Tiktok, the sands of time are running out on you....

 

Time to celebrate the utter failure of millions of dollars in propaganda shoveled on to American television last year, competing for airspace with commercials for Gambling Makes Sports More Fun Apps and Whiskey and Beer Makes Everything Better messages, designed to convince my fellow countrymen that before the Chinese created the brain cancer that is Tiktok nobody ever organized into groups or started small businesses or did much of anything at all.  How civilization developed before the Communist Party's favorite data-mining tool was created is something I'll leave to real historians, because as near as I can figure, nothing involving more than two people is possible without the benefit of the most important contribution to human society since cultivated rice. 

Assuming that four members of the Supreme Court (plus Clarence Thomas, who I'll assume has already negotiated his price and banked it in advance) can't be paid off to strike down the House and Senate action to force the sale of Tiktok, the app will disappear from American phones in 270 days.  Thousands of Health Coaches, Life Coaches, Couch Activists, Multi-Level Marketing Gurus, Preachers and other grifters will have to seek out real lives and maybe (horrors) have to seek out a way to make an honest living.  Thousands of others will simply have to find something else to do that doesn't involve making total jackasses of themselves for the benefit of an unseen (but hopefully subscribing) audience.  I have this weird idea that small businesses will survive and life will go on, maybe even better than before the Asian Brain Rot reached our shores just a few years before COVID with more devastating effects on our mental health, but maybe I'm just an incurable optimist.

Here's a heartfelt prayer to the multi-billionaires out there- please, keep your money in your wallets.  Don't bid for this valuable-yet-worthless nonsense.  Do the patriotic thing and just Let. It. Die.  Better yet, buy the rights to it, and shelve it.  The person who does that will deserve the Nobel Peace Prize and earn the gratitude of future generations into perpetuity. 

A few mean-spirited takes on this Finishyourdiploma.org ad.

 

This version cut out two parts that I am going to comment on anyway, because otherwise these takes wouldn't be as hateful as I want them to be:

First, in the original version, this guy says "I always dreamed of going to college," which instantly reminded me of a great line from the Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to School:

Thornton Melon:  "I used to dream about going to college."

Jason Melon:  "When do you dream about going to college?"

Thornton Melon:  "When I fell asleep in high school."

Second, and also in the original version, we hear his father say "this is a dream come true."  Yeah, I'm sure it's a very common dream of American men to see their son graduate from high school at the age of 38, after providing him with at least one grandchild.  

A third point- which is included in this version- features this guy saying that he decided he wanted to go back and get his High School Diploma because he didn't want to do manual labor jobs his entire life.  Um....I've got really bad news for you, buddy.  Unless you are a tech wiz, that piece of paper that says you completed High School is going to do absolutely NOTHING for your job prospects.  I'm very glad that you got your diploma because it sets a great example for your son (better late than never) and maybe you expanded your horizons a bit with that study, but if you think that this opens the door to a better-paying job....well, I hope they paid you appearing in this ad, anyway.  Because chances are most of the people around you at every job you've held since you became a legal adult had High School degrees and were being paid the same as you were.  I really hope you weren't expecting to show that paper in front of your boss tomorrow and get a raise.  

Again, I'm glad this guy got his High School diploma, but he isn't a role model and he isn't an inspiration- he had a chance to be those things, but decided to punt the twenty most productive years of his life instead, and choices have consequences.  Simply put, he's not getting those twenty years back.  The life lesson his kid should get from this is "dad's a great guy, he's worked his butt off to provide a roof over my head and food on the table, but I am NOT going to follow his path.  And I guess what I would really have liked to hear at the end of this ad is something like "I want to make sure my son doesn't think that this is a good plan, that he should not be dropping out of High School and having a family before he finishes his education because that's like strapping on a backpack full of cinder blocks before competing in the race of life.  I'm glad he's proud of me, I'm glad my dad is proud of me, but I'll be much happier if people see this ad and think 'yeah, to hell with that, I'm getting my High School Diploma when I'm in my late-teens, not my late-thirties, and I'm not dreaming of going to college, I'm GOING TO COLLEGE."

The sad, scary implications of these Chime Banking App Commercials

While driving up to Vermont from Maryland last Tuesday morning, I listened to a news story about the obesity epidemic in the United States.  A woman being interviewed talked about sitting in the McDonald's Drive-Thru hitting "refresh" on her banking app over and over again, literally racing her direct deposit paycheck with her breakfast purchase.  

What sounds to me like an absolute nightmare, and a huge red flag/wakeup call that it's time to get your finances in order.  That person in the interview got it- she realized that she was addicted to fast food AND living on the margins of poverty with the ridiculous amount of money she was spending on "food" that was literally killing her in two ways.  Eventually she went back to her banking information, did some hard, cold research, and found out that she had spent $40,000 in three years at the Drive Thru.  

