Stupid ads and outright lies!

"Thousands of pixels being chased by festive looking dancers. When they are about to catch up, the marauding pixels fly into a giant screen and arrange themselves to make the colourful face of a Kathakali dancer who makes facial gestures on the giant screen" - the brief for the Sony Bravia commercial couldn't have been very different from this yawn inducing, uninspiring idea meltdown. I hardly have a question about the uncreative nonsense that Indian ad. agencies almost always come up with. But if the brilliant colour of the Bravia TV is clearly visible on my existing TV, why would I want to buy the Bravia?

The latest ad for Timesjobs.com on television tells you you will find a better paying job on their site, and then goes on to explain in great detail, on the same site, how they are not responsible for anything in an "as is" presentation of information! http://www.timesjobs.com/popuphtml/Terms.htm#link14 In other words, there is absolutely no effort put forward by Timesjobs.com to ensure the jobs there are indeed the better paying jobs. Stretch that a little, and you will easily infer you could get the lowest paying job and Timesjobs.com will still not be responsible for their own advertisement in any way. How can a service that shouts - "Because you are worth more" completely absolve itself of that claim, after "better paying job" is the the only reason for you to consider their service? Absolutely nefarious.

This advertisement sells you an alternative to an employment agency, without any of the responsibilities you would come to expect. It is just a cheap reference, where the attempt is to cut out the percentage commissions of the employment agency and nothing more. Therefore it is an outright lie that you will find "better paying jobs" there. With subjective claims like "The tastiest Sambar in the world", you can let it go, but when there is something measurable like a person's salary, how can the media planners of Timesjobs.com be so stupid and assuming of people who end up visiting their site? Clearly they can, and I hope the recession causes some of these fools to be kicked out.

By now, even if you are a fairly occasional TV watcher, you must have seen the enormous disclaimers at the end of some ads. that flash for about a second, which nobody in the world can read, for two reasons - the print is too small, and there is just too much to read in one second. So, what is the point of showing the disclaimer at all, especially when everyone in their right mind should know the disclaimer is for dissing all claims made so far by the advertisement that a normal person can understand and trust.

Communication, the very point of advertising, is sometimes lost on me. Especially with car advertisements where the car flies through the air, skids all over the road, spins, and just about manages to find a grip of safety before vanishing into the horizon. I would think a car that throws itself about so easily would be the most unsafe thing to buy and the most unsound investment. Especially if the car is tiny like a Swift, I'd go all out singing its praise on how roomy it is and how solid on the road it can be. If it is all over the place, I kind of begin to feel it is flimsy and untrustworthy. Am I the only one who has this problem?

The ridiculous advertisement also has its place somewhere, except when you begin to wonder why a motorcyclist would hire a helicopter to throw him from several hundred feet high onto the top of a building. Motorcycles are not aircraft, and if you landed on the top of a building in one, and survived the fall, you'd pretty much have nowhere to go. Now if the building itself was your destination, what do you need the motorcycle for? Stupidity at its bleeding worst.

Then comes the sexuality crutch. Why would you think of sex when you are drinking a bottle of Slice, for heavens' sake? Aamsutra, my flaming arse! When I am thirsty I might reach for some Slice, and if I love mangoes, great! But sex is not something I associate with a fruit drink, no matter how much Katrina Kaif seems to be turned on by the thought of humping a mango or a Slice drinker. Jittu Krishnamurthy was right when he said, "In lieu of creativity there is sexuality". Most of the time, sexuality is what seems to be easily on tap for most of our ad. makers, and they don't even bat an eyelid about what the product is! If the fools working in advertising agencies are so bereft of ideas, why don't they just quit? Maybe we should make a Kaam Sutra ad. for them to get the hint? "Make way, not ads."

The attempt at the abstract - this is the genre that gets me really laughing. Like the ad. for the Tata Safari Dicor, that starts of about "lines", and how you can make your own "lines" with the ugly beast called the Tata Safari! What an idea, Sirji! How many customers actually think about buying a car as the same as buying a paintbrush to make lines with?! If I wanted to make lines, I'd find a thousand different ways without having to buy an SUV. Give me a f$#@%ing break. The abstract should be left to geniuses who can present some weird connection in a sane way, not to half drunk dopey eyed wanna be rebels turned washout creatives.

