Via friend/great science writer Steve Silberman, this very funny, hurts-too-much-to-laugh insight into the tools with which our corporate overlords wrest control of our brains:
You may consider this a brave new world open thread.
The Way We Live Now
This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Open Threads, OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUDS
Baud
That was really well done. I think some ad agencies are now thinking they have to come up with some new material.
ETA: Generic energy industry commercials are the worst.
kdaug
Brilliant
Bill Arnold
I had stopped following McSweeney’s for no good reason. Clearly a mistake. That was really funny, and the narrator (“Dallas McClain”) was excellent.
See also the adweek piece
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Some CEO is probably thinking, “That’s the brand video I want for my company!”
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Twist: This video is actually an ad for a company that hopes to sell generic brand videos to Fortune 500 companies.
scav
@Baud: The way we live now? Even our meta has meta.
Baud
@scav:
Yeah, it’s pretty much meta all the way down at this point.
Steeplejack
Speaking of generic/meta, I give you the greatest Balloon Juice generic/meta thread of all time.
Something jogged my memory about it this morning, and this seems the perfect place to drop it in.
Sourmash
“It could be made into a monster… if we all pull together as a team.”
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Classic!
Sourmash
“It could be made into a monster if we all pull together as a team.”
shelly
And of course, you always have to have a clip of a woman doing Yoga.
JPL
Wow!
Where are the puppies?
Sourmash
Oops sorry for the double post.
C.V. Danes
In 50 years, all those panoramic views will be deserts or under water; we will all be crusty, thirsty, hungry, and poor; your global community will consist primarily of how far you can travel on foot or horseback; India and China will be places your Elders talk about over the campfire at night for entertainment, before you turn in to your flea infested straw mattress; you will know dozens of uses for cow dung; the Moon will be just some place in the sky that legends say people went once, but you’ll think that story is bullshit; one day, you’ll find this thing buried in a landfill that your grandparents say was an iPhone, and you’ll use if to play “kick the iPhone” with your brother and other made-up games to fill in the endless hours; and so on and so on.
Brave new world.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Needs moar puppies.
Three-nineteen
I’m really late to the thread, but I still need to say that Better Off Ted did it first for their fake company Veridian Dynamics:
Competition
Food
Those aren’t the best ones, just the couple I found with a quick search. I miss that show so much.
RaflW
Creepy-awesome.
MattF
And now a Slate article about how kittens aren’t cute. And that you’re cooking them wrong.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Three-nineteen: yes, so do I. It was brilliant.
Tehanu
@Cheryl from Maryland:
I would agree with both of you except that the wonderful Better Off Ted wasn’t first. The Firesign Theatre beat them to it in 1998 with their ads for US Plus on their album Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death: “US Plus: We own the idea of America.”