Scary, but at least she figured it out and realized that her lifestyle was not sustainable and is no longer throwing good money after bad.  Unlike these nitwits, who seem perfectly happy to play a stupid game with their financial health and maybe even get a gambling-level electric thrill out of Beating the Clock every two weeks.  Personally, I don't see the attraction of wondering if I'm going to need overdraft protection every time I make a purchase.  These people are fine with it.  I wouldn't be able to sleep nights if my finances were in this kind of shape. 

I do not understand, but what do I know- I don't even get the "fun" of risking my financial stability on gambling apps.  

Why I'll never be on Rinvoq

 

It's not because I don't suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, though I've never had that skin condition thing that's really focused on in these commercials.  It's because I'm nowhere near cool enough to qualify to take this or 99 percent of the other drugs advertised on television.

All of these people ride horses or engage in competitive roller dance or BUILD guitars in their workshops (I'm not even cool enough to play one; this guy BUILDS them.  From scratch.  In his own freaking WORKSHOP.)  They are also always hanging with pretty friends (I don't have any friends, let alone pretty ones) and heading off to beautiful romantic places with incredible views and cafes and opportunities for selfies, not that they need to ever take a selfie because they are always surrounded by those pretty friends. 

If I had lives like this and was being slowed down by arthritis or plaque psorasis or whatever (I'm not looking it up- it's that red flaky skin thing) I guess I'd insist on trying this drug too.  But apparently when I walk into the office of my arthritis specialist he looks me up and down and realizes that I''m not Rinvoq-worthy.  Maybe I should take riding lessons or get some skates.  I'm sure not learning how to build a freaking guitar.  

Yeah, I have no idea what is going on in this Nissan Rogue ad....

 

So I guess that as far as the girl selling the smoothie- and the makers of this commercial- are concerned, the customer ordered the "wrong" smoothie (never mind that he apparently ordered from the menu) and deserved to be brutally assaulted by a guy wearing a mascot's costume.  In fact she is so taken by the guy in the costume's takedown of Soy Boy Kale Drinking Loser that she jumps into his Nissan Rogue and proceeds to smile ear to ear as he drives it recklessly through a gym which I guess is right next to the smoothie shop Never Mind Like I Said, I have NO idea what is going on here except that it seems to end with everyone chasing the insane driver of this car, hopefully to beat him to death with his own sense of entitlement, or at least arrest him for the assault he committed in the opening seconds of this intensely stupid ad. 

FreeFood123-with neighbors like these....

 

You have to seriously wonder about the mentality of people who can be convinced that they really should be in the market for pre-packaged "delicious" meals that can last up to 25 months sitting on the shelf of a bomb shelter, a bunker in the Colorado mountains, a cave, or a well-fortified suburban home bordering a reservation populated by dependents of the Democrat Party Soviet.  Then you remember it's the same people who fly flags which infer that Joe Biden's first name is a four-letter word starting with "F," believe that the only thing more important to stockpile than calories stuffed with chemicals is high-powered weaponry stuffed with Soon-To-Be-Banned bullets, and will buy anything from anyone wearing a t-shirt or using a website emblazoned with the word PATRIOT.  

Now I'm imagining these idiots, having spent the last of their fiat money on guns, ammo and prepackaged meals sitting on their piles of Trump medallions staring at the door of their Last Bastion of Freedom Lair waiting for someone to try to take away their freedom every time there's a power outage or BLM protest.  All I ask is that they stay away from the voting booths in November and far away from Washington DC next January. 

"Can Billy be put on trial for crimes against the environment?" This stupid Tacoma Truck Ad.

 

1.  I really, really hope that a lot of CGI was used in this ad and it did not actually include dozens, if not hundreds, of gas-guzzling vehicles spewing toxins into the air perhaps for an entire day or even more of filming in service of a stupid, pointless ad for whatever this ad is for (seriously, I forgot what was being peddled two seconds after it was over and was forced to watch it again.)

2.  I don't know who Billy is- I guess it's the guy who comes outside to find out why dozens or hundreds of people have shown up at his house which for some reason is in the middle of the desert- or why the guy yells "can Billy come out to play?"  If Billy is the guy who comes outside, why didn't the other guy yell "can you come out to play?"  Also, Billy looks like an adult.  Who was supposed to give Billy "permission" to come out to play?  Clearly, nobody- because Billy gives himself permission.  Obviously there is nobody else in that house- I mean, dozens if not hundreds of vehicles have just roared up, and only Billy came outside to find out what was going on.  If someone else is inside, they are either deaf or so drugged up they didn't hear the ruckus, or Billy has killed them because he is sick of having to ask permission to Come out and Play.

3.  What "play" is going on here?  Is driving aimlessly through the desert in trucks, cars, motorcycles, freaking LAWNMOWERS, etc. anyone's idea of fun?  Oh hell, yeah it probably is.  Never mind that the top speed for some of the vehicles shown here is like 5 MPH.  What is being "celebrated?"  The return of gasoline to "only" $3.70 per gallon?  

Hey everybody, we're driving around in the DESERT.  We're having FUN.  How can this be made MORE fun?  I know- let's pick up BILLY!  That will be the cherry on the sundae, right?