One of my favorite memories of the first decade of this century is sitting with my niece and nephew at a Hooter's eating chicken wings while watching the Patriots beat the Colts in a playoff game on their way to another Superbowl win. Good times.
That being said, there are a few things that would ruin my dining experience at Hooter's or Buffalo Wild Wings, which let's just be honest is trying really really hard to be Hooter's. One would be a big, clumsy, hairy oaf making a jackass of itself while noisily eating chicken wings and acting as if it's the only creature in the damn bar. Another would be a winged buffalo reading lines written for a precocious SitCom kid in a voice loud enough to be heard from across the room.
Seriously, ban both these idiots from Buffalo Wild Wings, and maybe I'll stop by. I'm sure there's something in the health code about the presence of all that dirt and hair. And I bet the bison is unsanitary, too.
...first, because they are almost self-parody. I mean, come on- more and more of them show people engaged in reasonably brisk exercise. If they did that BEFORE taking Wegovy, maybe they could have avoided taking Wegovy. Just sayin'.
And second, because one of the "possible side effects" to this generation's (year's?) wonder drug is increased heart rate, which is coincidentally a side effect of....oh, never mind.
It's the first three seconds, which feature a young woman sitting in what looks to be a very substantial apartment or perhaps suburban palace, taking advantage of a Buy Now, Pay Later "service" (this one being Uplift.) I guess she's using Uplift to buy airline tickets on Southwest.
This ad reminds me of those commercials featuring young adults buying life insurance from Ethos because "they don't ask any health questions" or Shaquille O'Neal endorsing auto coverage from The General. Whoever the audience is for Buy Now Pay Later, it's not the woman in this ad. It's not anyone who lives in a house that looks like that...UNLESS she's attempting an Influencer lifestyle and has tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt and owns none of the stuff we see and is hopelessly underwater in her finances.
If not, this is just ridiculous. This woman has money. She has a credit card. There is ZERO reason for her to be going the "Buy Now, Pay Later" route. I mean, come on, advertisers. Who do you think you're fooling?
1. "Ever wonder why we spend all this money on stupid novelty cheese hats and plastic necklaces just so we can sit in a parking lot during the game?"
2. "Think anyone watching this ad will buy the idea that we wear dumb foam cheese on our heads in order to promote a service that has been around for about one-fifth as long as that tradition?"
3. "Do you think anyone gets a chill down their backs when they realize that we are the among the only people on Earth standing between Donald Trump and the White House?"
First, I understand that Shingles is an awful disease that way too many adults get because they forget all about getting vaccinated for it; it's that shot you are supposed to get after you reach the age of fifty and who thinks about an entirely different vaccine you get for the first time at that age? I mean, now that it's not 2020 anymore?
Ok, enough of the serious stuff. Let's get down to mocking this weird woman who doesn't have shingles because she got the vaccine but who seems to be suffering some kind of "I might have gotten that awful awful illness if I didn't get a shot" post-traumatic stress. Or she's on the Dramatic Comeback Trail from her bout with shingles. I really don't know what that pained expression on her face is all about.
Oh wait, here's a possibility: she stepped on stage for the beginning of her Triumphant Return Tour to find a grand total of five people waiting to hear her sing. Yeah, that's gotta hurt. Not as much as shingles, but plenty.
...and the praise being heaped on it in the comments section is entirely the work of bots or corporate simps. There is simply no way that people actually enjoy watching people scream, take a break to drink a bottle of chemicals, and then go back to screaming. It's beyond dumb. It's insulting.
I mean, for chrissakes. All this fuss over a bottle of liquid candy with No Sugar but plenty of chemicals that have basically the same impact on your insulin levels as Actual Sugar and God Knows What Other effects on your blood and organs, not to mention the assault on your teeth.
But shout away For Reasons ( I don't get that either. I've never once screamed at a sporting event, and I've never appreciated the screaming of others either. If I'm in a crowd of several tens of thousands of people, the very last thing I want to hear is screaming. Kind of like the last thing I want to drink is a cold bottle of acesulfame potassium, aspartame, and potassium citrate.
(Just don't use a gambling app to do it. And don't try to convince me that gambling apps aren't related to the Buy Now Pay Later phenomenon.)
Klarna, Affirm, AfterPay, and all of the other Buy Now Pay Later "services" that have been created or will be created in the time it takes to type out this post are working yet another game of hot potato, this time with millions of "small" debts packaged and sold from bank to bank and then from debt collection agency to debt collection agency- because the companies allegedly taking on debt by fronting stupid, financially illiterate consumers the money they need to live beyond their means are not even building their business model on the return of that money plus interest. You know, like actual banks.
Instead, this is all about collecting fees. These companies charge a fee to every business they can talk into accepting their "service" on the theory that the Buy Now, Pay Later option encourages additional spending (a theory that seems to be holding up in fact.) That fee is collected every time a customer picks the BNPL option. Then Klarna, Affirm, AfterPay etc. simply sell the debt to someone else, washing their hands of it and walking away with the money. When the system crashes under a mountain of unpaid and unpayable debt, no problem- their books are clean, and they'll move on to the next scam.
It's so ingenious, it's a wonder it took so long for us to come to this. I mean, shopping online is in it's third decade already. Shopping using phone apps is in it's second decade. I'm guessing this shift from old-fashioned credit card use and Layaway is just another product of the economy? Or another jewel in the crown of our consumerist I Want It Now I Need It Now I Deserve It Now culture?
Probably a good guess, considering that credit card companies, which I thought were already the epitome of Buy Now Pay Later Convenience, are getting into the BNPL business by copying the four-easy-payments strategy of Klarna, Affirm, AfterPay, etc.....that's right, the people who brought Buy Now Pay Later to the masses after World War II are now going all-in on...Buy Now, Pay Later.
Whatever the reason, between Buy Now Pay Later and the normalization of gambling, we are headed into the abyss here and the third (or is it fourth?) near-Depression of my lifetime is just around the corner. Bet on it. But not with an app.
