broadband, but the successful marketing of such a loathsome product.  

Put that junk down and go outside, you ridiculous numpties!

This is weird even for you, McDonald's

 

This commercial is basically admitting that McDonald's French Fries are intentionally engineered to be addictive and binge-promoting, because it's just Good Capitalism to make a food product that triggers a dopamine response and encourages overconsumption.  These fried potato sticks are not satiating; they are oil and air and a little potato with just the right amount of salt and the perfect mouth feel to make the victim customer go back again and again to recreate that pleasurable sensation until the carton is empty- and then, in the best case scenario, go back for more.  

Imagine if this was an ad for whiskey that featured a disembodied voice asking "you people who take a sip, or a single shot, and then call it a night- how do you do that?  Who ARE you?"  Or perhaps a commercial for crack cocaine with the same message- "you tried it once and never went back?  You are so WEIRD!"

Or an ad featuring pressed and shaped potato flakes that used the catchphrase "once you pop, you can't stop."  Oh wait....we already have that....

The weird mixed message in this TurboTax Commercial

 

Marcus is not a "connoisseur of anything free."  He's a hoarder of other people's garbage.  If you throw it away, Marcus will snatch it up.  He doesn't care about quality, he doesn't care about taste, and he doesn't care if what he's picking up off the street is practical or useful.  If it's free, he's going to lug it home and find a place for it amongst the rest of the rubble he's retrieved from every street corner, dumpster or Facebook Marketplace Please Take This Awful Thing Away I Am Moving And Don't Want To Pay To Have It Removed post he can find.  If Marcus can lug it off on foot or jam it into the back of his car, it's gone.  No questions asked.

But Marcus takes this obsession with free junk to his approach to tax preparation services.  I use TurboTax every year, and have since around 2010.  I think it's an easy-to-use program and because I don't own anything and don't have any kids or one of those spouse things I can do my very simple taxes in about an hour using their basic package.  But the "free" edition is free of pretty much everything you want in something as important as a tax filing- you can't e-file, Turbotax will not check or back up the accuracy of your numbers, and no electronic copy will be saved outside of your own computer.  It's basically just a word processing program that allows you to do all the work yourself, including printing copies and mailing them by hand- and hoping your refund doesn't get sent to the wrong address or stolen from your box. 

In other words, the "free" edition is every bit as much trash as that ugly ceramic ice cream cone or fire-hazard ancient lamps or mold-infested recliner Marcus dragged home because he's an ill person.  Is this the message you wanted to send, TurboTax?  "As long as you like free trash, here's some more?"

In short, it's a really bad way to save money.  I put it right up there with using a third-party company to book important plane tickets instead of going through the carrier or regularly flying Stand By- it's a really penny-wise, pound-foolish gamble that I'm not going to take, ever.  It costs me about a hundred bucks every year to do my taxes with TT but I know some program has looked them over, I haven't missed anything, and my past returns are saved forever if the IRS ever decides that because I'm not very wealthy or very poor they better check to make sure I'm paying my fair share.  You get what you pay for, and accurate tax prep, e-filing and direct deposit are worth paying for.  Stop being an idiot, Marcus. 

Pringles. As with all successful illicit drugs, once you pop, you can't stop!

 

As near as I can figure, the guy in this ad is the very last white person on the planet to become acquainted with the artwork on a can of Pringle's.  And he's staring at it wondering if he'd have a shot at winning a settlement in a lawsuit against Kellogg's for Unauthorized Use of Likeness. 

Personally, I'm more perplexed at the popularity of greasy pressed potato and rice flakes and corn starch stacked in an oily can, designed to be eaten quickly (before that anti-Capitalist Full Feeling can catch up to the very pro-Capitalist Dopamine centers of our brains.)  Maybe it's all that salt?  Only the evil chemists who developed this crap know for sure. 

That Stupid Buffalo Wild Wings Commercial is Stupid.

 

All I get out of these Buffalo Wild Wings Commercials is that eating at  Buffalo Wild Wings is a dirty, noisy, unsanitary and uncomfortable experience in which one can expect to get jostled and interrupted while getting fur in one's food and probably getting one's overpriced beer spilled over everywhere because a stupid CGI buffalo is roaming around causing havoc everywhere it goes.

Oh, and that YouTube commentators continue to be the saddest mouth-breathers outside of the average Trump rally. 

This Weird Honey Bunches of Oats Commercial.

 

Yeah, don't just eat oats.  Eat oats drenched in sugar.  I guarantee that if you are the kid who gained fifty pounds of adipose tissue and is on insulin before the Senior Prom, she'll notice you.*  I do NOT guarantee that the attention you get will be positive, however.

Seriously, I've checked out Honey Bunches of Oats.  They taste really, really good.  That's because they are really sweet.  Sugar tastes good, in case you were born on another planet and weren't aware.  It has absolutely zero positive impact on your health, however.  I suggest that this kid finds some other way to get the object of his attraction to notice him that doesn't include taking on crap eating habits.  

*actually, I shouldn't guarantee this.  If this kid goes to a typical American high school, it's entirely possible that morbidly obese kids already on insulin are depressingly common.  

Just a few quick points about this DraftKings Commercial

 

1.  I can't imagine anyone thinking that there's anything funny about watching a multimillionaire go on and on about an addictive gambling app that certainly ruined lives in 2023 and will continue to ruin lives in 2024.

2.  I really, really hope that the posts in the comment section are all bots.  Because this....this is beyond sad.  "I died when I saw this."  "This is a Superbowl ad, this is so funny, screw watching the game..." etc. etc. etc.  If these are actual human beings posting these responses I weep for our nation.  You people need serious help.