Pointless But It Does My Head In

I always hated that shite to.

One of the banks here used to have a big fucking sign on their doors that said:

"HI YOU LOOK NICE TODAY"

Goddamn that irked me.

I used to talk to one of my friends about doing the OPPOSITE of all that pandering girls blouse shit.

E.g, marketing your face wash this:

"YOUR FACE IS FUCKING HIDEOUS AS A PLACENTA LICKING SEA SLUG SNIFFING ABORTED DUCK FETUS SO USE OUR PRODUCT - IT IS FULL OF HARSH CHEMICALS AND FIVE HUNDRED BUNNIES WERE MUTILATED WHILE TESTING IT"

Actually, while thinking up those insults I realised that originally our plan was a backlash to all the 'organic natural essential oil plant squidge' products, with marketing really synthetic and fake stuff.

That post makes me wish dissensus had an 'I like this!' button.

yeah, that patronising, over familiar shit is being taken way too far. gotta love how british gas have that ad with the floating planets and the cutesy puppet people all looking happy and shit while BG are hiking the bills up 20% and making billions in profits. gotta larf eh?

*whistles always look on the bright side of life*

another strain of patronising tv advertising is the use of northern accents when a brand is going for a "let's cut the crap" type angle

was it this thread where someone mentioned the plusnet 'good honest broadband from yorkshire' ad?

i mean for fucks sake.

Mr. Tea said:

WH Smith has decided to call its 'range' of foods (mediocre sandwiches and generic chocolate/cereal bars, in other words) "foo-go".

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this is odd. I guess the goal of the branding was to make the avg food appealing, right? now, who the fuck would find something called 'foo-go' appetising?

the shampoo thing is ridiculous, too.

Also related but I really hate twee pop and indie rock.

Why do people like this asinine garbage? It is worse than corporate trash by a long long way.

pattycakes said:

another strain of patronising tv advertising is the use of northern accents when a brand is going for a "let's cut the crap" type angle

was it this thread where someone mentioned the plusnet 'good honest broadband from yorkshire' ad?

i mean for fucks sake.

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ha, totally! Tea posted a key to accents and their purpose in the media. I loath accents full stop, not many I like.

...and how also, John Bishop has managed to get by on his accent in the comedy circle even though he doesn't tell any jokes.....

he's the scouse isn't he, i fucking hate that cunt. He's got the face of a racist too.

pattycakes said:

another strain of patronising tv advertising is the use of northern accents when a brand is going for a "let's cut the crap" type angle

was it this thread where someone mentioned the plusnet 'good honest broadband from yorkshire' ad?

i mean for fucks sake.

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Yep, as 'you' says, I've ranted about accents in adverts before. Good Northern salt-of-the-earth honesty, chummy likeable Oirish, serious earnest Scots ("Just two poonds a month could hailp pruvide..."), Brummy or Mummerset for comic relief...ugh. Makes me pine for the day when the only accents on telly were RP, it may have been elitist and all the rest but at least it wasn't pretending to be your wacky best friend.

And the prevalence of twee, dickless indie-schmindie in all these ads...bleurgh. Charlie Brooker had a good rant about this kind of crap a few years ago, bitching about adverts that are 'tweetronising', which is to say, both twee and patronising (much like the word 'tweetronising' itself). Mobile phone ads featuring a happy, good-looking, impeccably multi-racial group of young people holding hands on a candle-lit beach in soft sepia tones - after you with the sick-bucket...

I have to say, since I've just been reminded of it, Charlie Brooker's continued popularity. The guy's politics are horrendous.

What are his politics? His articles range from the genuinely funny and worthwhile to the tediously trivial but I think that the ones I've read which touch on politics have tended to be the best.

I read something he wrote about the riots that I thought was the worst kind of self-satisfied bourgeois shit. Give me Russell Brand any day. I know many people find his public persona insufferable, but I kinda love the guy for speaking his mind on important issues: http://www.russellbrand.tv/2011/10/occupy/ He also put his name to public letters protesting about the NHS, which very few supposedly 'left' celebrities bothered to do (yes, I'm talking about you, Albarn). he's got substance, something Brooker has never shown while whingeing (albeit wittily) about lots of things.

Brooker's politics are identical to those of a lot of bourgeois people I know, from what i can tell. Satisfied with what seems to be the right opinion, rather than bothering to have any thoughts/morality of his own. perfectly open to changing my view on reading further articles, but I felt violent towards him for his smug 'wittiness' on that occasion. it's a type of politics that in some ways I hate even more than Daily Mail types - at least that is honest about being fascistic, which means you can fight it.

PS I have personal investment in this. He reminds me of everyone I've ever known who covers up an inability to emote/philosophise/express their real selves through humour (usually irony and acerbic wit). It's so British, and it's so tedious, funny though it may be initially (I find it rather hollow after a while).

