Has anyone else noticed how aggressive the advertising has been lately.?

[EnviroBat]

This "Holiday Season" has been the worst I've ever experienced. The T.V. commercials are a down-right assault on the senses this year. The desperation to sell truckloads of Chinese shit seems more like a war. Every fucking commercial depicts smiling, mindless sheep rushing hither and yon to satisfy their rabid consumerism. It's all I can do to mute the T.V. short of just turning the shit off. Ad's like the T-Mobile crap with that vapid fem-bot, "It's Santa to go..." make me want to kick a hole through the screen. I hate that it's gotten to this point for me, but I fucking hate Christmas and all that it's about. I love spending time with my family, (what's left of them), but traveling anywhere borders on suicidal given how the majority of people operate a motor vehicle these days, (see Cranial/Rectal Inversion Disorder). Don't know about you all, but I just want the month of December over...

[DainBramaged]

1. I turned off cable, it's like having an invisible force field...

[rurallib]

2. Thank goddess for the remote control

were it not for that I probably watch no TV just to avoid commercials.

[asjr]

3. I love the Mute button. I use it

more than ever this year. The commercial that I mute most is some blonde lady in red acting like a nut for Target. I can't stand that commercial. We are being dumbed down even more this year.

[Odin2005]

4. If my SO bought me a Lexus for Xmas I'd be pissed, not jumping for joy.

Major purchases should be family decisions.

[DefenseLawyer]

14. My wife and I had a similar discussion

My question is, how much does an ad campaign like that cost? and how many people actually buy a new lexus as a christmas gift? As you point out it's not the same thing as just buying a new car. And of those who do buy new luxury cars as christmas gifts, how many would do so because of the commercial? The lexus as a christmas gift community has to be pretty damn small, but maybe it is a bigger market than I think it is.

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. You are not the market that's aimed at

On the other hand there are folks for whom buying a new Lexus every couple of years is not a major expense. Tat add s aimed at tat demographic, and the ones who believe tey are in that demographic.

[MineralMan]

5. Ah...I suggest you avoid all television except for premium

channels and PBS until after Christmas. It sounds like you are badly affected by advertising. Give yourself a break, eh...

Also, I like the T-Mobile spokesmodel. She's way cute.

[PassingFair]

6. That doesn't bother me as much as the shit-ton of direct mail and catalogs....

What a fucking waste of trees!

Seriously, who wants all of those postcards?

[loudsue]

18. That's what kills me, too. And credit card solicitations. More trees killed.

I get credit card solicitations ....sometimes two or three PER WEEK FROM THE SAME BANKS!!! .... some under my maiden name (been married 7 1/2 years ) and some under my married name. Citibank, Chase, Capital One, Bank of America, American Express....one month I got over 34 solicitations for credit cards. And I'm just one person. That's a helluva lot of trees killed

FOR NOTHING!!!!

I wish legislators would start passing natural resources laws about how often they can solicit.

The catalogs come two at a time for the same damned catalog: Travel Smith, LLBean, and on and on. Two of the very same catalog will come a couple of days apart. I wish the post office would step in and make it REALLY EXPENSIVE for these assholes to cut down all those trees.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Advertizing is by definition aggressive and it has one goal only.

That has always been the case.
A serious question. Can you show some highway accident stats that support your theory that driving is now 'suicidal' due to some huge rise in accidents? Or is this a 'vibe' you get from the 'sheep' and 'fembots'? I am not a fan of language that dehumanizes humans, that is aggressive, and it is selling a point of view. I'd rather have a model sell me a phone than a person sell me the idea that the model is not a person and thus can be treated as a 'fem bot'. Dehumanization of one is dehumanization of all.

[EnviroBat]

24. Here's just one amongst thousands of statistics,

that anyone with better than a fifth-grade education can look up for themselves.

http://www.nsc.org/Pages/2011ThanksgivingHolidayTrafficFatalityEstimate.aspx

I'd provide more but I have more important things to do with my time than provide well-known statistics to a overly sensitive hand-wringer...

[gkhouston]

8. I thought it seemed worse because we can't afford anything.

Maybe it's genuinely worse because a lot of people can't afford anything.

[zbdent]

9. Oh, don't you realize?

Everybody can afford to give their loved one a car for Christmas ...

and in case you don't get it ... :sarcasm:

[redqueen]

10. I love Christmas, but advertising has always been like this.

Always aggressive, always vapid, always with the fem-bots.

The regulations on advertising were relaxed during the Reagan administration. It's long past time we put a much tighter leash on the vermin that use our subconscious against us in order to persuade us to buy crap we don't need.

[snooper2]

16. Your right, always like this including before Reagan

Even the "modest" 50's had hot babes with large breasts :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T867c3bHPFI&feature=related

[redqueen]

19. Of course male privilege didn't change after Reagan.

I was referring more to the relaxed rules about deceptive ads.

[Yo_Mama]

11. The economy isn't doing well, but there is plenty of money in a lot of bank accounts.

They are just trying to liberate that money.

[Yavin4]

12. The Developing World DOES NOT Consume

Contrary to the hype you hear in the corporate media, folks in developing nations do not consume like we do, and it may be generations until they do.

The average Chinese, Brazilian, or Indian citizen does not consume like we do here in the U.S. I spent some time in Bangalore, India, and it is a mash up between the very wealthy and the abject poor. The only consumption going on is by the Western IT corporate types. The average Indian citizen lives very modestly.

[backtoblue]

13. I noticed during espn football games...

almost all of the commercials were for financial services, investment groups, or very expensive watches. Who has any money left to gamble??? (Not this football fan who had to go to a neighbor's house to watch my team)

[snooper2]

15. Same as last year, and the year before, and the year before, and the year

they were selling these stupid fucking things



and the years ago they were selling these stupid fucking things



and the years before I was born they were selling these stupid fucking things



But I guess all of the above is better than the options you had in the 40's :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Whisp]

17. those commercials sure don't work on us.

we just swear at them and mute.

but I guess they work on enough to make it worthwhile. poor suckers.

our Christmases have been honed down over the years and has become a very simple event - just dinner with family and a minimum of gift trading, which I want to eliminate all together.

Christmases past used to give me migraines. Had a multitude of families and places to 'be' back then (or they get offended that you can't clone yourself and be in 3 places at one time) and felt tugged all over the place. I fucking hated Christmas as I was working full time and had to do all that shit too - gifts, cooking, planning.

Thank goodness it's not like that anymore. Fuck Christmas. (not intended as a religious insult but as a consumer/commercial one)

[EnviroBat]

27. And if yours was anything like my experience, you were always

completely broke by that time of year. But, holy crap if you failed to show up with some trinket for everyone on the "list"!

[Islandlife]

21. YES! Have you also noticed the personal injury lawyers begging for class action suits?

I like to watch DVRed shows and zip thru ads. One hour show in forty minutes.

[saras]

22. No. Why would I go there and pay attention to THAT?

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

23. I can't stand sitting through commercials anymore

I switch stations like a maniac. But I thought it was more because I'm getting old and ill-tempered. Maybe you're right about the aggressiveness. But it also seems to me that the amount of time devoted to ads is increasing. I've seen networks cut to ads, come back after what seems like five or more minutes of brainwashing, identify themselves quickly, and go right back to another five minutes of ads before finally getting back to the program.

[EnviroBat]

26. This is absouetly the case!

There seems to be far more advertising than show now. I'm considering dumping television all-together. I pay way to much for cable only to be bombarded with these shitty ads for 6 minutes at a time!

[Taverner]

25. In a system that only rewards growth, the stakes get raised every minute...

And there is no limit to how high they get raised...