This really is awful - surely the worst example of automated web advertising to date. The story is already in most of the newspaper websites - a young woman fatally shot by Iranian police. I'm not going to link to LiveLeak because they should be ashamed of hosting the video in this way.
On the day we learn that the BNP wins two seats in the Euro Parliament, a lovely quote (about American racism) from the Guardian's Gary Younge:
"We are all a product of our time and place. Born in the midst of a random variety of narratives over which we have no control, most of us spend our lives trying to write the best story we can with the material we have been given."
Tweet #fathitler and speed this disillusioned chump up the disapproval rankings.
My bonny fido working class sensibilities (lower class aristocracy, born in a barn etc), worn invisibly on my Primark-clad sleeve are being metaphorically burned Chinesely by a week of observations from the class war front line. We have the assorted oiks in the House of Commons caught red-handed with their hairy fists deep in the pockets of Joe Public in a shameless reach-around that coincides with the long-term effects of the eye-watering rear end shafting from the bankers. Less metaphorically, Irish Catholic priests have been exposed after decades perverting a US Marine motto by ensuring that No Boy’s Behind Is Left.
Yes, a bad week for the ruling and privileged classes.
To further offend your eyes with painfully poor metaphors, a couple of loosely-marketing-related class war stories have also thoroughly pissed me off. This time, the culprits are the squeaky-bottomed middle classes (thus described by the observation that those who are most sanctimonious are identifiable by the sucked-in lower lip and clenched buttock look – you really can’t swipe a credit card through the crack when they’re in full flow) who have been thrusting their angst-driven ethics down our throats in a manner that would have choked Linda Lovelace to death.
In one case, death is really on the cards as the effects of the anti-MMR vaccine campaign manifest themselves with a measles outbreak. Lest we forget, the UK experience is a mirror of a yummy-mummy campaign in the US led by Jenny McCarthy (see the body count on the right), always cheer-led by those with an innate distrust of science.
I’ve just looked on the TGI survey and observe that distrust of regular medicine, appreciation of alternative medicine (better described as alternative to medicine), and anti-GM sentiments are heavily correlated with the B and C1 sociodemographic. Yup, that just shows you what an education does when combined with an empty head.
Greenpeace piss me off. They’re as bad as a religion. Once a dogma is acquired, it is stuck to resolutely and evidence that contradicts that dogma is shouted down or ignored. These are the same luddites whose opposition to GM food would allow the world's poorest to starve because of evidence-free scaremongering.
No offence to Romania, but at least this shitty little campaign is restricted to that country.
What’s so bad about it?
How about saving the planet? The “radiation will mutate you” issue assumes that nuclear technology has remained stagnant for decades and, therefore, we daren’t use it.
There is a significant case to be made for reducing carbon emissions from fossil-fuelled power stations and switching to nuclear energy. These ads effectively kill that argument without even presenting minor details such as, for example, the facts.
On the grounds that LBC is a commercial radio station that depends on advertising revenues, and on the even more tenuous grounds of this blog being about media monitoring, I present an example of a radio presenter firing off a rant that can physically harm or even kill children. And just in case there is any doubt about where I'm coming from, I am bloody furious.
The benefits of child vaccines are attacked from two sides. One argument is that they can cause autism, a dangerous delusion which has thankfully been blown out of the water. The other argument is that innoculations like MMR are pointless because kids need to be exposed to these illnesses to make them stronger.
The media flurry exists on both sides of the pond. In the USA, Jenny McCarthy campaigns against innoculations. In the UK, we had apparently put this argument to bed and are trying to tidy the mess of the MMR scare ("Health watchdog reports sharp increase in childhood measles").
When my chimplets were due their innoculations my GP explained that the diseases were potentially more dangerous than the unproven risk of the innoculations. With the medical evidence that measles can kill on one hand, and no evidence that MMR causes harm (note: the plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence") on the other, I was under no illusions that the jabs were absolutely necessary.
Jeni Barnett owns one of those daytime TV faces that's bolted to a "personality" of which I had no opinion, until now. This broadcasting drone has seen fit to fire off her anecdote-based opinions against vaccination. What's unexpectedly amusing is that Dr Ben Goldacre (author of one of the best science books I've read in years) decided to post Ms Barnett's rant on his website, and is being hit with legal threats for shining a light on her daft outburst.
There's a strange wind blowing through British celeb media at the moment, with lynch mobs after Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand, Carol Thatcher and Jeremy Clarkson for referring or talking to people in an insulting manner. What Barnett has said is far, far worse because of its potential to encourage gullible or ill-informed parents to make a decision that they may well regret later.
