Things Mis-heard

That Honda commercial sounds like they're singing, "I'm a horny ninja."



Supposedly, the song is actually "I'm a Hoodie Ninja", but, c'mon: tell me this isn't actually saying "horny".

Death of the "X" O'clock News Teaser?

So, I'm sitting at home, alone, tonight, watching TV. Well, to be more honest, I'm sitting around using StumbleUpon to kill time and periodically checking in on FaceBook. The TV's mostly on for background noise At any rate, as I sit here, tapping away at my laptop, one of the local TV stations has a blurb for their 11 o'clock local news show. It's like a 15-second blurb, so, all they really say is "we'll check out story 'X' on tonight's news hour."

Now, this is something that I've heard, in one form or another, since I was a kid. I'm sure it wasn't a new way to entice viewers, even in the 1970s. For some reason, though, tonight it occurred to me, "what's the point of the news teaser?" I mean, it did make sense even as recently as 5-10 years ago, but why bother, any more. I mean, if I haven't already been alerted to this story by FaceBook, Twitter, some other social media outlet or just general reading of news sites, hitting me with the teaser isn't going to make me wait around until whatever time you want to put that news story on. No: I'll hit up my favorite search engine and see if I can find out what you were hinting at. When you finally get your new hour on the air, it will be old news to me. Either it will be of little interest to me, by which point, the Internet-as-spoiler will have removed my desire to tune in, or I will have already read extensively about it from a variety of sources. Either way, waiting for your new show is pointless.

In other words, at this point in the game, the news show "teaser" does more to discourage viewership than it does to entice viewership. Besides: your news show conflicts with other programming (like Adult Swim) that I won't need to miss, thanks to you alerting me to the need to do an Internet-search.

Poor Advertising

The only message I can take from the new Mobile 7 commercials is that the phones suck too much to get engrossed in using them.

Opt-Out

Not sure how much faith I place in it, but NAI's website/tool supposedly allows you to opt out of targeted adverts.

I Don't Get Advertising

I get that makers of products have a need to make potential consumers aware of their products. I also get that there's this belief that any attention is good attention. I don't agree with it, but I get that some people believe it to be true. Personally, I don't know why you'd want to start a potential business arrangement (which is what a decision to purchase is) off where parties to the transaction are pissed off. I mean, me being pissed at someone or something doesn't typically encourage me to become involved with them. So, whenever it happens, I always wonder, "do websites (etc). really think that obnoxious, loud, multimedia adverts are a good way to encourage return visits (or ad clicks)?"

Sometimes, I Don't Understand the News

Was decompressing after coming back from seeing Philadelphia play dead against the Penguins. So, I was using StumbleUpon to find things to read. I found this article talking about Microsoft's most recent advertising against Open Source. Reading it, all I could think was, "why would Microsoft spend money attacking a piece of software that Oracle's already killed?"

Sponsorship Oops

USA is showing a "Visionary Character" commercial featuring Michell Rhee. Guess USA and BlackBerry doesn't know she's fired?

I need a commercial auto-deleter. If I had one, I'd have it set to blot out those nofoodtaxes.com atrocities.

Two Hateful Things, Combined, Don't (Magically) Create a "Good Thing™"

Late night TV can be an interesting thing. It's like the dumping ground of TV. It's where old TV shows go to die. It's where infomercials really thrive. It's also where there's some bizarre advertising (even aside from the infomercial schtick).

Last night, as I sat tapping away at my laptop keyboard, the strains of a familiar, odious song began screeching from my TV. As a slow feeling of dread slimed its way over me, I realized what the tune was. It was the music from The Macarena.

Now, I find The Macarena to be a truly hateful piece of work. It's a pernicious earworm. And, if you actually listen to the lyrics, it's kind of a nasty song. So, when you see really whitebread people bopping around to it, it's a truly facepalm moment.

At any rate, the music wasn't quite right. Well, the tune was fine (as fine as such a tune can be) but the lyrics were all wrong. I looked up to see why this musical atrocity was emanating from my TV. Apparently, the advertisers for The Snuggie decided that The Macarena's tune would be a good one to support their commercial. However, they'd altered the lyrics to pimp out their Snuggies.

