I thought this commercial was particularly interesting the couple times I caught it on recently. It has a single parent family talking about their phone use.
A dad enters his kitchen where his three daughters, aged roughly 8, 11 and 14-years old, are sitting around a counter. The 14-year-old is on a cell phone, the 11-year-old is texting on a PDA and the 8-year-old is doing homework.
Dad:(entering room) Hey guys. 14-year-old:(into phone) Hang on... (to dad) Dad, Daisy wants to know how your Internet dating is going. Dad:(looking not thrilled) ... 14-year-old: What? You're the one who switched us to T-Mobile. When you can talk to your favs all you want, things come up. Dad: Just because we have unlimited calling doesn't mean you have to tell everyone everything. 11-year-old:(while texting) So I shouldn't have told Cathy to tell her grandma you're available? Dad: What? 8-year-old: She thinks you're super-delicious. Dad: What does she look like?
I like this commercial, not for its cutesy joke at the end, but for its implication that a family can be non-nuclear without being dysfunctional. The family looks happy despite not having a mother figure. The older daughter seems to be overseeing the youngest doing her homework. There's a story happening here that's important without being specifically alluded to.
Dad is single and looking for dates online. The daughters are supportive of this and are trying to help him get dates. It's just a 30-second commercial, but the family dynamic on display here is endearing. Dad appears to be returning from working out, so he's trying to improve his desirability. The implication to me is the mother has passed away, and the commercial takes place after the mourning has eased off. It's cool that someone imbued the ad with that level of backstory. It feels uncommon to me.
I wonder if there is any negative reaction to the commercial's implied values. From what I can see in the comments on the Youtube video, reaction is pretty positive, but more in terms of the humor than the family structure. My hunch is that most people offended by the commercial would be less likely to leave a comment -- i.e. have a Youtube account, the Internet savvy to use it or knowledge that the commercial could be viewed online in the first place.
Here is a painting by Jason Chan, an artist from San Francisco.
I love it.
Apart from it being technically amazing and beautiful, there's a good story here, if you like the idea of zombie apocalypse, at least. These kids are making their last stand, but they didn't just end up here randomly.
My interpretation runs thus... I don't think of them as having specific names, but for the sake of easy reference, I'll call them (left to right) David, Nicole, Molly and Greg.
David is the central figure of the story. He figured out what was happening early on. He tried to tell the people in his life (parents, teachers, school nurse, other students, etc) that something was wrong, but his reputation for having offbeat interests hindered this. He's a mediocre student because he gets distracted, but he's actually very smart. When David tried to warn everyone what was happening, it was initially hard for him to overcome his innate shyness. It wasn't a case of "the boy who cried wolf" so much as "the nerd who cried nerd stuff."
Nicole is a popular girl in school and an excellent student. She likes sports and is known for her kind personality. David has had an intense schoolboy crush on her ever since they had a class together a year ago, but he would never be able to tell her this. He thinks her fearless, a perception that would greatly amuse her if she knew. Nicole also noticed something was wrong, but she didn't recognize the problem.
Molly is a couple grades down from David and Nicole. She has interacted with neither of them, but knows them by sight. She is bright for her age, but socially withdrawn, with only one real friend. On the day when things come to a head, Molly was attacked and almost killed by another child who'd been turned, but David saw what was happening and helped her get away. Together, they wre also able to help Nicole out of immediate danger.
Greg is known as somewhat of a jock bully, but he's not actually a mean-spirited kid, just insecure. He's in the same grade as David and Nicole, but he's never interacted with them except to maybe throw a few sardonic remarks their way. Although it isn't outwardly obvious to his peers, Greg is also a smart kid. It's this quality that allows all four kids to react more quickly when things get out of control.
In looking at this painting, I see a short movie, like a music video. Here is a song I feel overlays the painting well. It has elements of a childlike perspective of the world coupled with a subtly dark undertone. Coincidentally the video for the song features many children.
Here is the basic story as it mentally plays out for me.
The video is from the perspective of a child who is attending the school. The entire story is from her first-person perspective, making her a visual narrator. We open with her getting off the school bus and walking into school.
We see a number of mundane activities through her eyes: putting up her coat, sitting at her desk, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, getting out a workbook (from which we could learn her name).
These could all be happening in semi-fast-forward, with it slowed to regular (or slower) speed when the narrator's glance lingers on something she's interested in. a friend or something outside the window, for example.
The teacher is writing on the blackboard, when she appears to hear some commotion in the hall. She moves toward the door. With no warning, a bloody, shambling zombie comes through the door and attacks her. It's not graphically violent, but it's clear the teacher is being overpowered by this new player.
