AD-NAUSEA

I don't know about you, but I am so tired of stupid, intelligence-insulting ads that I could scream! Thank God for the mute button!

It's very annoying to be watching a really good program and be interrupted about every three minutes to suffer through four to six minutes of loud, rude, ridiculous commercials....I have timed them just out of curiosity. In defense, I have even tried channel surfing, watching two programs at a time in hopes that while one is insulting my intelligence with ads, maybe the other is actually showing the program....but, the powers that be have caught on and most of the time not only are they are both running commercials at the same times, but they are the same commercials.

Occasionally, you run across a really funny commercial that you actually want to see, just because it's so well-done and shows some imagination....but, unfortunately, these are rare. (I would love to be in the room when the people who think up these good ones are brainstorming. They've got to be a fun group!)

I think the commercials that get on my nerves the most are the ones with cutesy annoying kids who are trying to sell adult products....like cars or insurance. What in the devil do kids know..or care...about either of those things? Usually they are the car dealer's kids and I guess I'm supposed to run out and buy a car from that dealer because his kids are so "cute." (I haven't figured out the thinking yet behind the kids trying to sell insurance.)

I don't dislike kids.....I just don't like them trying to sell me anything they neither know nor care about. Show me, in real life, a 6 or 7 year old who gives a rat's behind about how many miles a car gets to a gallon of gas, or how fast it goes, or what model it is.....or anything other than the fact that it has four wheels and goes forward so that it will get them to wherever they want to go at any particular time...and I will show you a kid who needs some serious therapy and some children's activities to keep him busy.

And on the subject of kids....don't you just love the ads showing greedy, grasping pre-teens and teens pressuring parents for expensive electronics and the parents indulging their little darlings...the message being, if you, as a parent, don't give them this crap so they can keep up with their friends then you just aren't a good parent and shouldn't be able to hold up your head.

Oh, and there's the commercials showing people slapping each other upside the head because they didn't eat vegetables....I thought that was called assault.
Yeah, I know...it's supposed to be funny and where is my sense of humor? Blah blah! When this commercial first came out, it showed a man slapping a woman...I was horrified! Like there isn't enough abuse against women. Evidently I'm not the only one who found it offensive because I notice that that particular one isn't shown anymore. But, still, I find the whole concept of this commercial truly obnoxious. Isn't there enough violence and rudeness in the world?...do we have to see it encouraged in commercials, too?

And then, there are the commercials where, with the kids looking on with smiles on their faces, the wife treats the husband as if he is the dumbest creature ever to draw breath on this planet, and they all laugh about it, as if disrespecting Dad is just part of life. And Dad just laughs along...."Oh, dopey me".
With the divorce rate at 60% and kids showing absolutely no respect for their parents, is this type of commercial really a good idea?

Another one of my favorite type of ad is for food....most often pizza...where people are shown acting like hogs who were never taught any kind of manners at all, and who want the biggest, most fattening, heart-killing garbage they can get so they can stuff their faces until they puke. Yummy! (And then, right after those ads are the weight loss commercials! Makes you wonder if they are in kahoots: "you make them fat and I'll tell them how to lose it and we'll all get rich.")

Speaking of weight loss: how many of us are stupid enough to believe the ads where they show the "before" and "after" shots of the model side by side in the EXACT same pose? (Oh yeah, you took her picture before she lost all that weight using your product and then you took the after shot and you were able to get her in that identical position with the identical expression on her face.**Can you say computer manipulation?**) I love the one where the model is shown walking along a beach in a bikini, "before" and "after"...again, a side by side video shot with everything exactly identical. Yessir, boy, who wouldn't believe that?...they wouldn't lie to us.

One particular company here in my city is for a furniture warehouse. Oh my God! The announcer's voice is so extremely irritating as he literally screams at you (and screams in words so fast you can barely understand what he's saying) that my face involuntarily scrunches up in pain, I get an immediate reaction of anger and I press the mute button instantly...so the owners of the furniture warehouse are defeating their purpose. This man's voice could shatter glass. It's higher than a man's voice should be, WAY too loud, and what I can only describe as "thick". Ugh!

I could go on forever about these stupid commercials...but, I won't insult your intelligence...you get the idea.

The sad part is that, unfortunately, these ads must be working or they wouldn't be so common. And what does that say about us?