Neo
05-10-2006, 4:54 PM
Neo's Rant #1 (http://www.warboards.org/showthread.php?t=10640) | Neo's Rant #2 (http://www.warboards.org/showthread.php?t=13258) | Neo's Rant #3 (http://www.warboards.org/showthread.php?t=16033) | Neo's Rant #4 (http://www.warboards.org/showthread.php?p=312112)
Ok. Well I just went back and read my first rant, and I have to say its pretty good. #2 was alright, but #3 kind of sucked. Oh well. Heres my attempt at a 4th.
Oh, and the first person to take this seriously/dissect it/rape it will get hurt. Painfully. By many moogles. If you feel the need to dissect nonserious rant with (hopefully) a humourous overtone to it, then GTFO of my thread t.t. I'm serious here though. Don't do it.
Neo's Rant #4
So I'm sure you wandering "wtf is he ranting about now?", this is probably an older rant for a great many people, so I am sure everyone will be able to understand it.
Ok, so the other day I was in a dream-sleep-induced stupor, slowly coming awake to begin yet another day of geeky living listening to my radio. My radio is nothing special, a smallish cassete/cd player, a few years old, with a Star Trek sticker on it. Point being: I've had it for a damned long time.
As I am slowly waking up, I am hearing about recent news stuff, the station I listen to also picks up some wierd/fun stories off the web sometimes (read: stuff you'd see at Digg and the like) and they'll put a fun twist on it. At any rate, we get to the point where they put on some music (Jazz if anyone is wondering) and while I amlistening I must've drifted back to sleep or something, because at the next moment I hear commercials.
So heres the rant. I don't mind commercials, I've even gotten to the point where they don't bug me until this happens:
Listening to this radio commercial, its about HP Printer Cartridges, and some stupid women who (I assume) is at the grocery store looking for "Frruuuu" and "Tk Tkkk tkkk" and something else. It was kinda funny, but not really. As if you'd be trying to pronounce printer smeared words.
So lets dissect this: First off, even the crappiest printer on the market can print decently enough without leaving smears and shit.
Second off: This commercial actually was saying "BUY HP BECAUSE THISE OFF BRANDS SUCK". But you know they can't come out and say that, which is fine, but why the hell the decided to do it this way...
Ugh.
So anyways That mini-rant about this stupid commercial has a point -- I thought it was kind of moronic. But guess what? After a 15 second interlude -- you know the standard "Weee... your listening to <station>!" stuff? The SAME COMMERCIAL comes on.
WTF Seriously. Like I want to hear the same propaganda bullshit from HP "omg please don't use third party printer catridges (they might be cheaper, work just as well, and some are even refillable), use ours instead! (one use, expensive as fuck, and not refillable) twice in a row. Or even once. Oh well.
Now I understand that a great many of the commercials are probably stuck in some kind of randomizer, or perhaps they purchase specific blocks of time to play, but I would hope that they wouldn't do this intentionally.
But after some television watching, I've come to the following conclusions:
Both Radio and TV ad people don't care. I've often seen the same commercial on twice during the same break, even 3 times! What the fuck? Do they think if they show us their commercial enough time within a 3 minute block of time we will go out and buy it?
Oh my favorite ads now are these (on the radio):
"Do you want to improve your sexual stamina?" Yes. Its basically a real life version of those spam emails. They coat it and add in a shit load of inneundo, but its basically a "omg buy cialis because it'l make you harder, longer, and bring you and your partner more pleasure and might cause: headaches, hair loss, nasal seapage, joint pain, coma, death, anal leakage, blindness, stiffness, nasuea, fantasies about your mother-in-law, other minor effects".
I believe they've even infiltrated television commercials, what with those Viagra ones and stuff. Seriously, I don't want to listen to my radio then have my mother come in and out pops a "DO YOU WANT A BETTER LOVE LIFE? BUY CIALIS, I'TL MAKE YOUR EXPERIENCE LONGER AND MORE PLEASURABLE!!!!1" from a station that was just playing some nice abientic (ambience? something) jazzy music.
Although to be fair, within about 40 miles or so, there is the Lily Corporation, which is a ginormous drug company... My aunt made the point that we probably see a shitload more medicinal ads then other areas, simply because of where we are. Which makes sense I suppose.
So theres most of the rant.
Heres a mini-addon:
Why does it seem that every commercial break on television seems to be synced up with every OTHER station?
Seriously, What the FUCK?!
I remember in the past it was possible semi-watch 2 shows at once. Usually you could pick one you weren't to interested in but wanted to see anyways, and then a main one. Usually you could flip to your backup during the main's breaks and catch most of it, if not all of it until it breaks for commercials, then you could switch back to your main and continue watching.
