I suppose that the reason this married couple bickers as if they are children is some sort of play on the idea of “child-like wonderment” that is supposed to go along with this product. After all, TV’s have been pushing these new enhanced TV sets to us for awhile. I’m not an extremely social person, I admit, but I’ve yet to meet someone who has praised or desperately wanted one of these TV’s. It just seems like a set of extra features that my phone has already been able to do for three years, and most of us are more comfortable using that then a TV remote at this point.

The reason it irks me? Because it continues this push towards the inhumanity of everything. Every day the world is getting bigger, but your personal world is getting smaller. People stay in contact more with people who are a distance from them, and this seems like some sort of nightmare endgame for the scenario: we can’t even fucking talk to each other like normal human beings when we’re in the same room.

Finally, what kind of self-respecting man lets his wife push him around like this? You apologize and attempt to move on, not apologize and then apologize eight more times, and then play a song that says “it’s hard for me to say I’m sorry” when apparently it is really easy since you can’t stop doing it. Advertisers love to play on helplessness. I don’t want to psychoanalyze two people that I, frankly, hate already based on their passive-aggressive antics, but nobody should have a hold on you like this woman does to this man.

I’ve had quite a few girlfriends in my time — if any of them had changed their Facebook status to single (and I’m taking the leap that this matters as much as it apparently does to this man in the time period I was in), it would end with them apologizing to me, not the other way around. Honestly, it would probably be the end of the whole relationship. Yet this man just takes it like a complete and utter chump. Actually, an unironic status update that talked about how spicy those tacos last night were would probably be enough to drive me away. I’m picky like that.

I guess my problem with the product comes down to the fact that TV’s aren’t portable. You offer me no new utilization of anything by putting all the things “I love” in a product that I can’t move. I already have that: it’s called a desktop computer. I can even play TV on it if I want to wire it that way. Claiming that this is some sort of breakthrough (“The Wonder of Samsung!”) strikes me as spurious — all you’ve done is invented a commercial that sells unneeded TV services to people who would probably be better investing their money on therapy than smart TV’s.

Maybe then they’d actually be able to talk to each other.

This ad was conceived when a ConocoPhillips executive shouted forcefully at a director that had already delivered two not-good-enough ads: “Why can’t you make cute college girls understand that gas is good?” To which the director complained that this just wasn’t possible in a 30-second ad. The resulting commercial takes place after that director was fired, along with any spare plausibility that might have been hanging around in the corners of the ConocoPhillips office.

We can tell that this executive hasn’t been in college for the past thirty years, because if he had he would know that most college students don’t have their ideals morphed by a ten-second conversation with their peers. Where is the class? Why is this teacher still standing around awkwardly instead of telling them to get the hell out of his classroom?

Then we get to the actual message of the ad itself, which seems to boil down to the phrases “100 years,” “actually it’s cleaner,” and “it provides jobs.” 100 years really isn’t much in the long run, but I’m guessing it was used since it sounds big. I almost definitely won’t survive 100 more years. Environmentalists like the young lady in this commercial tend to take a longer-term look on things though, so 100 years probably shouldn’t mean much to her. The claim that it’s cleaner just reeks of dubiousness. I don’t know if it is true or false, mainly because they don’t pay me to research how clean gas is, but given that it was a big enough deal that they needed to make an advertisement claiming that it is, I would tend to lean towards false. Where’s the proof on that statement?

More importantly, the jobs statement is just hilarious. If an environmentalist isn’t going to be swayed by an appeal to length, she almost certainly isn’t going to be swayed by the fact that there will be more people employed by said corporation that is doing evil. Try to imagine the mental breakthrough that the commercial creator wants her to have. “Oh man, jobs! That means me and my friends can actually eat tonight! If only I get lucky enough to have one!” Jobs are apparently now just as much of a scare tactic as terrorism. The ending phrase of “I might get a job once we graduate!” only furthers that sentiment. ConocoPhillips: Let us keep digging up natural gas or you’ll have no jobs!

