Racist Friends

kowloon wrote: »

US ads just seem very off to me, they always feel like someone really untrustworthy is trying to trick me into buying the product.

+1. I'd reckon it's mostly because they dumb down everything to appeal and sell to the most people from many different backgrounds. You see it in their politics too. Make everything an easily digestible catchphrase delivered by a polished performance. As one American commentator noted they wouldn't elect Abraham Lincoln today as he'd be seen as too wordy. Take their mainstream comedy. The usual cliche of they don't get irony can be wheeled out, but that's mostly down to a culture made up of many, so irony doesn't translate so well across all those cultures. A pie in the face is funny everywhere.

They've also been utterly saturated with marketing and advertising for much longer than anywhere else, so they're more used to being sold to(one could argue similarly of the propaganda of the American Dream™). It was essentially invented and honed in the US. Ads like the one in the video can seem off to us because yes it is so glaringly obvious and cringe and "current" and "woke" or whatever, because the advertising companies are trying to stand out.

And they have, just maybe not I the way they wanted. For some anyway. Though the all attention is good attention can be their mantra. Look at Gillette and it's men are bad, buy our razors ad from a while back. Did it backfire? Maybe, but it got people talking about Gillette. You can be 100% sure that if actual fascists took over the mainstream in America, the advertisers would march right in behind them in perfect step in rainbow coloured jackboots. Or maybe not.