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.
Funny, I’ll take “Things not wish for” for $200, Alex.
That’s just what the elites do as they live life unaffected monitarily. They push up roses and lollypops in the face of other peoples disasters.
+1000- can’t stand them- it’s idiotic- it’s propaganda is what it is- commercials telling us to continue surrendering our rights- to obey government- using hte excuse ‘We’re all in this together’ when this is turning out to be no worse- and perhaps not even as bad as, the common flu-
My politically liberal wife exclaimed how sick she is of these PSAs. On this subject, I agree with her wholeheartedly.
[[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.”]]
They forget to mention: “And please use our cards more often so we can get rich while all of you have to shelter inplace without jobs”
Try listening to classical music on YouTube and the constant interruption by Justine Beaver-types telling me to stay home and stop the spread of blah, blah, blah. All a bunch of one-hit wonders.
They should have asked Billy Squier his opinion about going pansy on video. He had great tunes and a lot of followers but he bought the MTV low testosterone consultant line, pranced around on video and then watched his music stop like a needle scratching across a vinyl record.
Bump
When I hear “We’re all in this together” it reminds me of the old TV show The Prisoner, and the catchphrase “Be seeing you” that everyone used. Benign and scary at the same time.
“Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer!”
Advertising is so woke it’s nauseating anyhow without Covid
I went to Target yesterday
Their ads in the story are so PC
I’m like who made this crap
Millennials is who
Hipsters and queers
Nowadays it seems difficult to see a family in advertising that is not racially blended. It’s totally gratuitous. Here’s white Dad and his two black kids — you should buy the lawnmower he uses.
When those “We’re all in this together”, “We’re all on the same team”, etc., ads come on TV we groan so loudly that we scare the cats.
“Nowadays it seems difficult to see a family in advertising that is not racially blended. It’s totally gratuitous.”
So you noticed that, too? It’s disgusting. And even the token Caucasian actors have dark hair and eyes. Seldom is seen a blonde, blue-eyed person.
Feel-good virtue signalling.
Like the mask wearers.
(Mask wearing for non-infected has never been shown to reduce the spread or lethality. Some top notch virulologists, however, have opined they actually hurt. For infected people, it does help them to not spread to others. Asians have practiced this for decades. Only the sick wear masks. Until recently, that is, thanks to, well, virtue signalling)
Wow. 76 plus replies. I saw this thread when first posted. Figured it would amount to nothing, but only because I do not watch TV.
Evidently many FReepers do. And so the level of sappy Corona TV ads must really be nauseating.
Fortunately, I am an essential employee. And NOT “sheltering at home” 24/7.
But really. Read a book. Watch streaming TV. FReep more. Do something besides sit in front of the boob tube being fed disinformation.
“Here’s white Dad and his two black kids —”
You left out his Asian husband.
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