Sunday, August 08, 2021
Commercial Break
As I have previously blogged, I love the Olympics. I do not love, however, seeing the same commercials over and over again. (And yes, I fast forward when I can, but I'm watching a lot of this live.) Here are some of my least favorites:
-- The Microsoft Teams ads where people are "exploring" Tokyo virtually via Teams. First of all, don't harass your Japanese friends by making them walk all over with their mobile devices showing you cat cafes and translating shit for you. They're not asking you to carry them all over Navy Pier or take them to a virtual tea at American Girl Place, are they? Also, everyone looks stupid reacting to things on Teams; showing the world how that looks is not exactly selling the product. And to the girl for whom the cat cafe was the "top of her list for Tokyo:" time for some self reflection.
-- The Facebook ads where a "Longboard family" learns to do skateboarding tricks together on Facebook. I mean, sure, Facebook allows hate speech to fester like nobody's business and didn't seem too concerned about actual calls for the overthrow of the government, but at least they make skateboarders feel good about themselves. Can't Facebook just accept that everyone hates them but feels kind of stuck with them because they used their account to join Candy Crush and they don't want to have to start over on level 1? That's a pretty catchy ad slogan right there.
-- The Uber Eats commercial where the delivery person is trying to make a delivery during synchronized swimming practice. What happened to contactless delivery? Couldn't he just leave it at the door and text Janine? And what happened to waiting half an hour after you eat before swimming?
-- All of the pharmaceutical ads where athletes talk about how they get migraines or have relatives with diabetes or whatever. Is there no aspect of these people's lives that we can leave off the record? I mean, we already had to go swamp boating in Florida with Caeleb Dressel.
-- The commercial where the paralympic athlete swims through images of her life story to the reenacted sounds of her mother getting the call about adopting her. Why does everything look like it's taking place in the 1950s? She's 29 years old. Also, swimming into your childhood kitchen seems likely to cause water damage.
I'm a positive, life affirming person. It's the only way I know how to be.
