I think people think we are stupid. Have you ever given any thought to this? Americans must be doing something wrong, because the advertisers, government leaders and other masters of the brainwash in the US seem to think that we are somehow mentally deficient.
I mean this to be no ill-spirited complaint delivered in a fit of grumphood; anyone who knows me can tell you what a shining pillar of joy I am. I will offer to you, then, a few examples of how we are thought to be stupid.
LITE BEER AND FRIENDS. Everything calorie-reduced, fat-cut, or caffeine-lessened is known as "lite" rather than light. Lite beer, lite margarine, lite salad dressing. Whose brite idea was this? The trend is to leave out letters in words like that; I doubt that printing the extra letters would be that much of an added cost. Some of them, like Soft & Dri, wouldn't even require an extra letter, but instead merely a replacement. Does the word "Dri" somehow sound more appealing than "Dry?" It's not even a real word. Same with Brite cleaner, the Glo in Day-Glo, the Gro in Miracle-Gro, or the Kool in Kool-Aid. If we are truly coming up with new words to augment the English language, do we really want them to be these kind of words?
[I have a side rant, actually: What I'd like to see is an abolishment of calling one kind of product "lite" or "diet" and another kind "regular;" instead, they'd be labeled "Healthy" and "Crap that Will Kill You in the Long Run," respectively. Think of what a marketing boon that would be.]
Two-hundred seventy-five percent MORE FREE! Have you seen all of the packages that are labeled "(Such-and-such) percent More Free!" that they have now? Are these labels supposed to make us feel like we've gotten some kind of gift from the product-makers? It's a bigger box than they had last year. Who gives a crap? "Look, honey. They're giving us more dishwashing liquid for our dollar." "You're kidding! Hell, I'd better send Palmolive a fruit basket and a note of thanks. What a sweet thing for them to do it's nice to know that corporations care about the little guy."
THINGS THAT OUR LEADERS SAY. For this, I only need one paraphrase to clarify my point: "Ah did not have sex with that woman."
SWEEPSTAKES. "MR. JEFFREY M. DECK, YOU MAY ALREADY MIGHT WILL HAVE MAYBE BEEN A WINNER!" Am I supposed to jump up with excitement at such a proclamation? Some of them try to be sneaky and say in small letters: "If you have and return the winning numbers," and then say "YOU ARE A WINNER!" I'm onto this trick, and so is everyone else in America, except for those cursed with 20/50 vision.
SAVE A BUCK OR TWO. A long-distance phone company is currently using this slogan in their advertisements. To me, it seems pretty vague. Do they really run the company that way? "Dear Mr. Deck: As you can see from your itemized list of long-distance phone calls, you've saved a buck this month. Maybe, you can try for two next month." You can't just try to simplify things by making them vague. Imagine saying this when you get your next report card: "Well my GPA went up to a 3.37, but they rounded it down to a 3, just in case I couldn't figure out what the little dot and the three-seven meant."
And, finally:
GAS STATION PRICES. They put them in fractions of a cent "$1.19(9) per gallon". I mean, what is that, anyway? Do they really think we're fooled into perceiving a great bargain over, say, $1.20 per gallon? Let's say you fill up with ten gallons. That gives you a grand total of savings of a cent. Break out the marching band, it's time to freakin' celebrate.
So what is the lesson here? Honesty, honesty, honesty. Someday, I would like to hear, "Okay, we're scamming you. It's pretty obvious. However, we know that you need this product and you're going to buy it regardless of whether we put some dumb label like '50 percent More Free' on it. So, you know what? We're just gonna give it to you straight. Wham, bam, thank you customer."
Hey, maybe someday, right?