You know?
Nowadays it seems that you can hit a commercial break, and run into, literally, 15, 20, even more stations (in a row) that are also on a commercial break.
Correct me if I am wrong, but don't people sometimes break off from the show they are watching -- or start watching at different times? Don't you want to try to bring in people? My first action if I were to be running some station would be to make sure that my commercial breaks run opposite other stations breaks -- so that if people are switching channels during their original stations breaks, they'll come to my station and see that my station's show is playing. Maybe they might even stay!
Meh. It's just annoying is all. Commercials can sometimes be funny -- I don't want them to be removed or anything, but seriously. What the hell is wrong with these people? Do they think that everyone is just a sheep that will deal with seeing the same god-forsaken commercial 5 or 6 times in a 10 minute period?
Here are some thoughts:
Cable was originally created so you could watch television without commercials. Boy has that been fucked over.
Half-Hour shows are rarely over 22 minutes. That means that there is at least 7 to 8 minutes of commercials in every half hour block of television. Pretty sad isn't it?
Hour long shows are rarely over 42 minutes. Some older shows were 44 minutes long, but recent ones are only 42 mintues long. That means that there are EIGHTEEN minutes of commercials in 1 hour block of time. Thats almost 20 minutes -- does that seem excessive to anyone else?
How many cancelled shows can you recall? How many shows have you caught one or two episodes of then totally lost track of them? Lets take Dark Angel, its an older example, but it was from James Cameron (the genius behind Terminator and Terminator II (but not 3), titanic I believe, basically this dude is awesome). Dark Angel starred Jessica Alba, it was a very cool sci-fi show, based in a post-apocalyptic US, about genetically engineered soldiers... At least at first.
The series progressed well, and has some major twists to it. Overall it was pretty awesome. Guess what happened? Fox got stupid. They moved the show at least twice that I recall (to different time blocks) without notifying the fans at all -- you know when really popular shows move the stations will run blurbs off and on about them moving? They didn't even try to do that for Dark Angel. The point being that many promissing cancelled shows die because of moronic Stations. Dark Angel was cancelled after its second season because its ratings dropped (no wonder, moving it around without letting fans no where it ended up) and its production costs were very high (Think it was actually the first show I saw hummers in).
Oh well. So there's number 4. I did this one a little differently and kind of let myself wander around... I've got five planned out actually... Heh. Well, not really planned, but I'm not sure if it would apply to anyone else.
-Neo
Ok. Well I just went back and read my first rant, and I have to say its pretty good. #2 was alright, but #3 kind of sucked. Oh well. Heres my attempt at a 4th.
Oh, and the first person to take this seriously/dissect it/rape it will get hurt. Painfully. By many moogles. If you feel the need to dissect nonserious rant with (hopefully) a humourous overtone to it, then GTFO of my thread t.t. I'm serious here though. Don't do it.
Neo's Rant #4
So I'm sure you wandering "wtf is he ranting about now?", this is probably an older rant for a great many people, so I am sure everyone will be able to understand it.
Ok, so the other day I was in a dream-sleep-induced stupor, slowly coming awake to begin yet another day of geeky living listening to my radio. My radio is nothing special, a smallish cassete/cd player, a few years old, with a Star Trek sticker on it. Point being: I've had it for a damned long time.
As I am slowly waking up, I am hearing about recent news stuff, the station I listen to also picks up some wierd/fun stories off the web sometimes (read: stuff you'd see at Digg and the like) and they'll put a fun twist on it. At any rate, we get to the point where they put on some music (Jazz if anyone is wondering) and while I amlistening I must've drifted back to sleep or something, because at the next moment I hear commercials.
So heres the rant. I don't mind commercials, I've even gotten to the point where they don't bug me until this happens:
Listening to this radio commercial, its about HP Printer Cartridges, and some stupid women who (I assume) is at the grocery store looking for "Frruuuu" and "Tk Tkkk tkkk" and something else. It was kinda funny, but not really. As if you'd be trying to pronounce printer smeared words.
So lets dissect this: First off, even the crappiest printer on the market can print decently enough without leaving smears and shit.
Second off: This commercial actually was saying "BUY HP BECAUSE THISE OFF BRANDS SUCK". But you know they can't come out and say that, which is fine, but why the hell the decided to do it this way...
Ugh.
So anyways That mini-rant about this stupid commercial has a point -- I thought it was kind of moronic. But guess what? After a 15 second interlude -- you know the standard "Weee... your listening to <station>!" stuff? The SAME COMMERCIAL comes on.
