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Words to live with
Apr. 30th, 2009 11:45 pmSpam knows what we really want. I mean, not me personally, but we as a society. Mine's finally given up on bank scams, and now mostly tries to sell me a degree or an "elevated bed experience". It seems to come in waves, and changes like the tides -- and is apparently now responding to the news. A day after the swine flu paranoia started, I started to get the subject line "Absolutely effective respiratory pathogens treatment".
Advertising of all sorts does this, really. It appeals to the desires we don't want to admit we have: the shameful, base, lazy and cowardly and shy. There's an instant food company here called 'Batchelors'. I thought it was a little blatant, but never gave it much thought until a box of powdered "soup" packets appeared in our cupboard. How they got there is a mystery in itself, since my housemates are vegan and they are not. In any case, they were named 'Slim a Soup', to indicate their capacity to effect self-improvement. The powder they contained promised to materialise into "chicken noodle & vegetable", a stereotypical comfort food. The more interesting promise was in what appeared to be their slogan: "a great big hug in a mug" -- thus replacing not just the cookery of the prototypical wife, but the wife herself.
At least a wife is something generally considered desirable, though. Today I was shocked to find a crisp packet proudly proclaiming the environmental destruction (probably) wreaked by the farming of its contents: "This particular type of Cassava Root has been sourced from a unique 1,000 acre plantation in the volcanic highlands of Java." Yaaaay monocultures in a sensitive ecosystem!
Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that almost all of our food comes from environmentally destructive monoculture. But it's one thing to know it, and another to print it on the back of your packaging as a selling point. Not to mention reminding your customers that your product travelled half the world to get to them, while trying to promote it as an alternative to normal, potato-based crisps (which can be grown and processed entirely within the UK, even if they aren't always). Apparently this adds to the perception that they are "healthier". Uh-huh. You can read the rest of their self-congratulatory wanking here.
Advertising of all sorts does this, really. It appeals to the desires we don't want to admit we have: the shameful, base, lazy and cowardly and shy. There's an instant food company here called 'Batchelors'. I thought it was a little blatant, but never gave it much thought until a box of powdered "soup" packets appeared in our cupboard. How they got there is a mystery in itself, since my housemates are vegan and they are not. In any case, they were named 'Slim a Soup', to indicate their capacity to effect self-improvement. The powder they contained promised to materialise into "chicken noodle & vegetable", a stereotypical comfort food. The more interesting promise was in what appeared to be their slogan: "a great big hug in a mug" -- thus replacing not just the cookery of the prototypical wife, but the wife herself.
At least a wife is something generally considered desirable, though. Today I was shocked to find a crisp packet proudly proclaiming the environmental destruction (probably) wreaked by the farming of its contents: "This particular type of Cassava Root has been sourced from a unique 1,000 acre plantation in the volcanic highlands of Java." Yaaaay monocultures in a sensitive ecosystem!
Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that almost all of our food comes from environmentally destructive monoculture. But it's one thing to know it, and another to print it on the back of your packaging as a selling point. Not to mention reminding your customers that your product travelled half the world to get to them, while trying to promote it as an alternative to normal, potato-based crisps (which can be grown and processed entirely within the UK, even if they aren't always). Apparently this adds to the perception that they are "healthier". Uh-huh. You can read the rest of their self-congratulatory wanking here.
