Well, while this article is old, it’s still satisfying to say that Alltel just got bought by VZW. That’s right. The little, nerdy Verizon guy just put a dog-collar on “Chad” that says, “Verizon”.

He owns you now, Chad.

Ha, that’s a funny take on it Dave. I’m just hoping the buyout means I can stop having to see those Alltel commercials. All commercials are horrible, but at least Verizon’s tend to be corporately bland rather than somewhat offensive.

He owns you now, Chad.

I don’t really feel victimized either. Though I’ve employed (and attempted to subvert) a certain style of discourse in the post, for the most part I’m pretty apathetic to the whole thing. I do think it’d be nice if, for the first time in the history of the world, D&D wasn’t used as a synonym for dysfunctional people or actions, but I won’t be losing any sleep over it.

In truth, advertisers as a profession have a very very poor reputation of making fun of the people they are trying to sell their products to. It was common for many years that women were portrayed in a subservient, inferior or degrading way, but nowadays the hammer has swung a bit the other way just as much. Watch any commercial where there is a family unit including Dad, Mom and kids and I’ll bet my left nostril the father is the ’stupid’ one or the comic relief. For instance, McDonalds has a Spiderman III promotion where the dad is practicing his spidey moves upside down in the backyard and gest attacked by a squirrel. Another cell phone company touts their free text/pix to anyone on any network and Dad tells the kids that they “can now afford for Mom to quit her second job” as a giant TACO.

You are on the right track though. Advertising just annoys me most of the time, but I guess without it we’d all be Communists (and that whole concept worked out _so well_ in practice for the USSR).

Neeeeeeeeeerd