Shout outs to Cooper B. for sending this to me. Lookadis.
“For over one hundred years, we’ve been scrunching and folding toilet paper. Finally there’s a better way!”
Really. I personally use bark and thistle bushes when I do my business and it’s pretty darn inconvenient. Please, tell me more.
“Comfort Wipe! The sanitary paper extension arm and holder!”
I like how you speak. It is pleasing to my ears, as I speak in your style frequently. When I go to the cafeteria for lunch I ask for fried poultry embryos mixed with in vegetation. Couldn’t you just call it a butt-wiper?
“Think about it. Toilet paper is really archaic and disgusting. The Comfort Wipe is a modern solution”
You know what else is really archaic and disgusting? Eating. I mean, sheesh, manual breaking down of food particles with your teeth? Those outdated hunks of calcium? Screw that! I want my meals liquefied. Sorry. I mean liquified. Yum.
I’m sorry. I just can’t buy it. The whole “using your hands to wipe your butt is insanitary” makes no sense if you just wash your hands. It isn’t a problem now, nor has it ever been a problem. No. A thousand times, no. This ad demonstrates a very simple point about the world we live in: our material needs are taken care of so well that salesmen are getting desperate. Now to make a quick buck we’re actually stooping so low as to imply that you need a butt wiper. And not only will we sell things you don’t need, but we’ll sell them by any means necessary. Call you up on your phone when you come home from work? Yes. Embed them into your TV shows and movies? Yes. Illegally put fliers up around town against zoning restrictions? Yes. Convince you that you’ll answer life questions and get an identity with the product? Yep. Even advertise to toddlers, who can’t even tell the difference between TV and advertising? Yep. There’s neither a method too low nor a product too unnecessary for advertisers to try to manipulate the way you think.
Oh, Supreme Court…I have have no clue what you guys are playing at. What you give to the public with one hand, you take away with the other. Three days after their ruling to screw over American voters, the Supreme Court decided not to challenge a lower court’s ruling that California can have sections of the highway billboard free. California has had this policy in place for a very long time, where sections of the highway labeled “landscaped highway” are mostly free from billboards. As a result, I bet you can enjoy the fantastic California landscape a lot more. Hey, who knows, maybe there are less accidents because people are paying more attention to their surroundings. The story is that Nano Maldonado lived by one of these areas and wanted to put a billboard on his roof but was told he couldn’t. Over the past 10+ years he’s been challenging the policy, moving up the California court system pushing his luck only to be struck down by the Supreme Court recently. I don’t know what to think about the Supreme Court. And this isn’t a victory for people who want to see less ads, it’s a defeat of an advance of ads. Nothing’s going to change. But for right now, I’d say that’s pretty good.
Yes, it’s a tissue box for men. Yes, it exists. And it’s on sale in England. I can’t tell if this thing is successful or not. If someone’s feeling ambitious and wants to do the work, by all means go ahead and I’ll update the blog once you tell me.
What’s blowing my mind about this is that one, there doesn’t seem to be an area of culture that marketers won’t try to upend to sell products, but that two that color scheme actually appeals to my male sensibilities. And along those lines, how on earth does black, red and white somehow equate masculinity? How on earth did they get me to think that? How badly have they twisted my mind around?
America isn't a healthy place. The lives that are socially acceptable for us to be living just aren't good for our bodies, our souls, or our planet. We eat food that we don't know what it's made out of, and then think we can fix it by eating more of it when it's got health claims. We send gift cards to each other, like we're incapable of telling someone how we feel about them. We hope death will go away if we just put on enough make-up. We even sell sexually revealing clothing to little girls. And at the end of the day, the simple thing is that a life built on these rules won't be satisfying or meaningful. This society provides never-ending insecurities, toys, and distractions, but not enough lessons on how to live your life proudly, and if you ever develop into a critical thinking, confident, and creative person you run against the current of thousands of advertisers and salesmen who want you to be an insecure and dependent consumer.