There aren't that many professions in which anything goes! Most of our India centric ads. are all about filling up the airwaves with noise. Speaking of noise, why does the volume jump up as soon as it is time for an advertisement? Right in the middle of a cricket match, which itself is fairly well controlled in terms of noise during a broadcast, the ad. will just blare its way into your life. My hand is invariably on the Mute button as soon as it is time for a commercial. So, I get to watch most ads. without sound anyway. No TRP machine will report this fact, and some advertiser somewhere is losing money and not getting value!

"See what happens when a CD begins to dream"??? Since when did inanimate objects start dreaming and we found out what they dreamt about? This offering is from Moser Baer, with ugly black wires morphing out of nowhere and hitting the roof, the floor, the model's hands, and what not, before becoming all kinds of electronic goods - simply unimaginative, uncommunicative rubbish presented with the finesse of a snake devouring a rat. I wonder how this gets past the brainstorming stage - assuming there are actually coherent stages to the process of unleashing a commercial on unsuspecting masses. Scarily, this commercial is a computer graphics lift from a science fiction movie. Maybe that is why we are asked to imagine what happens when a CD begin to dream? I'd like to see what miracles happen when our ad executives begin to think.

The Axe deodorant commercials seemed to be rather well put together until they came up with the latest one with the chocolate flavoured temptations. Apparently, only women fall for the smell of chocolate and will stick themselves to glass in pure longing, even when they cannot smell the spray! How retarded can things get? If a deodorant smelt anything like chocolate or reminded me of something to eat, I'd be completely turned off. Watch this product vanish off the shelves for being absolutely idiotic in conception, ad or no ad.

The stupid, stressed out woman who thinks her husband is dead when she finds him snoozing and is shocked when he wakes up, leads me to think she was hoping he was dead! After all, presumably, she would be the beneficiary of her husband's life insurance policy! Knowing fully well that "Life Insurance" is actually "Death Insurance", they don't really have to tell us how happy we can be just because we bought insurance, do they? I mean seriously, what the heck do we care once we are dead? Sure it must be the hardest thing to sell, but in all seriousness, if you needed Kal Par Control (whatever the crap this means, especially to those of us who cannot read English and end up understanding in Hindi), you'd work to make more money today, not spend a little more on an insurance plan! Moreover, if there is another company selling the same thing, telling you to let tomorrow lie and just enjoy today, what are you supposed to do? Very confusing, and might be better if someone would just tell us, "Look, someone is going to need this money if you croak". After all, how many of us are fooled by insurance ads anyway?

Now we have the very stylish PSAs, like "Save the girl child" that comes to us in the middle of a cricket match on Ten Sports. Hello? It isn't as if we are all about killing the girl child, and it certainly isn't those of us who understands English and can see the point of a poignant message that needs the message. So, what is the point of this PSA as opposed to the crude ones made by the same ministries? The direct ones in Hindi, that treat the viewer like a stupid villager are actually much more effective in communicating the point. Check out the one where the girl child in the womb talks to her father through a stethescope! Then there is the really thought provoking one that asks us to imagine a world without women. I thought about it, honestly and deeply, and really came to this - I'd definitely hate seeing fewer women around, but... Wow, wouldn't that be a good way to control human population?

Remember the Intex commercial, extolling the virtues of their speakers, especially the drop of the pin you can hear clearly while the older gentleman is clearing his ears? Well, if I can hear it on my existing set of speakers, I sure don't have any reason to buy Intex, do I? Am I the only one thinking out loud on this really base level of stupidity exhibited by fools who are paid to precisely not do this kind of work?

Selling Delusion

Sarah Palin, the American Republican vice presidential nominee has proven to be a real dead duck - dumb as a brick, shrill as a whistle, incapable of coherent thought, and absolutely awful at displaying intelligence. It is almost as if intelligence is an extra terrestrial precious metal with this woman. And yet, she has had her impact on this campaign, proving once again that there will always be someone willing to buy into delusion.

It is also the revenge of morons on intelligent people, when they support a candidate who is more "like them" instead of being able to acknowledge there are others who are more capable and definitely better. But for this, delusion has to be bought into, and Sarah Palin is an expert at selling delusion. After being hammered with the simplest of questions in interviews, she went on to criticize the interviewers for being mean, and losing out on opportunities to ask her things she wanted to talk about! The plain and obvious truth is, she doesn't have much to say that is so important, or even coherent.