Speaking of: what is the deal with these floating words? “CENTURY,” “ENERGY,” “ECONOMY,” and “ENVIRON” — I assume that is supposed to say environment, but it is (likely) as off-screen as the actual environment is to a for-profit corporation. Are these name tags? Can I create my own? Because if I had one while watching this commercial, it would say “BULLSHIT.”

Finally, this:

“I know, I know, you were just being brainwashed by your fellow hippies. Let me deliver the smuggest knowing nod I can for you.”

Auto Insurance? Are you fucking shitting me? Look namby boy, I know you’re on a roof and I’m sure that makes you feel like a real man, but if the commercial hadn’t cut you off from the torso down, we’d all see the little elastic bands that you requested to keep you from falling and knocking your training bra out of place.

Real men don’t need auto insurance, because real men CAUSE accidents, they don’t get into them. Bareback that shit just like I did with your wives and significant others last night. I once wrecked Terry Bradshaw’s Thunderbird on purpose, to get him back for interrupting me in the middle of too many of my points. Why did you think he became a stuttering wreck? Why did you think Pro Football Talk reported he was dead? He’s just lucky I like watching his bald ass squirm.

Now this is more fucking like it. You see this, roofer pussies? This is how you drive a fucking automobile. If you can’t drive blindfolded, then how the fuck are you supposed to defend our planet from the terrible shit you see on TV these days? You think Luke would’ve been able to go on and kill Darth Vader if he didn’t practice blindfolded? Fuck no he wouldn’t have. You think I was able to go on Mad TV without driving blindfolded a few times? Of course not, you faggot. Have you ever seen the fucking Swan Lady without makeup? Good fucking god.

Unfortunately it’s not all good things for you Enterprise. First of all, you shouldn’t even exist because, as I pointed out earlier, real men do not cause accidents. Your company’s existence is based on a set of circumstances that means that the majority of your dealings are with cuckolded husbands that I let Jimmy Johnson sodomize last night. How about if you just go ahead and dissolve your piece of shit company and give all the money to a real American company, like General Motors. We can use it to pay me more money and make sure you see me five times a break instead of two. I’m just looking out for fucking America. If there’s one thing it needs, its less of you little vaginas wrecking your Subaru’s and then driving around in a fucking hoss like the Silverado and not appreciating it.

Techno twins huh? You know what your first fucking mistake was, besides that fucking mushroom haircut? Spending your AMERICAN DOLLARS in EUROPE. The only reason to go to Europe is so that Hanz and Franz there can show you their little sex clubs and make you wear a black leather thong while you try to repress that “Getting Jiggy With It” is playing in the background that time when I was sixteen.

No, real men go to American attractions like the goddamn Space Needle. Too big for you, Beavis? How about the motherfucking Statue of Liberty? How about anywhere besides your communal dorm room shower at eleven-thirty because you’re scared of getting towel-slapped or dropping the soap? Hell, how about you drive to your local Chevy Dealership and we write you some financing that grows your balls 4 inches wider? You’ve got no one but yourself to blame for this one, get your ass back to a real country and there might be hope for it yet. Maybe I’ll let you watch me plow all your sororities while you take notes.

Okay, first of all, learn to put your fucking videos on the internet you limp-dicked Home Improvement wannabes. Secondly, why in the hell are you so damn afraid of admitting you bought a goddamn lamp at lunch? You’re a woman! That is basically your only purpose in life! Accepting my seed, and buying stupid frilly shit that the Eurofag up there would probably love and trying to emasculate me with it. Then, I rape you in the parking lot, break it and tell you I’m going out to the strip club, and the process starts all over again.

Thirdly, Lowes, you carry yourself a little too fucking high. You think anyone is going to take off their 9-5 job and go visit you at motherfucking lunch? Any real American is busy test-driving the Avalanche and bulldozing warehouses with it’s enormous grill. It’s a little like Grand Theft Auto, except that cops know better than to try to fuck with a V8 that also has it’s own camera in the rear. Can’t shoot my shit out when I’ve deployed my optional James Bond tacks and send you spinning out of control, and that is without even getting into how the three piece cover cargo is BULLETPROOF. 99% of the increase in crime is because of the fact that nobody can fuck with the Avalanche.