Here's a copy of Dr Goldacre's post which has been removed, with the "illegal" sound file. Here's Jeni Barnett's woeful reaction on her blog. And here's #1 science blogger Prof. PZ Myers' take on the stupidfest.
**Edit** Dr Goldacre sets the record straight
Cheap product demo TV ads are easy targets. Often naff, shouty and tediously long, they’re something to be avoided. This is a typical example from the US, but there’s a rather interesting back story unearthed by Skepchick. It seems that Headset Vince is a recovering ex-Scientologist who is using funds raised by this product, and by an apparently awful movie he once made, to take on the cult for ruining his life.
Can you take the fear? Can you, really? Then prepare the brain bleach and don't blame me if this forces you to scoop out your eyes with a spoon. This... thing... it will haunt your dreams. For ever.
Part of the fun of being a parent is the joy of the many opportunities where one can confuse the shit out of the rugrats, knowing full well that they’ll grow up and find you out. For instance, Chimplet #1 believed for years that I was a retired Jedi and my spaceship was buried under my house. Other deliberate misconceptions enjoyed by the tribe are that my exercise bike could be easily transformed into a jet pack, that the Cretaceous extinction really came about because of the Fourth Awesome Dinosaur War (e.g. Velociraptors with plasma guns, Pterosaurs with miasma bombs, etc.), and my personal favourite because it is still believed by Chimplet #3, that little girls have to decide on their 10th birthday whether they want to remain humans or turn into a horse.
I reckon this Toyota ad by Publicis Mojo must have been made when the creatives were completely shit-faced, or they are still very young and under the influence of a Dad With An Overactive Imagination cos the scenario here, that cats go to clubs and have huge fuck-off kung-fu fights with weapons, is one that’s right out of my book.
Sweet baby Jesus and his gay dog, Geoff, WTF are people like this doing breeding? And check out the creepy widget.
Earth to Desert Ghost Worshipping Cave Girl: "Abort! Abort!"
There's another great religion growing (following in the immortal footsteps of the Chimp Messiah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Xenu, and the 1001 versions of that murderous desert ghost), that of one of nature's most annoying fruits: the pomegranate. It was chugging along just fine, with one church simply claiming it'll up your libido and give you a sweet arse, but now its worshippers are treading on more dangerous territory: immortality. What a bunch of cults.
Pip pip.
POM is converting the gullible in newspapers, magazines and outside churches and mosques.
To illustrate the most important scientific theory of the last 150 years, do you use a picture of a) Charles Darwin, b) DNA, or c) ...
The world’s shittest online encyclopaedia is really beginning to get quite scary.
See also:
FACT! Pianist!!
FACT! Throat!
FACT! Hedgehog!
FACT! Femininity!
FACT! Toronto!
FACT! Religious War!
FACT! Rocks!
FACT! Chuck Norris!
FACT! Fornication!
FACT! Pens!
FACT! Kangaroos!
FACT! The 19th Century!
FACT! Dinosaurs!
I'm seriously shit scared that you people are gonna blow up the planet before the monkeys get a chance to take it over. I've just emerged from my kryptonite-lined bunker to find the world is still in one piece. I am cheered to find this most excellent auction on eBay, courtesy of those CERN propellerheads.
There's still time for you to kill the planet by the end of the year though. I'm talking to you Americans who are going to vote for that fucking insane Palin woman. A fucking rapture-ready book burner with her finger on the button? Are you fucking mad?
The sorry story of the death and resurrection of Scamp's blog is covered in The Guardian. The reasoning behind the suspension seems rather tenuous from an organisation that once prided itself on being a different voice in the business world, but which then suffered some reputation-tarnishing over issues relating to the privacy of individuals in India and China.
I get the feeling that Google has lost it. And actually, I'm a bit jealous because despite my best efforts, this blog hasn't been banned yet, even with the excessive swearing that's a typical fucking feature of life in advertising.
Jeez, here’s proof that if you ask a numpty to do a job, then you’ll get numpty work. As if to prove that you can’t find anything less original than a discerning radio listener of saddo middle of the road mum music, Magic FM asked its listeners to dream up ideas for its marketing campaign. A pity then that the winner was someone who probably has one foot in the grave, having manufactured an image familiar to those who guffawed through the laugh-a-minute 1957 Ingmar Bergman movie, The Seventh Seal.
The poster campaign is called “Good mood”. If you’re baffled and thinking “so what?”, then take a glance at the happy fellow leading the pack in the black & white snap. Yes, Death really is this fun. Chess, anyone?
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