Yes, I know, Apple has those smugly annoying “I’m a Mac” ads, but I think that everyone can agree this is far, far worse.
That’s bad, and, even if we assume that this was done by an outside company MS signed up and approved the thing for release.
Mind you, putting the camo’d Mac in the ad is stupid, but the ad is some kind of creeping horror, that would give Lovecraft the willies. I made it just a couple seconds into it before I realized that I had two choices: I could stop watching the ad, or I could start stabbing myself with sharp objects. The “acting” falls somewhere below what the guy who does the Sham-WOW ads is capable of, and slightly above that of having your testicles removed with a rusty coke spoon.
Okay, so I get that since its music software, you’ve got to demonstrate it somehow, and with High School musical being “all the rage” amongst the kids these days that you’d want to ape it, and hope that you appeal to the “youth demographic,” but this is not how you fucking do it. This is like someone telling you they’re a songwriter, and when you ask them about what kind of songs they write they respond with, “My latest song is called Jesus is a Traffic Light.” Its a horrifying hard stop, like when you meet that certain special someone, only to discover they’ve got the wrong kind of plumbing. It falls squarely into the catagory of Things Which Should Not Be[sup]TM[/sup].
How the fuck could the people at Microsoft watch this and think, “Yes, this is exactly the kind of image we want our product to project.”? Did no one say, “Look, I realize that this might (somehow) be appealing to kids, but this is so jarringly bad that it taints everything we touch.”? Because, for me, it really does. Now, admittedly, I don’t have a high view of MS to begin with, but thanks to that ad, every time I see a PC ad, I’m going to hear some teenaged girl go, “I’m singing to my laptop.” in my head. Then, I’m going to get all twitchy and people will think I have Tourette’s or something.
