Please read what the RoBeast is writing about his experience browsing the Lenscrafters site. The questionnaire they use to help you find your frames is just mind-blowing.
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It’s no secret that I am a serious hater of the MTA’s PSA copywriters. They are complete hacks. It’s like they’re mining for coal, but forgot what coal is. Take this example:
Let’s examine the copy…
Using your powers of pattern recognition to a degree easily achievable by most lizards, you quickly realize that they’re going for a theme of “phrases that start with the word take.” If you were a trained rhetorician, you’d know that is called anaphora. If you were a master rhetorician, you’d call it “for fuck’s sake, you’re embarrassing yourself.” If they had started and stopped with “you can take it with you”, it would have been lame, but not “fails so hard it hurts me” lame, because it’d be a basic play on a well known phrase. Rhetorically, you’d classify it as simple, tried and true reversal negation — lame merely in the way that most PSAs are lame. But they did not stop there. Laboring under the sad delusion that they know catchy from painful, they decided to drive home the point with some phrases that start with the word ‘take’… and came up with this list:
Um, excuse me… “take it light?” When was that ever actually said by anyone? Anyone not answering the question “How do you take your coffee?” Never mind, that would actually be “I take it light.” Or just “light.” No, “take it light” has simply never been a phrase, anywhere, ever. And they put it on a poster as one of four phrases that start with the word ‘take’. The most painful thing about this latest MTA PSA copy travesty is that it was completely avoidable. Here, allow me:
See how it’s done? It’s not so hard when you actually know English. Now paypal me $50, bitches. [Update: corrected NBC to WNBC] I never watch news on television. Why? This image, I think, sums it up nicely:
NYC-based NBC affiliate WNBC was doing a story on rats in NYC, I think related to a spate of health-code violations that happened over the summer. Up comes the above graphic. Let’s examine the bullet points in this illuminating slide of “Rat Facts.”
So, rounding up this list of “facts”, we have one which is insulting (minus 10), one which is ambiguous at best (minus 5), and one which is not a fact (minus 100). F-bloody-minus, WNBC. I have struggled to imagine how this travesty of newscasting occurred. It makes me angry to think of the number of people who were shown that graphic with the expectation that they would just swallow it along with the rest of the stream of garbage that passes for information on TV. A fourth-grader could do better. Despite this anger, I do try to have some understanding for my fellow humans (who are much bigger than cats, I’ll have you know), so I came up with what I think is the only possible explanation that does not incorporate sinister motives or a blatant and egregious lack of respect for the public. Here goes: The story was already running on air when the news producer realized that they needed a slide to show. Who knows, maybe they had blocked out a graphic but never filled in the actual information, or they thought they had some video footage to roll and it was missing… but somehow, with 60 seconds to go, the producer screams “oh my god, we need three facts about rats in 30 seconds, people, get me some facts!” Some people pound in google searches, some poeople shout out the most rudimentary things they know about rats, and one person says “I think I heard that there’s like one rat for every human!” And thus was produced the dumbest slide ever. How fun! The irony is that these little gems are actually made in China. Found by my friend P at Pylones. Oh iCal. Is there no end to your sucking? Here’s the latest example of breakage. At my company some of my co-workers use a hosted exchange server for calendaring. I use iCal and MobileMe. Sometimes we invite each other to events, and often the invites are even successfully transmitted to each othe via email. Then I started being an hour late to meetings. Why? Well, see if you can pick out the bug in the below screencap…
That’s right. In the info panel, the time of the event is displayed as noon, while in the graphical calendar view, the event starts at 1pm. Once again the iCal team earns my Harsh Glare of Ultimate Derision.
Can you believe it!? Whithering away for only 20 days! Taken @ BBB Back in August I posted about an ad for mascara that I thought was ridiculous. I said
Well. I suppose I should have expected this:  Face Spakle Yes, Laura Geller sells Face Spackle, Eye Spackle, and Lip Spackle. Ok, I admit that I’m a makup bigot. I think that the right amount of makeup that a person should wear is “none.” I just mostly think people look better without it. But I’m not trying to bang that particular drum right now, I’m just saying — face spakle just doesn’t sound like good marketing. You shouldn’t associate anything that is meant for your face with somthing that is applied with a trowel. Thanks to F. over at The Holophusicon for the tip.
Ruby Tuesday has done a lot to look better recently, I’m told. Not that I’d know, since last night was the first time I’ve ever been in one. But the mojoto was fine, in fact it came with a stick of sugar cane in it, an this avocado quesadilla was really good. Only… one of the things on this plate is a dollop of butter. Huh? No, I didn’t try it. Yes, I’m knocking it.
I watched Joe Lieberman speak last night. More on that another time, maybe. During the speech, one of the quick camera cuts the the audience featured this woman. The button reads “Liberals pick on someone your own age”. ??? I’ve got two theories so far to explain this sentiment. 1) John McCain is old, and people have been making an issue out of this, and so she’s angry that people are picking on him for this. 2) It goes along with the anti-abortion button she’s wearing, and the “your own age” is a reference to the very young age of a fetus. But while I noticed the button last night, it’s not til ljust now that I noticed the hat itself. It appears to have it’s own hair. *Raised eyebrow of skepticism and derision*
I’m sure that the advertisers who created this spot are quite good at talking to their target demographic. And perhaps that’s what horrifies me about this. I think my feelings about paint-on false lashes can be captured with this made up ad copy:
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