But the people buying into the delusion couldn't be happier, because it takes effort to acknowledge, discern, recognize and support the more substantial candidates. This kind of candidate is the perfect cheap chocolate that is always going to be sold at a discount.

There is no winning against people who are delusional. That is a hard one for intelligent people to digest. It is a fact that humanity is based on a system where the right to survive and be represented in the collective has nothing to do with intelligence. If the majority of our road users break the rules and make it dangerous for those of us who do follow the rules, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it, except formally complain to equally incompetent and status quo loving nincompoops, who are indeed happy to see things stay the same.

Delusional people are also selectively blind, selectively deaf, and ready to selectively apply value systems to the things they subscribe to. It is a character trait, and it is highly noticeable! The unfailing occasion when this trait screams for attention is when an illusion is being smashed, like a celebrity who turns out to be a little less than the image. The delusional fan has a hard time accepting it not because it would fundamentally change anything, but because the delusion has been fed for too long to kill so ruthlessly!

If you know someone who is delusional, what can you do to help? The best strategy would be for you to insulate yourself from the madness first. A frontal attack on a delusion has virtually no chance - it only helps to strengthen its own defence - you are playing right into the delusion artist's premise - you are attacking the delusion precisely because there is some value to it! This is how people who first subscribed to the round earth theory must have felt when they refused to accept the earth was flat!

When you talk to delusional people, you need only prod a little for intelligence to get a really defensive answer like - "That is not something I am interested in", or a fight-for-personal-rights answer like "Why're you telling me this? I don't need to know!" At this point, you better know your time's up. If you are in an even more persuasive mood, you will get "I don't care. I like it!" Now, it really is time to back off!

The Communist Party of India is now famous for being deliriously delusional. Remember the recent attack on the UPA government that our nation's sovereignty has been compromised and India sold out to American interests and so on? I thought for a while that there was probably no delusion involved, but finally, it didn't take much for me to realize that this was what was at play - simple delusion, and a hard sell to us poor believing Indian public that there was an occasion to celebrate a "black day" when India signed an agreement for nuclear co-operation with the USA. There is not one mention of any real disadvantage to India yet! Good old delusion from that idiot Prakash Karat.

It goes beyond blindly applying our value systems to other people. It isn't as if Karat cannot understand in a cerebral kind of way that India is merely engaging in business with another country. It has to do with being delusional about sticking to who he likes and who he doesn't. Very childish, but true of most politicians, particularly the communists, who shot themselves in the foot by subscribing to a no-money-making lifestyle, and cannot even enjoy the material benefits of an emergent India. They want to keep India in the stone age, and be patrons to a foreign ideology, no matter how unsuitable it is to us!

I dare say people who serve in the armed forces are delusional to some extent, when they take this patriotism stuff a little too seriously. It helps of course, to somehow feel that what you are doing is morally on the higher ground, and "serving the country" somehow has a nice ring to it. The delusion of course is that being in the armed forces is somehow superior to other professions, while the truth is that it is just another job opportunity, with its own unique set of benefits, however deserving those may be. But the delusion has been sold brilliantly down the years - if you are a member of the armed forces, you do get some respect, even if you happen to be the biggest moron simply willing to follow orders. It isn't as if we wouldn't defend ourselves if we didn't have uniforms.

It isn't always fun questioning people's delusions. Sometimes it is amusing to just run with it - observe and laugh. There is plenty of supply and apparently, plenty of demand too!

An ally called Objective Reality

There are four thousand young people who move into the city of Los Angeles on a daily basis, following their dream of becoming successful actors in the cinema industry. Many of them have intense belief - an emotional component that is equally noteworthy amongst youngsters moving to cities like Mumbai and Chennai, following the same dream.

A week away from being slapped in the face by the outcome of the US presidential election, John McCain believes he will win and go on to become the next president. There is a theoretical chance of course, but it is akin to needing 36 runs in the last over of a cricket match - possible, but highly improbable. That's why it has never been achieved. That is objective reality. All knowledge begs us to respect this objective reality, while this pesky thing called "belief" can often step in to reinforce the impossible chance!

