[Corporate Pinhead]
Well, our focus groups have shown that people have a favorable view of these devices, so you’re obviously defective.
Thank you for calling ViewBPSonic!
-Joe
Well, I’m not a fan, but having lost the battle in airports, grocery stores, hospital waiting rooms, gyms, and so many other places I’ve been pretty much beaten into submission by now.
As a general rule I think there are a great many more places that would benefit from less noise, instead of more. But this is yet another area in which I am clearly in the minority.
(I must admit, tho, that the first time I was slightly amused when I heard a sound like someone tapping on glass, looked around and saw the guy in the TV screen trying to get my attention. The FIRST time that was, not every time thereafter!)
Yea sure I “just think about things” - usually during the drive time it took me to use up the gas I am replacing. Most other people are using that time to talk on the phone I guess, and then use the gas pumping time for silence.
Oh, and for the record, I think I have only encountered one of these ad machines once. I suppose the places I visit are not ripe for advertising dollars.
I get my gas at costco and they do not have these TVs on the pumps. But before costco had gas near me one station had the TVs. The TVs would only operate when you were pumping gas. No free TV for you.
Companies are actually very sensitive to using this new technology, and a few complaints in the right places will get them removed.
For instance, they started putting these things at the checkout lines of the local Meijer store. I know a guy who works pretty high up in the company, and I let him know that I was specifically not shopping at Meijer due to the screens. He claimed he would put in a word with the marketing department.
They were removed within two weeks. I like to think I was a factor in that.
Ah. In that case, just pump the gas onto the ground. Sit back, have a smoke, and enjoy TV time.
OK, I think I crossed the line from evil clown to totally psycho clown.
The supermarket ones annoy me the most. I’m trying to catch all the prices as they come up at the register and this freaking crap is playing and distracting me. I do have problems with more than one thing being distracting to the point where I can’t understand what’s being said or wanted. I know there are a lot of people with the same problem, with sensory overload.
The damn things are spreading. My Valero station has had them for a month, and they’ve spread to the cheap gas place.
Business idea: someone should sell shrouds for them - sound proofed. Drive up put shroud on TV monitor pump gas, remove shroud and drive off. Or, we can all spread a rumor that they’re two way TVs, and are watching you.
But I must admit these things annoy me much less than the blaring TVs at mall foodcourts and airports and especially waiting rooms. They’re for slack-jawed morons for whom reading People is way too much of a challenge, let alone a book, so we who want to read are stuck with the distraction. And you’re usually not allowed to turn them off.
Snow Crash is becoming less and less a work of fiction every day.
Tell me about it. I was surprised to see one of these horrors on a recent business trip to Chicago (the Shell on the corner of Arlington Heights and Algonquin, if anybody cares).
Love the ideas regarding possible retaliation scenarios. 
But at least we don’t have spam on the inside of our corneas to drive us mad.
Yet.
(Actually, that was The Diamond Age, but I digress…)
I guess the next step is to put them on planes. When I flew in November, though I can’t remember with who, there were fucking ads on the seat in front of me, and on the damn tray when I tried to eat. We do have one station around here that has those TVs and has had them for awhile. They do have lower prices though, and I think half of the TVs don’t even work.
I posted this is in the mini-rants thread a couple of days ago:
So yeah, I’m on board with the OP. For my quality bathroom time, I think that old saying should apply - “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”
I’m on board with this movement. The Cheesecake Factory’s menu is half advertising. There are ads pasted on the FLOOR of the local grocery store, in addition to the ubiquitous TV screens, grocery cart handles, and every inch of wall space.
Fuck advertising.
I think advertising raises your blood pressure. Last year, I rode the subway in Rio de Janeiro. The subway is new and clean-and there is NO advertising 9except for public service stuff). I felt very calm and peaceful-I think the CONSTANT assuatlt of advertising (in the USA) drives you nuts! :smack:
There are better than those irritating placards with a photo of a roid raged cop holding a picture of your state’s driver’s license, looking at you like his five year old kid for thinking about running off without paying for your gas.
I applaud the good citizens who have had the decency to draw eyeglasses and moustaches on said dick head cop…
“Eyeglasses and moustaches” are among the kinder things I’ve seen scrawled on that picture. I’m sure many a scofflaw has been scared straight by the image of a stern-faced police officer.
“I swear, man, it’s like his eyes were following me! I was just going to drive off, but I decided to use my AmEx after all…”
Actually, it would be cool if, instead of ads, they just had a series of people’s faces, looking downward with a judgemental, unimpressed expression on their faces.
I think the very best method of revenge for urinal/toilet ads would be going out and pissing into the waiter’s station–where they have the bus trays and clean glasses and such. When someone gets annoyed and yells at you tell 'em you have shy bladder and all those faces and noise in the bathroom makes it impossible for you to cut loose, but the waiter station was quiet… That oughta do it!
I haven’t seen tv screens on gas pumps, but then again in Oregon we don’t pump our own gas so I guess they won’t bother–gas station employees would probably riot if they had to listen to that all day long!