I tend to find he's very good on the media and how it works and quite bad at a lot of other stuff...

BLAST English humour, for making a mountain into a molehill!

I think you're right - it's been media politics on which I've found him most convincing.

New topic - advice on dealing with damp in your house. We're trying really hard to avoid it, but pretty much all the advice you can find basically boils down to "don't live in a cold wet climate". I mean, I've mostly seen things saying that you shouldn't have wet towels around the place and you shouldn't dry clothes on radiators (which seem unavoidable if it's wet outside) and you should keep the place warm and well ventilated (which is a contradiction in terms if it's cold outside).

i always feel so thick when i read this forum. ideas i've had but never been able to express half as eloquently are laid out here on the reg.

anyway, yea, brooker is such a bore nowadays. i think the pic of him looking all disgruntled with the state of britain atop his guardian column says a lot. he's entertaining in small doses, but after a while he's just an embittered old cunt.

brand, ugh. pisses me off that he manages to make me laugh as often ashe does. his whorish antics have seriously cheapened any serious stuff he might want to pursue in the future. not sure what he's got planned but he mentioned something in that interview he did with paxman.

anyone see that clip of him at the G20 protests in 2008 when the reporter asked him what he was there for? can't seem to find it on youtube now but it was well awkward.

baboon2004 said:

I have to say, since I've just been reminded of it, Charlie Brooker's continued popularity. The guy's politics are horrendous.

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What, because he isn't prepared to offer a blanket exculpation to rioters who destroyed people's homes and livelihoods and put lives at risk? I admit his rhetoric was a bit OTT in that article but he made some pretty valid points, I thought. Or is there other stuff he's written that you're talking about here?

He may not be a card-carrying Marxist but he seems generally left-of-centre and has made a career out of being cynical about government, big business and particularly the media. I think he's OK.

Edit: oh god, the dreaded 'b'-word...I wish people would stop using the word 'borgeois'. It's just a word middle-class people apply to other middle-class people as a catch-all perjorative, usually to denigrate things they recognise in themselves. And using in that way is, ironically, the easisest way to make yourself sound as borgeois as all hell. It's like making yourself sound like a hipster by whining about hipsters...

Mr. Tea said:

Edit: oh god, the dreaded 'b'-word...I wish people would stop using the word 'borgeois'. It's just a word middle-class people apply to other middle-class people as a catch-all perjorative, usually to denigrate things they recognise in themselves. And using in that way is, ironically, the easisest way to make yourself sound as borgeois as all hell. It's like making yourself sound like a hipster by whining about hipsters...

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Yeah, it's an awfully white middle class thing to do isn't it...

no, because he's another person who pretends to be vaguely left-wing about events further afield, and then, when social uprising happens in his back yard, suddenly it's all wanton theft and destruction, and he sounds like a (more sheepish) Daily Mail columnist. Uprising has been portrayed the same throughout history by those close to them (as apolitical, 'looting', whatever), from the French Revolution to the Rodney King events - it's fucking boring and stupid.

No-one's offering a "blanket exculpation", anyway. That's a straw man created by the right wing press to excuse the usual left-bashing/'bleeding heart' bullshit. Rather, the sane thinking is that the riots (or whatever you want to call them) had obvious causes, in a society run by consumerism and featuring massive inequalities and close to no meritocratic features. The financiers are the people who got a 'blanket exculpation', if anyone, no? As far as i recall, none of them went to jail.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/14/charlie-brooker-prevent-more-riots Sorry, these are the writings of an apolitical fool. Put rioters in the stocks! Oh, ha ha, Charlie, you're so funny! He reminds me very directly of people I hate. Read this against Russell Brand (who I didn't like before, so had nothing invested in him) and it's embarrassing. Brooker is scared to come out from behind his irony and say anything of interest. Massive fail.

Re bourgeois - maybe it's overused, but it's a very useful term. Whining about hipsters makes you sound like a hipster - that's absurd! It may sounds neat, but it's a non-argument.... So complaining about fascists makes you...a fascist?

I refer you to Bunuel and the best film title of all: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Mr. Tea said:

What, because he isn't prepared to offer a blanket exculpation to rioters who destroyed people's homes and livelihoods and put lives at risk? I admit his rhetoric was a bit OTT in that article but he made some pretty valid points, I thought. Or is there other stuff he's written that you're talking about here?

He may not be a card-carrying Marxist but he seems generally left-of-centre and has made a career out of being cynical about government, big business and particularly the media. I think he's OK.

Edit: oh god, the dreaded 'b'-word...I wish people would stop using the word 'borgeois'. It's just a word middle-class people apply to other middle-class people as a catch-all perjorative, usually to denigrate things they recognise in themselves. And using in that way is, ironically, the easisest way to make yourself sound as borgeois as all hell. It's like making yourself sound like a hipster by whining about hipsters...

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