Commercial rant time...

D'Snowth

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Well, it's kind of like how Zaxby's is supposed to be a chicken restaurant, right? That is right? I wouldn't know, we only recently got a Zaxby's in the last couple of years, and I still have never been. But I wouldn't know by the fact that their commercials are always pushing their salads and milkshakes and never their chicken.
 

Drtooth

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The latest in a long line of local cable channel commercial cut ins (commercials that interrupt other commercials that local cable companies cut in instead) really gets under my skin. Especially with its frequency. Though not as frequent as those *&^%in' Perillo Italy Tours commercials that sometimes can't even wait until after the commercial airs to tell us about these again.

Some creepy scar lipped wacko warning us that if we're not a prepper now, we will be. And to purchase some 25 year long lasting dehydrated emergency food source in case the imaginary collapse of the world happens. Or, reasonably, actual natural disasters. Let's get that out of the way before someone assumes that I don't realize those are an actual threat. Now, I have a problem with commercials that use faulty logic and paranoia to sell services. I HATE those IRS tax solution commercials that basically say the IRS is hiding under your bed and will take your first and second born with its scaly claws if you owe more than someone of your tax bracket would likely own their entire lives. Like someone sat down and said "you know the same techniques bad politicians and cable news use to make sure that bad politicians stay in office? Let's apply that to some gold based scam and surplus L.L. Bean dehydrated camper food!" Not only do you get these gullible consumers to fall for it, you also help feed the beast of hateful conspiracy sociopaths that are glued to Alex Jones and or Glenn Beck's cartoonish ramblings that actually believe them 24/7. Jeez.

And wasn't Doomsday Prepping like a fad back in 2009 or so? Ugh. We are not going to live in Mad Max/Fist of the North Star times. If the world somehow through one of those Chinese Liberal Lizard Men Space Alien scenarios, the darn thing's gonna end. All the Alt Right talk radio and dried stroganoff in the world isn't going to rebuild the planet like the ending of Wall*E.
 

D'Snowth

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I don't think I've ever seen commercials for doomsday prepping.
 

fuzzygobo

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It's the same dehydrated beef stroganoff they were peddling during Y2K.

Actually, if some foreign foe (real or imagined) dropped a bomb tomorrow, I wouldn't want to be around during the aftermath. What good is your life if you have radiation poisoning that will slowly kill you anyway? And if the highlight of your day is sitting down to a freeze-dried turkey dinner from 1990, deal me out.

One flaw with this dehydrated food. After a nuclear attack (check out "The Day After" on youtube), good luck trying to find uncontaminated water to cook this crap in.
 
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Drtooth

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Actually, if some foreign foe (real or imagined) dropped a bomb tomorrow, I wouldn't want to be around during the aftermath. What good is your life if you have radiation poisoning that will slowly kill you anyway? And if the highlight of your day is sitting down to a freeze-dried turkey dinner from 1990, deal me out.
There was a Simpsons episode from a couple years back where Principle Chalmers convinced Homer to be a Prepper. It eloquently put it better than I could.

That's not to say you shouldn't have emergency plans in case of a natural disaster, since quite a few of them have been playing out. There's a difference between simple steps that can be taken to survive during a disaster (the primary one being when they say evacuate, you freaking evacuate). You don't have to spend your life worrying and panicking about something that may/may not happen, and if it may, it may/may not be as bad as you fear. Though I get the sneaky suspicion most preppers are those who want a major disaster that turns the world into Fist of the North Star/Mad Max so they can live out their fantasies of being something more than a salary man/person with a dead end job that actually pays well enough. Yes, we all want to be big darn heroes, and we can without wishing the world would end. Something tells me if there were an Apocalypse that left us roaming violent gangs, those kinds of people wouldn't exactly be a match for them. If not, totally soil themselves.

But onto another terrible annoyance. Knightline Legal. I don't know if I should say turn your volume up or down, but get ready for serious ear bleed.


I get it. I watch Better Call Saul. These "non-attorney legal spokesman" commercials have to be abstract and non-visually specific. I don't have a thing to complain about the commercial visually. But that screechy, harsh, nails on a chalk board music. Ouch. Bad enough it already sounds like a colon, but those loud, sharp tones that sound like what a dog whistle might. They couldn't come up with anything a little less glass shattering?
 

Pig'sSaysAdios

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Anyone seen that furniture store's 9/11 sale commercial?

