Friday, April 08, 2011

1470 Snarky Shark

I was about to watch something online the other day, but first I had to watch one of those online commercials. You know the ones. They call them "pre-rolls," and they are the unspoken deal you make to get free online contentwatch a short commercial first.
Hey, somebody has to pay somewhere. Al Gore's Information Superhighway may have a low carbon footprint, but it still needs financial fuel to keep it going.
In any event, the commercial I watched was a little disturbing. It was by the Snickers Bar company, and it depicted a scene in which a number of very realistic sharks were deciding on something in a focus group. The facilitator was human, and she was asking the sharks which of the samples they had just eaten they liked better.
The sharks very creepily said they liked Steve. "That's great," said the facilitator, "because Steve had just eaten a Snickers Bar." She concluded it was no surprise Steve himself tasted better to the Sharks. At that point, one of the sharks actually made a noise I assumed was meant to be a snicker.
One was led to the inescapable conclusion that Steve had been completely and ravenously eaten by the sharks. One of which said, "Yeah, Steve, Steve was very good, Steve was delicious..." and then drooled quite horrifically.
All very clever. The sharks even had some attitude. Being a little sarcastic with the facilitator, as reluctant folks in a focus group sometimes do. But showing snarky sharks calmly discussing eating humans quite put me off eating candy, much less having any appetite at all.
I couldn't help but think of all the poor shark victims and victim's families. Atavistic fear of the deep, blood, gore, death, dismemberment...and Snickers.
A fistful of peanuts and an actual fist too. Yum.
America, ya gotta love it.

No comments: