But how does it work? How do I use it?
Perhaps you should take your own advice vis-à-vis this thread.
That doesn’t follow, since this thread itself not a commercial–besides, it’s a valid question. And it’s informative to see exactly what bothers people about commericals.
Interestingly, it tends to be a personality (or voice) of someone in the commercial, which must mean that personalities in other commercials are at least acceptable, so people watch them willingly.
Personally, I won’t watch TV unless it’s pre-recorded, so I can fast-forward. Life’s too short to waste on commercials. And it’s not about the personality of the characters: there really is no reason to watch any commercial.
If a product gave me the best value for the price, I would not let the stupidity of the commercial prevent me from getting the best deal available. That would be silly.
“We can save you 15% on car insurance. And if we didn’t run and pay for so many commercials, we could save you 25%!”
I would never bother getting a quote from Liberty Mutual because I hate their stupid ad campaign so much. It appears their business plan involves selling to people who don’t know how insurance works.
Any product deceptively marketed to appeal to people’s baseless fears.
Crest is now selling “Detoxify” toothpaste, alleged to prevent gum disease, because, y’know, them Toxins are everywhere (food, air, water, chemtrails…).
It’s probably only a matter of time before makers of OTC constipation remedies start bragging about how they “detoxify” your colon.
Mentos.
But the Foo Fighters video is AWESOME!
In exchange for getting entertainment piped into my eyeballs for free, I have an implicit agreement that my eyeballs will be monetized. I do not have a problem with this, I would rather that be the case than having to pay for every piece of entertainment I consume, piecemeal.
As such, I have no problem with the concept of advertising, and am perfectly willing to consume the ads that they serve. There are times when I see that there are products I didn’t know about, businesses I didn’t know provided services I never knew I needed, and sometimes also promos for other avenues and forms of entertainment I may be interested in.
OTOH, stupid ads exist, and are annoying. I have and use adblocker, but I unblock most sites that I use frequently that don’t have ads that try to crash my computer. I have Youtube unblocked, but when a youtuber puts something up with a commercial break every 2 minutes, I turn it back on.
I don’t see many here claiming claiming to hate all ads, but only to take exception to some particularly bad ones and their implementations.
The library is free.
It was meant in the sense of “if you don’t like it, don’t look at it.” It was annoying to have someone pop into a thread like this and declaim how stupid everyone else is.
It’s as if someone came into a traffic complaints thread and said “I don’t know why you people all drive yourselves. I take Uber everywhere so I can sit back and ignore the traffic. Anyone who puts themselves through that when they don’t have to is incredibly masochistic.”
There’s a name for that kind of post, it’s on the tip of my tongue…
The old AXE body spray commercials, where some guy sprays himself and women start swooning. So juvenile. Also ANY product whose commercials star a Big Dumb Average Guy, i.e., some real-life version of Homer Simpson of Kevin James’ character from The King of Queens. The co-star in these ads is usually the Big Dumb Average Guy’s Smart Wife who informs him on just how wrong he is to not be using the XYZ product. I immediately cross off any such product with an ad like this, just for insulting me.
Can I watch the latest episode of “The Expanse” at the library ad free?
I have a particular hatred for Subaru TV ads. Enough that if I were in the market, it would make it less pleasant for me to consider their cars. The ads seem to be created by people who have no familiarity with automobiles in general.
In one, two little boys are washing dad’s new Subaru. On the INSIDE. They have soap and toothpaste and a high pressure hose and are soaking and sudsing the steering wheel, the dash, the whole inside of the car. They are literally destroying the car, causing enormous damage. Dad walks up, gives a wistful shrug, and starts helping them.
I think the one that started me on my peevedness was the Subaru graveyard one. In this, an aged Subaru is driven two days to be left at a special Subaru junkyard so it can “live on” as parts for other Subarus. The car was still in good enough shape for a two day drive, but was junked by this schmuck, who wasted 8 man-days to do it. I understand that the ad is supposed to be sort of a fantasy, but it just strikes me as insipid and idiotic.
You only mentioned “entertainment.” I was talking about books. You’re moving the goalposts.
I set up no goal posts to be moved. I said that I am willing to trade the monetization of my eyeballs for entertainment.
You said that the library is free. Unless the library provides the same entertainment that I have already said that I am willing to monetize my eyeballs for, then it is not the same thing.
Because most commercials are pretty neutral and forgettable and a select rare few are even clever or funny. So I don’t personally feel the need to be on eternal vigilance with my remote control or car stereo buttons but I do sometimes see commercials that are especially stupid or annoying. But sometimes it’s entertaining to make fun of stupid or terrible things. There’s the unpacked mystery of why people see commercials and sometimes complain about bad ones.
Anyway, Burger King once had a series of commercials about “Whopper Freakout” where people were captured on supposed CCTV going apeshit when told Burger King was out of Whoppers. While I’m sure the intended message was “People love our burgers so much”, I got the message “Burger King customers are the lowest dregs of society who lose their minds when they can’t get the fast food burger they wanted”. That wasn’t a demographic I wanted any part of and stopped going to BK for years afterward.
That one I have not seen and am sure I would have liked it too if I had. But I don’t think it would be enough alone to cancel out “Paul” in those other commercials. Besides, someone I trust told me when I returned to the US two years ago to avoid Sprint at all costs.
I was waiting for someone to pop in with this. Glad we got it out of our system early on.
I’ll never buy Red Bull, ever since their “gives you wings” ad campaign showed they believed it’s acceptable to litter with the Red Bull cans. Several of their commercials depicted their users drinking the product down and casually tossing the cans wherever, usually outdoors. This had to be deliberate, considering the commercials were animated.