Posted on 04/27/2020 8:12:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
A new kind of television advertisement has crept into our collective consciousness here in the age of virus. In an effort to show that they care, and you know, sell stuff, major corporations are inundating the airwaves with saccharine-sweet, super-sincere TV spots that are not a little bit dystopian. Indeed, the virus, it seems, is inescapable even when we cut to a few words from our sponsors.
You’ve all seen them. They include phrases like, “In this time, more than any other,” or “As we all rise to the challenge,” or “Stay safe, stay home.” The last one is particularly infuriating. I mean, I am home! I’m watching freakin television! Where do you think I am, a sports bar? I’m just trying to tune out watching “Friends” over here.
In a Dunkin Donuts ad, employees in one store are making masks. An AT&T ad like dozens of others is a for-profit celebration of frontline responders. There is ad after ad after ad of cozy indoor shots of parents teaching kids, people cooking, virtual happy hours, all of it.
And they aren’t even honest. A lot of families are at each other’s throats. What there should probably be is more Peloton divorce ads about couples who now hate each other, or some single guy sadly taping together used pizza boxes for the recycling.
It is honestly enough to make me long lovingly for the days “Mike Bloomberg for president” ads were more prevalent than grains of sand on the beach. Remember that? It was about 14 years ago, I think. But annoying as they were, those ads weren’t as cloying and Orwellian as the 30-second spots reinforcing lockdown orders while selling products.
We all know already about the shutdown. It’s not a public service to constantly remind us that we have barely left our houses for two months. One of the big reasons people watch TV is to escape this weird reality for a few hours, to settle into the world as it was, not as it is. But the next thing you know it’s back to hospital rooms and facemasks on the screen, stirring music swelling beneath. Just stop.
You know what I want from TV ads right now? I want pretty people with good, strong teeth pushing products that can dramatically improve my life. I want jokes, and celebrity cameos, contests and yelling. I want some affirmation that someday life will be back to normal, not constant reminders of the current drudgery.
A great danger in a long-term slow-motion crisis is that a narrative can start to set in across the culture. Increasingly. that is reinforcing a victim narrative. After all, there is little some Americans crave more than the mantle of victimhood. It is a message of powerlessness in which all we can do is heat up a can of baked beans and wait for the dictatorship of expertise to give us the all-clear.
Television ads play an outsized role in crafting that narrative. This is in part because TV viewership among Americans is so fragmented that we don’t watch the same news, or the same shows, but we do watch the same ads. It is one of the few forms of television that can still saturate society. Please saturate it with something other than shilling while putting on a coronavirus pageant.
There is a danger of wallowing. Yes, our lives have temporarily changed, but no, coronavirus need not be at the center of our every waking moment. In fact, if we let it be, we will all slowly go insane. So please, big companies and advertising companies, just cut us a break. Let us think about something else. I’ll buy it, whatever it is. I promise.
At least the sad piano players making the background music have jobs.
they are repulsive to watch.
“crept into our collective consciousness”? We are being assaulted.
I have started muting my tv every time one of those assnine commercials come on!
Advertisers might want to consider that some of us are completely put off by TV ads filled with people who are cowardly, subservient p#ssies.
I'm a Ford guy, but give me a Chevy/GMC truck ad with Bob Seger's "Like A Rock" playing in the background any day of the week.
I get several robo-calls each day from credit card companies, just to let me know they are “committed to their employees’ and customers’ safety.”
Its good to know how “committed” they are, and these calls are not at all annoying…
/s
I feel the same way, pharmaceutical ads (which were the previous lowest of the low) almost look good by comparison. It’s virtue signaling, “look how wonderful we are, we care.”
“The new normal” is particularly insulting and just wrong. Pound sand idiots if you think Americans will accept this crap as “normal.”
I don’t have TV and have never seen a Coronavirus ad.
No wonder I’m perplexed by the attitude of my otherwise intelligent and logically minded friends on the internet that do watch television.
I’ve not been exposed to ANY of the mass propaganda.
My favs are the ads by the rich and famous proclaiming we are “in it together”. Some are in with their toe and others are waving their hand for the third time.
A true turning point for America (for the worst, naturally) was when GW Bush was stopped from repeating “We will go on a crusade to bring these folks to justice” (crusade reminded Muslims they deliberately slaughtered and tortured huge numbers of Christians before the counterbalance of the four Crusades started-—a little bit negative to have people remember that).
Instead he helped push the idea of “we are all in this together, we are all Americans”. So stupid ads began showing a Lebanese firefighter in a US city, a nurse, a teacher, all races and pointedly throwing in our friendly pals the Muslims who could be your barber or your neighbor.
The USA, USA chants were stopped and we were back to cowering before TSA agents who scowl and feel people’s crotches as they decide our fate about being permitted to be an airline passenger.
And dummy Americans voted for a guy who had the middle name of one of our Middle East military adversaries in a shooting war.
DVR and Hulu without commercials are your friends.
At the very first note of the “sad piano” music through the speakers...its fast forward through 3 minutes and back to the show.
My wife and I call them Schooner Tuna ads. With a reference to “Mr Mom.”
I’m glad there are others as sick of these vomit inducing ads as I am.
Agree, there are as bad as the virus. Soft music while some voice actor tells me to trust the state and stay under house arrest. Well f that.
This is how you know they want it to be forever.
The new normal.
Cloying and Orwelluan is a good description.
Everyone!!! has something to say about it!
But the worse are the MD’s and nurses who whine on and on about how we’ll ONLY be safe if we stay at home or wear masks in public.
How many nurses are out there? How many Doctors? Does anybody expect that a nurse or doctor will ever say “All Clear! AOK! it’s time to go back to work”?
No. They will NEVER say that. It’s time for Trump to get somebody REASONABLE advising him and get rid of Fauci and Birx and whoever else is advising him...
Big it companies have product their advertising that’s useful during this situation.
Wouldn’t have a large market otherwise.
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