Black Friday Deals Week
Businesses are out promoting and conducting “Black Friday” sales more than a week before Thanksgiving?
Inconceivable!
Black Friday is, by simple definition, the day after Thanksgiving. It is decidedly not the day before. It is not an entire weekend. And, in the name of Zeus’ butthole, it is not the entire third week of November.
Your attempts to redefine the day to satisfy your own insatiable greed is crass and immoral. You know, contrary to that whole Christmas spirit thing which is, if you think about it, the real reason for the season.
I’ve often thought about taking a crack at the retail game myself. My spin would be to insult the fuckshit out of my customer. Yeah, I think that is the approach that would work for me. My style would be loosely based on Dick’s Last Resort Restaurant only on steroids and much more likely to cause my clientele to break out the nunchakus.
Instead of a button on my website called “Place Your Order” my checkout would say something different. “Idiot Want Stuff?” is a top contender. Or, perhaps, “Monkey want banana? Monkey see button. Monkey push button! Monkey get banana.”
Mmm, mmm! Banana!
My store would have a “no bullshit” policy. For example, “If we say it’s in stock, go ahead and push button, monkey. We have it. If not, we’ll give you the motherfucker for free. That’s our no bullshit guarantee.”
The point is, at least I’d be insulting you to your face with dignity, honor, style and grace. I wouldn’t do it like all sneaky subversive like the rest of those namby pamby “Black Friday” giants like Walmart, Best Buy, Kmart, JC Penney, Old Navy, etc. Big box? That’s what we’ll need to bury them in, yo.
Just remember that from the moment they’ve attempted the Black Friday gambit they’ve already insulted you right to you face. And you lap it up like Babe being led to the bacon farm.
I decided to run some more of their bullshit through the universal translator to find out what these stores really think about the marks, fish and dupes who decide to go shopping in the hollow halls. This is all part of my commitment to edification of you, the lowly loyal reader.
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Searching the dark recesses
The internet is pretty good at having information but not always so good at the sharing of it.
“Did you see that video? Thing You Did With A Banana? It was so funny!”
Nope. Never heard of it. Now I feel more left out and more like an outlier than ever before. Well played, internet.
You know what’s not well played? The video itself.
There I was, in my own living room, feeling all dejected because when it came to Thing You Did With A Banana I didn’t even qualify for a participant ribbon. Not only had I never seen it. I’d never even heard of it. Since this is how I measure my worth as a human being I was feeling sad and dejected.
Luckily we recently souped up our home entertainment system with a device that has YouTube built in. I decided to undertake a quest. I was going on a mission to search and destroy.
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Kirk Blocked
Meanwhile, in 1964, the idea for a space exploration television series was already a glint in Gene Roddenberry’s eye. Who could have possibly guessed where this glint might lead? One night, early in 1970, a jackal howled at the moon and that glint was conceived as a new life form. A winning sperm penetrated a poor little ovum and nine months later, on October 12, 1970, Kirk Thomas Cameron popped onto the earthly plane.
Verily, I must go where the spirit moves me and today it has led me to Kirk Cameron. Ugh.
Far be it for me to question the motives of the Creator. Maybe he’s torturing me for a follow up to the Book of Job? The Book of Tom has a nice ring to it. Yeah, I’m willing to suffer a little for 15 minutes of Biblical fame. But not too much, okay?
Verily, like most incidents of torture in my life, it all started on Facebook…
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ABC News can eat my ass
The internet is not just a series of tubes. My God! It’s full of links!
Today, while my mind was contentedly numb and was clicking things on the internet like a monkey pushing a button for a reward (mmm, banana!) I happened to click a link that led to ABC News.
What can one say about the ABC News internet experience?
First, before you even get to the page, you are subjected to a full page advertisement and the option to “skip this ad.”
Here’s the link that aroused my ire and prompted this post: ABC News
The next thing you notice is that your browser says, “Hey. Psst! I have prevented a popup window.”
At the top of the page is a giant banner ad. It’s moving, of course. It’s flashing and trying to get your attention.
Near the top right of the screen is a rectangular ad area that flashes every five seconds or so, encouraging you to click “Play” to watch more about some ABC television show.
And then, without your prior consent, on the left side of the page and embedded in the article, is a video window. It automatically starts to play, sucking up your internet connection and most annoying of all, it begins to pump out sound from your speakers!
That’s just damn rude.
What’s the etiquette of stealing bandwidth from people who decidedly did NOT click “Play” on your video? And then surprising them with sound?
Is your baby laying in your arms asleep? Too fucking bad, says ABC News. We’ll wake that son of a bitch up. We have gots to get paid, yo.
Angry, I immediately located and clicked the MUTE button on the fucking thing. I was almost shocked when it actually worked. Alas, I was not that shocked when the click also brought up a popup window with yet another advertisement. Shit, I thought my browser was blocking those? Apparently not this one.
In the time I’ve been composing this post, that embedded video has been happily playing. Each time I go back and glance at that tab, the video is still playing, thankfully still without sound.
In a smaller box, still within the article, is embedded more advertising. This time a small box labeled “sponsored links.” Scroll down a bit to the bottom of the article and you’ll find two more boxes of sponsored links.
All told I found no less than five items on the web page labeled as “advertisement” or “sponsored links.” This does not include the ad I was forced to skip to land on the page. Nor does it include the two popup windows (one blocked, one that got through.) And, lastly, it does not include the commercial video that started playing with sound when I first loaded the page.
Hey, ABC News. I got a question, and then I have a follow-up. Greed much? And why are you such a bunch of motherfuckers?
I can’t help but wonder what percentage of internet traffic is bandwidth consumed by video and sound that no one ever requested? I bet it’s a lot. It probably ranks right up there with spam and porn thanks to the greed of organizations like ABC News.
This doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Television networks are the same people who decided to stick their logo on the corner of the screen when watching their programs. God forbid we forget what channel we’re watching. Except during commercials, of course. And then they decided to build in commercials during the programming in the form of moving images advertising the next show you should be watching. And then, naturally completing the progression, they added sound to those moving promos in the bottom left corner of the screen.
Fuck the viewer. The viewing experience be damned!
Never again will you be able to watch a show without being bombarded at the same time with commercials for the next show.
How much is enough? When will they say when? How many times do they need to get paid?
I’ve got an idea. How about making a web page that is informative with actual content and making the advertising proportional to the rest of the page? And how about keeping video and sound from coming on unless we ask for it?
Is that too much to ask? You betcha!
Is the audience the customer? No. The advertiser is the customer. And they’ll never ever let you forget that.
Moderation is not a word in the Advertiser’s Dictionary. Just how many boats can you water ski behind?
Hey, ABC News. Can I please read a news story without you spamming the fuck out of all five senses? That would be great.
Something new on the WordPress bar
So there I was this morning, surfing the Living Dilbert blog and minding my own business. I swear.
Suddenly a star and the word “Like” leaped out at me from the WordPress bar at the top of my browser page. (This feature seems to be context sensitive and only shows up when viewing a specific post.)
Like a monkey wanting his banana I pounded that button as fast as I could. Mmmm, banana!
Well, long story short, I didn’t get a banana. But the button did change to say, “You like this” and drops down to a menu that includes the choices “Reblog this post” and “View all posts I like.”
Looks like we have a new WordPress feature to start the month of June. Woot!
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