deletion inflation

I like how the meaning of the word 'delete' has changed over the past couple of years. Apparently, now it means, "move it to this other directory called 'deleted' and save it there forever just in case it's needed again."

Nowadays, when you want to delete something the way you used to, you have to "delete forever".

Just like how if you want a medium sized drink or order of fries at a fast food place nowadays, you have to order a 'large' (except for at Carl's jr., where apparently the forces of inflation work in the opposite direction), and like how if you want to get someone's attention you have to add an expletive or two to your sentence.

give it another decade, and you'll have to specify "permanently delete forever, no kidding, yes I mean it", along with clicking 8 or 9 "yes, I'm sure" buttons, and everyone who eats at Carls will have to specify "dinky winky drinky" just to get a normal-sized drink, and everyone else will be ordering the "super ultra mega large drink" normal-sized drink.

And then someone who frequents other fast food joints will try out Carl's for once and place his usual order, only to find himself in front of like a frickin' kettle of soda.

Seriously. Give it like 10 years.

my favorite advertising shenanigans

I've always been fascinated with the many ways TV advertisements trick and deceive their viewers, but lately, it's been even more amazing. Here are few of my favorite new gimmicks, with some classic ones thrown in for kicks:

4. "I'm trying my own sleep study between Advil and Tylenol!" says the guy who's being payed by Advil to do a commercial for them where it looks like he is, by his own motivation, doing a sleep study between two competing products, to see which one works better. Advil isn't the company going out of its way to make their advertisements look more like an unbiased experiment from an uncompromised third party than an advertisement of their own product. It's like a new (and more sinister) version of the paid testimonial.

3. "Now you can buy more of our product!" This comes from a recent trend in canned air freshener commercials, where they advertise, as an added bonus, the ability to make the air freshener automatically release itself every 9-18 minutes, as if it was a good thing. Clearly the long life of a single can of air freshener was hindering sales and they needed to find a better way to make people use more of the product, so they would have to buy more frequently. The amazing thing is that they actually market this new feature as an added bonus! They might as well just say "We made it easy to run out of our product as fast as possible so you can come back and buy more!" Thanks, Airwick guys.

2. Just showing hot girls making out with guys who use their product: I'm constantly surprised how often people pull this one, but I shouldn't be, because it's all over the place. Sometimes the point is really that simple, just a straight up lie. "Use our product, and hot girls will make out with you." it's demeaning from both sides, but neither the marketer nor the consumer can get over this one.

1. Inventing better statistics: This one has been around forever. For example, "9 out of 10 dentists recommend this kind of gum!" Everyone should know by now that this is an overt "lie". I can say that 10 out of 10 dentists recommend this gum even if I question 10,000 dentists and only 10 of them say they recommend it. I just take the 10 that did recommend it, and I say that out of those 10 dentists, 10 of them recommended the gum. You'll never hear any commercial say that 9 out of EVERY 10 dentists recommended anything. They only say 9/10 instead of 10/10 because it sound reasonable enough to have more credibility than 10/10, and I only put quotes around "lie" because they're technically telling the truth. Their intent is still to make you think something that is untrue.

I think the reason I'm so fascinated with marketing schemes is that it unveils a dark truth about humanity that corporations have discovered: it's more profitable to tell everyone that you're product is amazing than to make a product that actually is amazing and market that instead.

Ok I promise, I will never write a post that long ever again.

two things I've recently had the urge to do:

pull my cell phone out of my pocket and chuck it as hard as I can:
I'm not really sure why. It's not even that crappy of a phone or anything. It just seems like it would be really gratifying for some reason, although it does have the consequence of possible damage to my phone.

flip someone off:
Not anyone in particular, preferably someone I don't know. I've never done it before. I'd probably feel bad afterward though, which is probably why I haven't done it yet, but I do know the urge comes on the strongest when I'm crossing the street on a "go sign" and some car gets a little too close to me.

I must note that I'm not much of a believer in catharsis or venting at all.

oh, and... so much for the picture post.

that explains some things...

I found out this morning that one of the reasons It's been so hard to wake up this week was that my alarm has been disabled since last Saturday. I'm surprised it took a week to figure that out. I thought I was just really tired.

I'm feeling a picture-post coming up sometime this weekend.

nuclear twig reaction...

I remember a time in my life, back when I didn't understand molecular physics, when I thought that it was possible for someone to be unfortunate enough to step on a twig while walking through the woods and break it in such a way that it splits at a point within one of the tree's atoms (instead of breaking weaker bonds between the tree molecules), thus releasing the atoms energy and starting a chain reaction, leading to a freak nuclear explosion, and that the only reason that this had not happened yet in all the many years of people stepping on twigs and breaking them was that it was just extremely uncommon.

I like how that was all one sentence.

I also like how I say "back when I didn't understand molecular physics" like that isn't the case anymore.