Oh, I guess there should be some basketball on this network too. You’re looking for that, right? Pansy. Football is the only real sport in America. I excommunicated my son when he started “pitching” for a “baseball team”. The fuck is that all about? He might as well have just came out of the closet instead of trying to hide it in a sport that you don’t even need steroids to be good at.

Yeah you would be rooting for Syracuse, sissy boy. Real men don’t even pick higher seeds in their brackets. I’m gonna go repossess your HDTV. You don’t need that shit, you need a fucking TRUCK.

There aren’t many things in the world that bother me these days, but one of them is the constant advertising creep that envelops the internet and society in general. I often wrestle with the question of how far this can go before the ends stop justifying the means. While I’m not sure how far it goes in society at large, I’m positive that Mike Florio’s constant shilling for Sprint on his premiere rumor-mongering site, Pro Football Talk, is offensive to the senses.

It’s not just that he has an advertiser, there are ways to have an advertiser and at least be light-hearted with it. Bill Simmons, a frequent target of my criticism (not in print yet, but trust me) has handled Subway sponsoring his podcasts by playing up their product with a self-aware praise (and thus funny) of the product that is so over the top that you’d think he was Joe Buck and Subway was David Eckstein. It’s the way that Florio just attaches his mouth to Sprint’s antenna and slobbers on it for dear life. Gobbles for every last customer. You tell Florio how high to jump and he’ll do it, especially because Sprint gets reception that far up!

Look, I’m not a take down artist for other columnists, thus the pieces cheesy sub-title. There are many things about Florio’s writing and style that bug me, especially the constant nicknames for players (I did this when I was in 10th grade) and the way he comes off as a big subjective dick about any player who happens to get arrested. That said, he runs a great site. Not a site that I would put in my RSS feed because it posts a bit too much and because of the things I’ve already been over, but nonetheless a very informative and involved blog.

But, the Sprint thing bothers me a lot. To go back to Simmons, he talks about how he won’t be surprised if in 2012 we have the Chevrolet NBA Finals. Where does this stop? I don’t know that it does. We already have the Subway Simmons Podcast and Pro Football Talk brought to you by Sprint Mobile. What’s next, Gregg Rosenthal’s Pancake Blocks sponsored by IHOP? (Gregg will never read this, but if he does and this happens, I demand a cut.) As long as advertisers keep following the eyes, I think we’re destined to have “______ blog brought to you by _______”.

However, just because you run a blog and have a sponsor does NOT mean you have to be a complete shill for them. Passionate sports fans and advertising overkill have met several times over the past few years: This Is Our Country, FrankTV, and Saved By Zero are perhaps the best examples of products that have been shoved down our throats so many times that there isn’t a chance in hell of us thinking of the parent company without adding on “…those annoying sons of bitches” in our heads. Florio and Sprint are arguably worse than that: they’re breaking the fourth wall, if you will. It’s one thing to have ads, for those ads to make arguments, and for us to then decide. It’s another completely to sponsor someones website and then put them on the company payroll to shill out for their services in the guise of an actual blog post. Without getting off on a total tangent here, advertising agencies need to learn that “creative marketing” like this ultimately does more harm than good. Fans, exempting Super Bowl wives who are watching because everyone said they should, only tolerate ads. Stepping outside of boundaries you’ve already pushed to the limit by sponsoring every damn stat shot that gets put up on the screen is something that ultimately creates more ill will than new customers.

As for Florio, I hope you weren’t planning on clicking any of those links of the proof of his Sprint work, as his website crashed under the pressure of a trillion page views of people trying to figure out which uniform Albert Haynesworth would be stomping opposing linemen on the ground in next year. So he’ll be running off of NBCSports for a little bit. To end with a glib judgmental remark like Florio would, perhaps he should have tried to get a server company to sponsor him.