Why Do You Waste My Time?
The advent of the VCR was a wonderful thing, followed in time by the DVR and latterly the TV recording box in all its near-identical flavours of branded recording boxitude. Partly it’s the sheer unadulterated convenience of being able to set a thing to record and then watching it whenever I want to, especially nowadays when I don’t need to swap a tape or fight through the irritating Video+ codes or menus (thank you Mr Box Tied To My TV), but it’s really because I get to see the show I want to, not the idents that make me want to scream with their dull repetition and particularly not the advertisements every fifteen minutes for products that make me want to end the human race. I can just… skip them. It’s wonderful; it renders television almost as good as a DVD box set, depending on my availability for eye-gorging.
My enjoyment of TV has increased in direct inverse proportion to the amount of advertising I absorb. I wonder if companies realise just how much their adverts can make someone want to burn down their headquarters rather than purchase their tat. I’ll allow that there are some beautiful ads out there, with gorgeous direction and animation. If I want to see those, I’ll look them up on YouTube. I will still skip through them, because I can remember them. I don’t need to watch the fucking things nine times during a single programme to decide I never want to buy your product. Perhaps I am abnormal in my response… It’s always possible. I do know that advertising slides off me quite well. The chances are pretty poor that I’ll remember what shitty car or deodorant you’re pushing. Sorry. Maybe that’s why they annoy me so much – they don’t really have much of an impact on me, still less now that I don’t watch them. It’s a kind of empowerment.
Once Riled, Twice Enraged
Since I don’t watch the things at home, the only time I have to endure them is at the cinema. We get there bright and early you see, so we can sit exactly where we want to. We then give the impression of hostility to ensure that we have a reasonable twat-free zone around us. Sure, we then have to sit through twenty-five minutes of ads and trailers, but I don’t usually watch them. Why would anyone? It baffles me. I just whip out me tablet or phone and either play games or get in nearly half an hour of writing time. I’m certainly not going to stare at the screen just because it’s there. I’m not a complete sucker.
Anyway, we see a lot of films and although I’m generally busy, sometimes we see films with friends or I’m feeling uninspired or weirdly sociable and maybe we’ll watch the ads too. There’s not a lot of variety. It’s also amazing how much more you can hate the ads before a film when you suffer them twice in a single day. This happened on Sunday, and I found myself growing increasingly angry with the adverts. Partly it’s that every advert is a lie, a manipulative, deceitful string of stereotypes designed to make you feel worse about yourself and envious of others. That alone sends me some way along the emotional spectrum. It’s also how fucking inane they are. The examples below were furiously scribbled while snarling at the screen and mocking the universe in which they exist. It’s a fair representation of the string of ads you’ll get before any 12A or 15 film.
What I Learned From The Adverts Before My Film
Vodka, the notably rather flavourless drink is actually exciting / suave / like taking acid. It isn’t; it’s a decent mixer and a handful of brands are quite nice straight. If your vodka makes it seem like I’m in a forest or surrounded by snakes you have not given me vodka. I’m confused about why being in a room full of snake people represents a good night out.
We are young and stupid (with terrible hair) – especially you boys. You are so stupid that you are prepared to trade your skateboard / pet / car for a bland orangey drink. Girls will take everything you have and then mock you by demonstrating how a vending machine works. This is a bad example of economics.
A well shaken can of dyed, sugarless carbonated water is as thrilling as watching a gardener ejaculate over himself. Women like this, though their pupils notably fail to dilate with excitement. Also, it is an hilarious jape to toss a semi-pressurised metal container towards a ĺawn mower – nothing could go wrong here. I’d like to see the alternative one where his legs are taken off by shrapnel and the picnicking diversity squad is questioned by police. (The “reverse”-sexism doesn’t concern me in the least – this is one shit advert versus a million that denigrate women.)
Selling the scent of a product is admittedly difficult. Perfumes get around this by showing us something totally unrelated to the product. Perhaps the young people with crap tattoos shot in black and white is what this product smells like. But I’ve been into McDonalds… they don’t smell all that good. I wish I could be skilled just at walking in slow motion and being adored by other airbrushed and emaciated people. Maybe if I smelled like a celebrity I would be slower.
Hurray! A bank! Some banks, I’m sure will enable me to have a happy balanced home and work life, just by holding my money and investing it for their shareholders and rewarding me with an interest rate mocked my the change I can find on the street. Even more reassuring, a bank has returned from the brink of doom (all those other mean banks bullied it) and it still has all of its original values about financing the common man and woman which aren’t even slightly compromised by spending millions of its customers’ savings on an exploitative (if beautifully animated) advertising campaign.
A range of inferior beers and lagers are actually not drinks at all, but embody the creative spirit of the age, and I too can be part of it if I just swallow their terrible pissy beverage. I’ll make an exception here and name the brand because it is utterly disgusting. Carling lager – this is an indisputably poor beverage most comparable to lining your mouth with rusty water and then encouraging someone to shit in it. The taste of further Carling will make this slightly less awful. The current spree of witty little ads tells us that nothing beats the sheer perfection of Carling, and should you somehow fail in life you will be denied the drink. Remarkable, I would sooner fail at every endeavour than stoop to sip from the puddle next to the urinal that the brewery gathers it from. It’s a mark of shame against my home town of Burton on Trent that such utter shit is excreted where once was brewed Bass and Ind Coope. If I know you, and see you drinking Carling I shall be forced to put it to its only proven use: encouraging violence.
Also, aeroplanes are like horses.
Oh, and that I’m on the verge of cancelling my mobile phone contract because of their patronising and expensive adverts. Give me fucking bandwidth instead of pouring money into the man whose face looks like a forearm stuffed in a scrotum.