Faith and belief are inherently risky things to give any sort of importance to, unless all objective reality and the acknowledgment of such has already been comprehensively thrown out! Belief is that elusive something you will hear from people who succeeded against impossible odds. The truth is, belief played no part, but statistics did. The odds were not beaten, merely reinforced. Those who succeed in these circumstances do so because there already exists a small window of opportunity and they are willing to hang in there hoping to be lucky. It has nothing to do with belief when the chance of being hit by lightning is actually bigger than the chance of winning the biggest lotteries.

The reality is, even the ones who didn't hang around long enough to tell us their stories, those who failed and had to give up, also had belief! Even if they had hung around longer, they would have failed, just because the statistics are stacked against them. Why then, do we promote this nonsense called belief, faith, and so on? Quite simply it is because of our inability to tell someone to base their efforts on mere statistical chance! Faith and belief can give us something to hold on to, however illusionary that may be - to stay positive and run hard while not really acknowledging that sometimes, effort can only go that far, and beyond that, we are as much creatures of chance as we are anything else we might imagine.

In taking stock of an individual's chances of becoming rich, for instance, neither effort nor faith, neither objectivism nor prayer can actually guarantee a favourable result. But those who did take their opportunities and based their judgement on a fundamentally sound direction definitely came out on top. People in the community of successful businesses will put less on faith and more on running hard when they know it is time to accelerate their efforts. This is based on acknowledging the objective realities before them. But asking Tiger Woods to be a standout example of "high performance" that we can all emulate is a bit too much. For a genius breakout success like Tiger Woods to take place, a lot of elements have to naturally find their places together. Vijay Singh probably puts in more effort than Woods, but hasn't seen the same kind of success.

What works in the favour of enterprising people engaged in business ventures is that the onus comes onto them, and on certain market factors which they can still work to their advantage, giving importance to understanding and processing information. There are usually many ways to succeed, unlike actors, for instance, whose success depends on someone else's perceptions at a particular time and a potentially life altering decision that might simply "work out". So, what advice can we sincerely give someone who wants to pursue a chance of being successful in a highly unpredictable line of endeavour? The truthful advice would indeed be "Do your best to prepare for an opportunity that might never come!"

The power of prayer is the one unknown that is yet to be acknowledged as a balance tilter. Coming from someone as competitive and celebrated as Billie Jean King, who said she would have achieved a lot more had she realized the power of prayer earlier on, there has to be some truth to it. There are some parts of this realm outside the purview of knowledge that can be applied to every individual. Hence, it is a challenge to ask people to pray and be serious about it!

The truth is, there is an objective reality that stares down upon us all the time. Some of us acknowledge it and use it to our advantage. Most will perish under its intense glare by ignoring it - it is just too cold to handle for most of us. All suffering is because of a refusal to acknowledge the presence of an objective reality. Knowledge can free us, even while being painful. Faith can destroy us, even while being positive. Stupidity, on the other hand, can be the sweetest, shortest ride to doom. It takes stupidity to use faith instead of knowledge.

In choosing our friends and relationships, it doesn't take much for us to decide what influence is good for us and what can be potentially destructive. And yet, all over human society, we can see some of us stuck in relationships that are purely corrosive, erosive of all good energy, and heading towards, at best, a prolonged state of agony. Yet, we will continue to hear from people their summary dismissal of all objective reality, giving themselves excuses and reasons to maintain status quo just for the comfort of the familiar.

There is no guarantee that we live longer by using the seat belt. But it definitely improves our chance of survival in a collision. It is by observing more and more of reality that we have longer life spans today than we did during the stone age. Humans have not progressed by faith and belief. Every step we have taken forward, we have taken because of someone's worship of knowledge and an embrace of curiosity.

And yet, we pray, consult psychics, perform rituals, give our Gods special places in our inconsistent, inconsequential lives, and put unnecessary pressure on them to perform where we might fail! We wear lucky stones, lucky colours, look for auspicious times to do things and basically do everything in our power to ignore objective reality that tells us simply what we need to do better or more than others to get ahead. Now, the number one cause for us to do this has to be laziness. How convenient if we can blame luck instead of lack of effort or understanding! The second more important cause for us to choose this line of reasoning is fear - fear that we might fail despite our best efforts. Fear and ignorance! The two biggest, least mysterious causes for all human problems. May we live to fight them! And may we celebrate reality for the best friend it is!