Things I Hate: 7

Hello and welcome to the seventh installment of things I hate. I'm back, baby! This one will be dedicated to Davis, not because the topic really reminds me of him, but because he reminded me that I used to do this segment. I had originally said I would pick it back up when the quarter started, but then Morrowind happened. Now that I am back in the real world again, I will try to get back into doing this. Since it's a long term thing I'm hoping and there are only so many things on which I can hate, I might not make this every week, but I will definately try not to leave more than a one week gap between segments. I for sure will not post next week because I will be in Mexico for my cousin's wedding. I'm leaving on Wednesday and we have the wedding rehearsal on Thursday, the wedding on Friday, and some party on Saturday. I get back on Sunday. Unfortunately, this means I will not see the Superbowl live, so If you ruin it for me, I will probably have to cut your balls off, but I will probably have watched the whole thing before I use the internet anyway since I don't want to have the game ruined for me. I'll do the picks later. I figured I have a lot of time before the game comes. Ok well anyhow, I think that I should get back to hating on shit before I get on too much longer of a tangent.

This week on Things I hate: Stupid commercials

Like ways to respond to an internet feud, there are several different types of commercials. The three major types are: Sentimental, Funny, and Cool. I shall now go into detail about those three types.

Sentimental:
These ones start with very little interestingness and slowly deteriorate in interestingness until they are discontinued. Sentimental commercials often have soft music playing in the background while some lady or very emotionally insecure guy has a close up on the camera and they tell you all about their pathetic story of their lives and how their kid died and they need you to buy this product so it doesn't happen to your kid. You can only buy so many home HIV testing kits before you start to realize that this isn't really something anyone needs ever. Things to watch out for in these types of commercials are soft fabrics, bright colors, pink, flowers, and tears.

Funny:
These commercials can start out with a level of interestingness relative to how funny the joke was in the commercial. The unfortunate part is that once you have heard the punchline, the joke fails to be funny anymore. There are some outliers to that of course (see: Urlacher commercial). Let's face it though, there are many jokes out there that may be hilarous the first time you see it, but then once you hear it again, you just blurt out the punchline in an attempt to get the joke over with faster and then right after you say the punchline and the guy says "Yeah," you dickishly utter "Yeah I've heard that one." to let that person know that if you ever get told that joke again, they're going to get their balls cut off. The worst part about funny commercials is that the people in charge of advertising for companies don't tend to understand that the hilarity of a joke has a very short shelf life, so they will constantly play these commercials over and over and over (see: Wendy's 3conomics (don't really, they are extremely annoying)). Those commercials seem to always come up multiple times during commercial breaks and I'm truly amazed anyone bothers to eat at Wendy's anymore after being repeatedly fed that shit day in and day out while trying to innocently watch football.

Cool:
These commercials are often the most successful because while sentimental is never interesting and funny is insteresting the first time; cool is always cool. If you see a guy jump a car through a nuclear explosion, you're going to say, ok that's pretty damn cool. If you see it again, are you going to now say "Well that sucked."? No, you won't because that is still pretty damn cool. Unfortunately, some people don't understand what cool is, so we wind up with the Dodge Ram commercials where you get a bunch of stupid "manly men" (aka assorted douchebags) to test your truck in harsh conditions. I don't care if my truck can jump through a burning building. I can honestly say that I will never do that. I would rather have a man step than the ability to jump through fire in my car. I might actually use the man step.

Now the way the commercials come at you can be very annoying as well.

Short and many:
Some stations like to break up their broadcasts more often but to use less commercials. That's a clever way to make sure I get less out of the storyline and more commercials are thrust upon me to watch.

Commercial free:
If you have ever seen a commercial free program before, then you know how annoying it can be. Sure, you don't have to watch commercials, but you trade that in for "Remember, this is a commercial free broadcast today brought to you by the good people at Subway." every 30 seconds. It's just as bad as watching commercials.


In commercials, you tend to see some little fine print at the bottom and you occasionally wonder what they mean by it. Well wonder no more.

Not paid actors: Well actually, they are actors, we just aren't paying them because we're cheap.

Actual customer: They bought the product, then we reimbursed them so they would tell us it's a great product.

Real people: See, look at them. They are not mannequins!

These two did not know each other before the commercial: But they knew the script.

Professional Driver on a closed course: Your car will never perform this well unless you are that guy on that road.

Do not try this at home: Do it where you can injure the most people.


As for commercials that show skinny women and make little girls think they are supposed to be anorexic, shame on you! Stop giving girls a need to be that abnormally skinny. As for the Dove commercials showing real women, shame on you too! Stop telling women that it's okay to stop caring about their looks.

And last, but not least:

Billy Mays:
HEY BILLY WHAT'S GOING ON? YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY I'M TYPING IN CAPS LOCK? WELL IT'S BECAUSE YOU YELL ALL THE TIME SO I THOUGHT I WOULD JUST LET YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS TO BE YELLED AT. I ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT IF SOMEONE NEEDS TO YELL TO GET MY ATTENTION, THEY MUST BE REALLY TELLING ME SOMETHING I DON'T NEED TO HEAR. AND WHAT IS THIS MAYS PROMOTIONS SHIT YOU HAVE GOING? LAST TIME I CHECKED, SHOUTING AT PEOPLE WASN'T CALLED ADVERTISING, IT WAS CALLED BEING A DICK. I PROPOSE THAT YOU GET OUT OF THE ADVERTISING BUSINESS PERMANENTLY SO I DON'T HAVE TO HEAR YOUR SHRILL, LOUD VOICE AGAIN. HOW MANY YEARS WOULD YOU EXPECT TO BE OUT OF THE BUSINESS? I BET YOU'RE THINKING 50 RIGHT? WELL THINK AGAIN, IF YOU QUIT NOW, I WILL PERSONALLY MAKE SURE YOU ONLY HAVE TO BE OUT OF THE BUSINESS FOR 20 YEARS. You would be dead after those 20 years. It's my personal guarantee.


Well that's that for commercials. In the end, just buy a Tivo or DVR and send a huge screw you to the commercial makers of America and teach them that they should use their bailout money on something that will actually move their products.