and you know what? i am REALLY sick of these ads that are openly mocking people for being concerned about the products they’re selling.
Amazon’s super bowl ad where the Alexa mocks Chris Hemsworth for being worried about giving spy software control over his entire life. Waymo’s ad with the intro “the robots are coming!” mocking people who are rightfully extremely concerned about sharing the road with, or riding in, self-driving cars.
i don’t know, it’s just genuinely insane to me. “Oh, you have legitimate concerns about our shitty product? sounds like you’re just lame!!!” like what kind of “quiet part out loud” marketing is that?
so this post blew the hell up — which is i’m sure a sign that things are very normal and fine and none of us are remotely frustrated by this kind of thing — but it’s given me time to think about how to articulate the SECOND thing that pisses me off about these ads, which is that they don’t even bother to address the concerns.
i feel like any normal ad would go, for example, “i know you’ve heard that this shaving cream might give you cancer. but it doesn’t! and also it smells nice!”
but THESE ads mock you, and then go “anyway, your concerns are invalid because our self-driving cars that run over children at crosswalks have heated seats!”
it reminds me, in a much less comical way, of that scene from Emperors New Groove when the angel and devil on Kronk’s shoulders are having a debate, and the devil goes “don’t listen to that guy, because look what i can do” and then does a handstand. Only these are real-life commercials. That they expect you to take seriously.