I'll admit, I have an irrational hatred for Snuggies. I could never really figure out why people would buy them. I mean, they look like someone took polar fleece and made backwards bathrobes out of them (kind of the bastard offspring of a cheap blanket and a hospital gown).

When I was younger, and it was appropriate, I wore bathrobes to cover up or keep warm. Bathrobes are great when you live in a college dorm and want to make the transit from your dorm room to your dorm floor's showers
.
For keeping warm in more sedentary settings, I use blankets or similar coverings. Hell, as I sit here, tapping away at my laptop, on a damp, chilly, raw day, I do so from under a nice quilt.

Snuggies just don't make sense. Get a bathrobe or get a quilt/blanket/duvet/etc. Don't turn a blanket into a robe. And, for gods' sake, don't turn it into a backwards robe. And, for the sake of humanity, don't pimp your wares with a hateful song.

Argh.

Recursion Error?

I gotta watch an unwanted commercial before watching the commercial I actually wanna see?? http://is.gd/fwvI0

Q&A Instead of "Real" Search?

So, FaceBook is coming up with a Q&A "service". It's going to be a zero-privacy, zero-filters proposition. Basically, anyone can ask, anyone can answer and there's not much you can do about it. Intentional anarchy. Well ...with one exception: it won't be indexable by search engines. Speculation being that this is a shot over the bow of Google with the hopes being that it would be a "first stop" for people that have questions. That people would hit FB Q&A, get their answers and not have to go the next step to Google (et. al.) and FB could reap the advertising rewards.

Now, I've used a lot of forums over the years. Some were truly designed to be help-oriented. But, generally, the first responses given - particularly in tech circles - were of the form, "did you RTFM" and/or "did you Google it"? So, clearly, there's plenty of people that either can't be bothered to do research on their own or are willing to wait for answers rather than finding them on their own. I guess this is part of why KGB was born (haven't seen commercials recently, but their website's still there, so, they're probably still around). Granted, useful answers can be found - particularly if you display a level of clue in the asking of your questions. But, if you've got clue enough to ask your questions well, you frequently aren't going to be use a simple Q&A site.

I've also used a few, more entertainment-oriented Q&A sites. They were always a mixed-bag, however.

One of my favorites was Wis.DM (RIP). It was a lot of fun. I still don't know whether its creators intended for it to be serious or not. Not sure anyone that those who became regular users saw it as a site for serious answers - mostly it seemed to just a way of initiating discussions (and flame wars - made me miss Usenet, sometimes). Unfortunately, it died. It's users scattered to the four winds, but many stayed in touch (a few of my FaceBook friends I know only from Wis.DM). Some found homes on new Q&A sites - some making their own in an attempt to recapture some of the magic that had been the Wis.DM experiment.

I've tried a few other sites, since then. Unfortunately, for what I was looking for - semi-interactive entertainment - they were too serious or so pointlessly stupid as to be unbearable. The first place the Wis.DM crowd fled to was Fluther. Unfortunately, it was very restrictive - particularly for someone, like me, who likes to post a lot. Worse, Fluther's community and moderators didn't react terribly well to the recreational questioners that flooded in when Wis.DM died. However, they apparently have a niche and they're doing well enough, these days.

Google once tried a Q&A service, but it was kind of a bust. They shuttered it at least four years ago. 

Yahoo still has their Q&A site. My primary experience of it is through sites like YahooAnswerFail.com. It didn't have the social aspects that Wis.DM did and tended to have lower utility than Usenet did. So, for people like me, though, the lampoon sites that have more value than the actual. They act to distill the most humorous aspects of the site into convenient, easy to find morsels.

I just don't see that FB Q&A is apt to be any better than Yahoo answers. We already have a couple FaceBook humor distillers (e.g. FailBook and LameBook). Do we really need an FBQnAfail.Com site? The world can always use more humor, I suppose.

Oh well. Should all be interesting to see how it all plays out.