WTF Seriously. Like I want to hear the same propaganda bullshit from HP "omg please don't use third party printer catridges (they might be cheaper, work just as well, and some are even refillable), use ours instead! (one use, expensive as fuck, and not refillable) twice in a row. Or even once. Oh well.
Now I understand that a great many of the commercials are probably stuck in some kind of randomizer, or perhaps they purchase specific blocks of time to play, but I would hope that they wouldn't do this intentionally.
But after some television watching, I've come to the following conclusions:
Both Radio and TV ad people don't care. I've often seen the same commercial on twice during the same break, even 3 times! What the fuck? Do they think if they show us their commercial enough time within a 3 minute block of time we will go out and buy it?
Oh my favorite ads now are these (on the radio):
"Do you want to improve your sexual stamina?" Yes. Its basically a real life version of those spam emails. They coat it and add in a shit load of inneundo, but its basically a "omg buy cialis because it'l make you harder, longer, and bring you and your partner more pleasure and might cause: headaches, hair loss, nasal seapage, joint pain, coma, death, anal leakage, blindness, stiffness, nasuea, fantasies about your mother-in-law, other minor effects".
I believe they've even infiltrated television commercials, what with those Viagra ones and stuff. Seriously, I don't want to listen to my radio then have my mother come in and out pops a "DO YOU WANT A BETTER LOVE LIFE? BUY CIALIS, I'TL MAKE YOUR EXPERIENCE LONGER AND MORE PLEASURABLE!!!!1" from a station that was just playing some nice abientic (ambience? something) jazzy music.
Although to be fair, within about 40 miles or so, there is the Lily Corporation, which is a ginormous drug company... My aunt made the point that we probably see a shitload more medicinal ads then other areas, simply because of where we are. Which makes sense I suppose.
So theres most of the rant.
Heres a mini-addon:
Why does it seem that every commercial break on television seems to be synced up with every OTHER station?
Seriously, What the FUCK?!
I remember in the past it was possible semi-watch 2 shows at once. Usually you could pick one you weren't to interested in but wanted to see anyways, and then a main one. Usually you could flip to your backup during the main's breaks and catch most of it, if not all of it until it breaks for commercials, then you could switch back to your main and continue watching.
You know?
Nowadays it seems that you can hit a commercial break, and run into, literally, 15, 20, even more stations (in a row) that are also on a commercial break.
Correct me if I am wrong, but don't people sometimes break off from the show they are watching -- or start watching at different times? Don't you want to try to bring in people? My first action if I were to be running some station would be to make sure that my commercial breaks run opposite other stations breaks -- so that if people are switching channels during their original stations breaks, they'll come to my station and see that my station's show is playing. Maybe they might even stay!
Meh. It's just annoying is all. Commercials can sometimes be funny -- I don't want them to be removed or anything, but seriously. What the hell is wrong with these people? Do they think that everyone is just a sheep that will deal with seeing the same god-forsaken commercial 5 or 6 times in a 10 minute period?
Here are some thoughts:
Cable was originally created so you could watch television without commercials. Boy has that been fucked over.
Half-Hour shows are rarely over 22 minutes. That means that there is at least 7 to 8 minutes of commercials in every half hour block of television. Pretty sad isn't it?
Hour long shows are rarely over 42 minutes. Some older shows were 44 minutes long, but recent ones are only 42 mintues long. That means that there are EIGHTEEN minutes of commercials in 1 hour block of time. Thats almost 20 minutes -- does that seem excessive to anyone else?
How many cancelled shows can you recall? How many shows have you caught one or two episodes of then totally lost track of them? Lets take Dark Angel, its an older example, but it was from James Cameron (the genius behind Terminator and Terminator II (but not 3), titanic I believe, basically this dude is awesome). Dark Angel starred Jessica Alba, it was a very cool sci-fi show, based in a post-apocalyptic US, about genetically engineered soldiers... At least at first.
The series progressed well, and has some major twists to it. Overall it was pretty awesome. Guess what happened? Fox got stupid. They moved the show at least twice that I recall (to different time blocks) without notifying the fans at all -- you know when really popular shows move the stations will run blurbs off and on about them moving? They didn't even try to do that for Dark Angel. The point being that many promissing cancelled shows die because of moronic Stations. Dark Angel was cancelled after its second season because its ratings dropped (no wonder, moving it around without letting fans no where it ended up) and its production costs were very high (Think it was actually the first show I saw hummers in).
Oh well. So there's number 4. I did this one a little differently and kind of let myself wander around... I've got five planned out actually... Heh. Well, not really planned, but I'm not sure if it would apply to anyone else.
-Neo