This is just horrifying:


Do I even need to explain what's so awful about this commercial? Clearly they were trying to do something controversial and shocking to get more sales. But this is just going waaay too far, this is disgusting. But besides the actual ad, why on earth would you market a massive tragedy as if it were some over commercialized holiday?

This is just sick.

Luckily the store responsible for this atrocity has been closed down.
 

Drtooth

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Personally, I'm far more appalled by the fact the first responders of the actual 9/11, heroes all, still can't get adequate healthcare because of some horrible excuses of human beings in Congress than I am about this pathetic attempt at Family Guy style humor.

This commercial is a moral quandary for me. On the one hand, it is sick and offensive and purposely so. On the other hand, this is what happens with tragedy, it becomes an ironic joke. I watch Family Guy, so I hate to say I'm desensitized to it. Recent seasons have made light of school shootings and even had a line about the Boston Marathon tragedy. But we come to expect that sort of tasteless shock humor from that kind of source. I remember how much of an uproar that ironic internet games about Columbine caused. Someone with the blackest of humor is going to constantly make light of tragedy. Not saying it's acceptable, but it seems that some places, like South Park (which to be fair, tempers it with smart satire), it's waved off.

Then there's the whole issue that's been bugging me about this. I can't help get the feeling that a huge amount of those who are complaining about this ad are also those who tend to complain about how PC everything is. Yeah...not making fun of a tragedy is political correctness. And while Political Correctness being a word that's overused is a can of worms in itself, I can't help but think those who love to whine about how everyone's offended by everything these days are on the forefront of saying how offensive this ad is. The same ones that complain about safe spaces and trigger words and micro-gressions. Everyone's offended by something, and while a lot of the offense can be debatable, we have to admit we go looking for things to be offended about. If this local commercial wasn't all over the internet, no one would have seen it or even cared. Discussing it makes the commercial popular. Ignoring it is the best form of mass disapproval, so it could have languished in obscurity.

But the thing that really conflicts me about this is, whatever you can call out this commercial on being insensitive, offensive to the dead, and mocking one of the darkest days in the US for such petty reasons, the thing that stands out to me is this. The commercial is an everlovin' trainwreck. Now furniture store commercial and trainwreck are words that inevitably follow one and other in a sentence. Anyone that's seen a local furniture ad can testify on that. Get a load of this one from Canada...


"we knock the cr[bleep]ap out of our competitor's prices."

How is that not a Meme, or at least on everyone's compilation of insane commercials with (clearly fake) Big Bill H*ll and Jones' Good ^%% BBQ and Foot Massage?

So I have to admit. I laughed at this commercial. Not with this commercial, at it. I laughed at the thought if this being a good idea, I laughed at its clumsy attempt at humor, I laughed at how horrible this commercial was. It walks the line of so bad it's horrible and so bad it's hilariously so. I do not approve of their commercial at all, but laughing at its expense is how I deal with how wrong this commercial is and how big of an idiot whoever thought this was a hilariously on purpose commercial is. But then that gets into that really sticky situation of being offensive to be funny and being offensive to actually hurt someone. There's a difference between Sausage Party's semi-ironic caricatures of the bagel and the lavash and some crazy gun store owner selling "Muslim Proof Brownies" with bacon in them. And yes that is a thing. Go to Fusion's Yotube Page and look for "Democracy Handbook:The New Hate Economy." The Texas furniture commercial, for whatever is wrong with it, isn't malicious. That gun store owner is. The real offense for me is when horrible people do horrible things to hurt others, not a bunch of dimwits that think they're clever.
 

mr3urious

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It's very clear that that stupid, tasteless commercial was done just so they could go viral on YT, and the makers were totally in on it. As Mr. Enter always says: What they're doing is wrong, and they know it's wrong, but they're doing it anyway.
 

D'Snowth

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I don't even know what it takes to go viral. I once posted a video on YouTube under the title "Scary Home Invasion Attempt Caught on Camera!" because of a video from our surveillence camera of a spider crawling towards it, and the night-vision made it look as if it was glowing. Nobody watched. I thought it might go viral as a joke, but I guess people were wise to me.
 

Drtooth

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It's very clear that that stupid, tasteless commercial was done just so they could go viral on YT, and the makers were totally in on it. As Mr. Enter always says: What they're doing is wrong, and they know it's wrong, but they're doing it anyway.
Indeed. If this went under the radar, no one would have known about it or even cared. But the internet being the internet found something to be offended by and gave them national attention. If something like this is so horrible and tasteless, the best way to react to it is by not reacting to it.
 
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