In terms of honorable things a Man can be, Dad and Soldier are probably tied for first place. Thanks to the folks behind Mission Critical dad gear, you can pretend to be a soldier while half-assing the whole dad thing. Their logo is a minimalist military-style “male symbol,” so you know they’re going to be tough. We’re talking “I once watched Die Hard 2 and drank a WHOLE six-pack of Coors Light” tough.
Where they really stand out are with stuff like diaper bags and, in particular, the baby carrier. This probably sounds like lame marketing to dads, but the proper rearing of your child is a critical mission, goddammit. We were dropped as children and still managed to end up graduating. Imagine if our parents had been carrying us in Mission Critical Baby Carriers. We might be in medical school instead of writing for an internet comedy site. Seriously, check this shit out.
Now, if we know the actual and potential dads in our audience, they’re going to want the coyote color like they show in that video, but who are they trying to fool? “Coyote”? That’s camo. You’d carry your baby into fucking ‘Nam in that thing. And when Charlie shows up, you just chuck the baby at them. He can handle it. MAN STUFF. MAN.
Just the words “internet ads” are enough to make you cringe, as visions of pop-ups and flashing banners cause you to go into epileptic fits. And if that’s not enough, your Facebook and Gmail are full of targeted advertising, which knows exactly what you’ve been typing into search engines and smugly displays those searches on every web page you visit. To sum it up, online ads are creepy. It’s like marketing departments are squishing their faces up against your window to see what’s going on in your home so they can custom-build all the commercials you’ll see on TV with eerily accurate precision.
With all this privacy invasion going on, users can be forgiven for wanting to put a stop to irritating ads. That’s why programs like AdBlock Plus are so popular. They allow you to surf the web without forcing you deal with winning a free iPad for being the millionth visitor. Or at least, AdBlock Plus used to do that.
If you’re not interested in the technobabble of how the internet works, you may not have heard about how AdBlock Plus, a company whose mission statement to block ads is right there in the name, is now selling ads which are integrated into their platform.
Here’s a CNN article, three BBC articles, The New Yorker, the Atlantic, and breathless previews from the industry itself. Read some and you’ll quickly notice a trend – the developers are always taken at their word.
They occasionally admit that the game might not be perfect because the future is unknowable, but otherwise they’re all incredibly flattering previews that take every promise at its word. Perfectly realistic physics? Cool! Complex animal behavior and interaction? Can’t wait! Note that the earliest preview dates back to June 2014, 26 months before launch. I’m all for optimism, but come on. I can’t sell a million books by announcing that I have a great idea that will be written in two years, so why do games get a pass?
The year 2014 was also when Dude, Where’s My Sky? went to E3 and stole the show, wowing critics and winning multiple awards. So hey, here’s a question – why do we give out awards at E3? It’s a controlled environment where every presentation is carefully designed to hide flaws, and any questions from journalists are lobbed at developers like it’s a preschool softball game. That’s like giving “Trailer Of The Year” to Suicide Squad because it had a couple jokes and a fun song. Except, of course, we don’t give movie trailers awards – they’re met with honest skepticism, while game previews are greeted with the wide-eyed glee of a child who’s just learned about Christmas. Just look at how previews compare to reviews.
For some reason, “front” vowels made with the tongue forward in the mouth (i and e) bring to mind “small, fast, or sharp” things, while vowels made with the tongue further back in the mouth (o, a, and u) make us think of “larger, heavier” things. And this applies not only across languages, but also to made-up words: In a study where researchers pulled some brand names straight out of their asses, participants assigned names containing front vowels to objects like small cars and knives, while they preferred back vowels for objects like Thor hammers and SUVs. In other words, guys, be sure to consult at least one linguistics expert before naming your penis.
This effect is so strong that it overpowers things you’d think we would have pretty much grasped by adulthood, like, you know, counting to 10. “Six” has the double whammy of a sissy non-plosive sound at the beginning and a puny-sounding front vowel, while “two” has a badass face-punch plosive followed by a powerful back vowel. So subjects who were told to mentally repeat the prices $7.66 and $7.22 for a scoop of ice cream (Starbucks serves ice cream now?) ended up rating $7.66 as the better value, simply because the larger numbers at the end sound so teeny-tiny.
Yes, amazingly, the fact that this ad stars a pre-murder O.J. Simpson is the second-creepiest thing about it. And you can squint and try to read the text all you want – it makes no reference whatsoever to the fact that their spokesperson has three legs. There’s no cute slogan like “Boots so comfortable, you’ll wish you had another foot!” Nope. It’s like some guy in the art department just said, “Eh, I don’t like how you can’t really see the chair, let’s just add another leg to fill that space.”
We know what you’re thinking: “Cracked, this is obviously a subtle ‘big dick’ joke. 'Third leg?’ Get it?” But, no, it turns out this was a whole campaign they did with various celebrities, some of whom are women. But O.J. seems to be the most frequent star of the “Third Leg” campaign, which apparently lasted for years.
Despite their direct line to the being who knows everything and makes all the rules, we’re not so sure the Catholic church is an authority on hipsters. Of all the ill-defined symbols of hipsterism, why go with untied sneakers? That’s more like a mild symbol of diet teen rebellion in the 1950s. If this wasn’t exactly what happened, we’d probably joke, “It’s like something the world’s squarest church would use to appeal to their vague notion of young people.” If they really wanted a hipster, why not have Jesus listening to The Lumineers on vinyl or holding a Bible made out of recycled bike tires? Did this church do any research at all? Those are probably the top autocompletes when you type in “Hipster Jesus would totally …”
This also doesn’t really fit any message of Christ. Sure, Jesus was a hipster in the sense that he had a beard and was crucified before it was cool, but (as of press time) hipsters are all about non-trendy fashion, esoteric music, and squeezing into size 4 women’s jeans. Those are all things Jesus didn’t seem very interested in. All the church managed to do with this ad was to insult the intelligence of its audience, muddy its own god’s message, and fundamentally misunderstand everything about the subject being discussed. It’s insane to imagine an organized religion acting in such a way.
In 1986, Silo, a discount appliance chain, had way too many stereos and needed to sell them off for shockingly low prices. So they ran ads saying it cost only 299 bananas for a new stereo. Obviously, “bananas” means “dollars” here, though you’d be forgiven for not knowing since no one has called money “bananas” since Calvin Coolidge’s day.
At this point, dozens of wiseass customers flocked to stores with literally 299 bananas (worth about $40). Which brings up the question: Where the fuck were people getting all these bananas? We can see a local grocery store having a total of 300 bananas on the shelf, but who the hell keeps enough on hand to serve a line of customers each asking for 50 or 60 bunches? Is there a special fruit wholesaler just for industrious smartasses?
Anyway, the appliance store had no choice but to accept all the bananas from dozens of customers wearing what we assume were shit-eating grins. Silo lost over $10,000 in one just day, pulling the ads the next day before others could get the same idea.
