Lauren RabainoSo I’m loungin’ in the crib just watchin’ TV and some punk-ass commercial had the nerve to diss me.
Most commercials on television these days are just plain stupid. And the trend in these ads is assuming you’re stupid, too. Take, for instance, the commercials where two people are talking on the phone and the call gets dropped, ruining the conversation and causing an awkward moment. Yeah, the commercials are pretty funny and dropped calls are really annoying, but homie, please; who doesn’t look down at their phone and see that the call has been dropped when they don’t hear a response on the other end? Who doesn’t just call the person back?
And what about those “debit cards are faster than cash” commercials? Everybody’s in a cafeteria dancing around with their food trays, paying with a quick swipe of the old plastic, and then along comes the idiot paying cash, interrupting the whole process and bringing the choreographed dance to an end. This commercial assumes we’re dumb enough to have never used cash before. Anybody who has used cash knows it has obvious speed advantages over cards. How many times has your $5 bill had to be wrapped in a plastic bag and slid through a slot eight times?
The most laughable case is the commercials that go something like “get the funniest jokes sent straight to your cell phone daily. You’ll be the funniest person in the office. You’ll have everyone peeing their pants.” Who subscribes to these things? These commercials think we’re stupid enough not to realize they’re going to send us knock-knock jokes and spend our $3.25 per message on more commercials.
Also, we used to have Miss Cleo ads where she’d tell us to “Caaall me now!” Now we have that commercial that says, “Are you going to die tomorrow? What will the future bring? Get your own personal pyschic revelations sent straight to your phone.” You mean I can’t call and talk to someone with a fake Jamaican accent about my future anymore? They gotta type it to me? Are we dumb enough to believe that there’s a whole office building somewhere packed with psychics on computers that are gonna keep us alive? “Hold the wheel, dog, I got a text from my psychic. It says ‘Don’t let your friend hold the wheel.’ SHIT!”
Movie previews have to be the worst case of this trend. If they had the chance, they’d put us in a dunce cap and suspenders. I’m not just talking about how they assume we’re dumb enough to watch a movie after they show us all the best parts in the preview, since we are that dumb and fall for it every time. I’m talking about the claims that these commercials make. For one, how quotes from newspapers like the Arizona Daily Star like “Incredible,” “Supreme” and “Brilliant” fly across the screen. C’mon, be real with us, what did the actual quote say? “It’s incredible that the director had the supreme audacity to even attempt to make a brilliant movie out of a script this horrible.” Also, how can every movie coming out be the “No. 1” movie – and in every category? There’s the No. 1 family movie of the summer, the best comedy of the year (which was proclaimed in February, June, August and November by different movies) and the greatest family movie of summer. These commercials think we’re dumb enough not to do some research and be like, “No wonder ‘Without a Paddle’ is the No. 1 comedy in America; it’s the only comedy in America right now. Everything else is the No. 1 suspense thriller that’ll keep you guessing to the very end.”
Don’t believe what these commercials say. Dropped calls don’t ruin conversations, debit cards are not necessarily faster than cash, jokes in the form of a text message won’t make you funny, and just because a movie says it’s No. 1 doesn’t mean it’s good – it just means it doesn’t suck as bad as the rest. However, coming to a theater near you this winter: “TRENDASAURUS,” the No. 1 feel-good romantic comedy of the year starring dinosaurs.
Brian McMullen is a journalism senior and a Mustang Daily columnist.