Into every generation, a handful of hypnotically irritating advertising spots are born. They burrow their way into your brain like an indigenous lifeform on Ceti Alpha 5, and suck away your will to live while simultaneously programming you to walk around singing their fucking jingles all day. It’s the marketing version of a phenomenon best explained by a chick with big boobs and cat ears:
As a kid, the one that infected me most severely –and led directly to my vast array of gender issues– was this ad for some shitty perfume, one designed specifically to torture co-workers throughout a long, musky day:
Quick thoughts:
- “The eight hour perfume for the 24 hour woman”? So best case scenario, what happens the other 16 hours of the day? Does she smell great while at the office, only to come home reeking like a mix of three day old Chinese food and hobo farts?
- Did we not have technology like “showers” and “soap” in 1980? Is this why women of that era were constantly worried about “that not-so-fresh feeling”? Are you telling me we could put a man on the moon but we couldn’t hose our chicks down occasionally?
- Bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan sounds like an excellent idea. Leaving the bacon at the store, or feeding it to me unfried with a side of intestinal worms? Not so much.
- Is it wrong that I know the bacon-bringer-homer in question is 60 by now, and I still want to hit it?
But back to the subject at hand…
The modern version of this sorta thing comes from Education Connection, a company which initially made its commercial mark by reminding uneducated drop-out males that uneducated drop-out females can work on their degrees in their pajamas. But it was only when they unleashed this marketing Kraken upon the world that they truly became a force with which one might reckon.
For the longest time, I thought I was alone in suffering under the totalitarian rule of this mind-conquering Mussolini of a song. As it turns out, I wasn’t. Many pathetic losers innocent victims have been caught up in the madness, via an obscene contest sponsored by the site itself. The result? Well, just look:
That’s right: a home-made spot encouraging douches to get an education! Can you imagine what would happen to this country if our overwhelming stockpile of douchery was to attain sentience? It would be like SkyNet, only with liquid Terminators made out of hair gel and Jägermeister.
Almost as disturbing is this all-jailbait all-stars iteration, featuring out-of-sync, tone-deaf audio married to a strangely ambitious attempt at a single-take Steadicam shot. It’s like Scorsese’s Copacabana scene from Goodfellas, if Marty were somehow transformed into a field-hockey team full of giggly sixteen year-old girls. (An image which is –let’s face it– incredibly sexy. Mmmmm… eyebrows!)
This next one just blows my mind:
Dude, if you expended half as much effort on school as you do making cut-out puppets and smoking the reefer, you’d be out of your mom’s basement and into a supermodel’s panties by now! I mean, bonus points for creativity and all, but seriously, shampoo the smell of bong water out of your scruffy beard, rinse out your collection of crusty jerk socks, and move on.
Of course, this collection wouldn’t be complete without the kitschy gay auteur version:
…or the sassy gay auteur variation:
But I’ve saved the true horror for last. It’s like watching some sort of dark offering to the thousand-horned hellgod on his nightmarish video altar. Every second of viewing leaves me feeling as if icy shards of demon spittle are tearing at the stitches of my fragile sanity.
Or put another way… I’m not saying this guy is a creepy, homeless, pedophile cannibal or anything, but, y’know, I wouldn’t leave your tastier looking kids around him.