All the children stand and run to the back of the room. As the narrator runs to the back, we can see her reflection in a mirror on the back wall. She sees her now-dead teacher and the zombie in the mirror, rising from the floor to walk towards the children in the back.
The narrator moves to the side and sort of hides herself in the coat closet. The two zombie adults converge on the kids, but the narrator covers her eyes with her hands out of fear, making all go mostly black. Maybe we can see movement and color through her hands, but no detail.
The narrator uncovers her eyes and an adult zombie is standing over her. She scoots between its legs and runs toward the door to the hall. As she runs, she's violently stopped and jerked back. She looks over her shoulder and sees a freshly risen child zombie has grabbed her arm. It viciously bites her arm but she fights free and runs into the hall.
As she runs down the hall, the narrator looks left and right into classrooms and sees similar chaos in each one... Left: a group of kids fighting off their turned teacher with whatever weapons they could improvise. Right: a group of turned kids coming towards her. Left: a crying teacher backed into a corner by a large group of turned kids.
As the narrator runs, her pace slows more and more. She just barely makes it out the door to the playground, As she lays there and looks down at her mangled forearm, all goes black for the second time. After a bit of time, she opens her eyes again and gets to her feet, but now colors are faded, and the edges of her vision are blurred.
She looks around and sees a large number of turned kids all shambling in the same direction. She follows suit. As she crests a small hill, the main jungle gym of the playground comes into view. The turned children are converging on it.
As the narrator comes closer, we see David, Nicole, Molly and Greg making their last stand. At this point we move backward from the narrator's point of view, slowly moving up and up. As we get higher and higher, we pan down and see the fight will be hopeless.
Dozens of zombies, child and adult alike, are massing at the jungle gym. The screen goes black as the music fades out.
Here is an image of a work request placed on Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk site. The site is basically a billboard for paid odd-jobs on Amazon's millions of pages.
The gist of this post is that Michael Bayard of Belkin, a tech company specializing in electronics accessories, wanted to pay people about $0.65/per to fabricate positive Amazon reviews of Belkin products.
Originally investigated by the Daily Background Web site, this story provoked a fair amount of consumer outrage. Belkin was quick to attempt damage control. The president of the company responded saying:
"Belkin has always held itself to the highest standards of corporate ethics and its employees to the highest standards of personal integrity. Similarly, we support our online user community in discussion and reviews of our products, whether the commentary is good or bad.
So, it was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turk website inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment.
Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this. We know that people look to online user reviews for unbiased opinions from fellow users and instances like this challenge the implicit trust that is placed in this interaction. We regard our responsibility to our user community as sacred, and we are extremely sorry that this happened."
Although this vaguely apologizes ("one of our employees may have posted" sounds evasive) for the incident, it wasn't limited to Amazon's reviews. After doing some digging, Daily Background also found Bayard had paid for flattering reviews on other sites. Bayard's specific goal seemed to be renewing interest in a poorly rated wireless router by simultaneously slashing its price and inflating its review scores.
What I find interesting about this is not the deception, which is appalling but not really surprising. It's the corporate mentality of deceptively spinning a bad product rather than making a good product.
It's obvious that someone put a lot of thought into how the paid reviewers would have the maximum impact on a product's rating. Add personal elements, but don't make it too long. Downrate any unflattering reviews. Mention what a great deal it was. The post really suggests a nuanced level of deceit.
I wouldn't say Bayard is completely to blame for the ethical void on display in this incident. He's responsible for his own actions, but the attitudes that motivated them are rooted in corporate profiteering.
In the video game industry, it's apparently a common practice to base a marketing rep's bonus or even job security, on a product having a collectively positive critical reception. A shorthand way of observing this process can be found on Metacritic.com. A game's positive average rating is necessary irregardless of a product's actual quality.
This puts PR flaks in the position of having to get a game a high critical rating via any means in order to save their own asses. Mind you, these people have no control over the content or quality of the product they must sell, so when a steaming turd comes along, they must cultivate the perception that it's purest gold.
For example, one way companies artificially boost a Metacritic rating is to place an embargo on reviews of a product, but with an exemption clause if the review is positive. So hypothetically all review sites that are giving a review score above a certain percentage get to publish their reviews early.
Those giving a lower score must wait until the embargo has expired or risk hurting relations with that company. Bad relations can result in less exclusives, less access to pre-release information or even a site being blacklisted, as happened between 1up.com and Ubisoft.
My impression is that practices like Bayard's are commonplace in the world of corporate marketing and likely have been for years. Viral marketing campaigns, fake fan sites, message board infiltration, fake reviews... Countless forms of deception all aimed at getting consumer dollars. All's fair in love and war.
