The Ford F-150 is a huge serving of Cope

 

As I've always suspected, the vast majority of these trucks are not being used for any of the purposes shown in the ads.  Almost NOBODY is using these trucks to haul tools and bags of 'Merican Stuff, tow, or crash through sand dunes and forests for "fun."  Instead, they are being used to haul groceries home from Costco and children to and from soccer practice; in other words, they are just SUVs designed to look like those vehicles blue-collar people used to own for work. 

For some reason, people living in suburbs want to project an image of rugged individualism and adventure.  They want their neighbors to think that they have hobbies that require the hauling of tools and materials and enjoy the Great Outdoors and need a $70,000 truck to Just Live Their Lives, so they need a truck with an average monthly payment of $700* over the course of 72 months and can afford the inflated maintenance and insurance that comes along with these ridiculous ornaments to conspicuous consumption.  An SUV might convince the guy across the street that you have money, but it won't sell him on the idea that an actual virile American Man lives in your house.   You need a truck for that, even if you never use it for any of the tasks you saw in the commercial because after all, it looks like that stuff creates dents and scratches and those don't show well either even though they would be evidence that you actually use your truck to do all that rugged and fun stuff.  See the problem here?

Back in the 1960s, a lot of young people gave societal expectations the middle finger by purchasing Volkswagen Bugs and Vans- cheap, ugly vessels that got them from Point A to Point B and told the world that their owners weren't buying in to Consumerism.  I think that the current version of Minimalism is people who ride bikes** to work or drive beaters (I own a 2-door 2011 Honda Civic.)  But YouTube is overflowing with horror stories of mostly young people being buried by car payments (at high interest rates) because they signed up for new cars that cost more than my entire college career with monthly notes higher than my rent.  All to show well for their neighbors and friends.  It's scary and dumb and more than a little entertaining (sorry) but it shows how desperate so many people are to project Economic Success while sabotaging their ability to attain it. 

*Trucks are the most popular Lease vehicles in the United States.  You think anyone is going to lease a truck and then plow it through the forest or toss anything heavier than a case of Diet Coke in the back of it?  Yeah, sure Jan.

**I'm referring to the people who ride bikes that DON'T cost $5k.  People who spend more for their bikes than I spent for my Civic are just flexing in a different way. 

Coors Light and Wedding Ceremonies; what could go wrong?

 

So maybe the bride and groom wouldn't really appreciate the ceremony being interrupted by two members of the wedding party suddenly handing out cans of beer, no matter how much the gesture was appreciated by the guests who decided not to wear hats or use umbrellas despite the fact that this particular event is taking place under a blazing sun and it's heavily implied that it is very very hot out.  Maybe they'd rather NOT have the exchange of vows interrupted by the spray of shaken beer or have their moment (or, to be more honest, HER moment) contest for attention by the guzzling of watered-down beer.

Maybe if the bride and groom wanted the guests drinking beer during the ceremony, they would have planned a much more laid-back event including a touch football game afterwards, as one of my older brothers almost fifty years ago.  They wouldn't have set up this cliche'd nonsense outdoors in a place with no shade in the middle of the summer with guests wearing full suits and dresses desperate for the whole painful thing to just Be Over Already.

But I don't know if this is worse than most of the other TV Commercial Weddings I've seen in the past few years, with everyone on their iPhones instead of paying attention to the two people ruining a perfectly lovely afternoon for dozens of people who would rather be doing pretty much anything than watching them pledge to temporarily live together and file jointly.

This Pizza Hut Campaign Launch is even worse than most

 

So I'm guessing that this clown, chosen after weeks or even months of screen tests with thousands of aspiring "actors" in the LA area, will be featured in a series of ads for very cheap-yet-overpriced carbohydrates in which he offers boxes of grease to random strangers just trying to live their lives.  Like the two guys playing basketball in this ad; who asked this obnoxious jerk to interrupt their exercise with blood-sugar spiking, inflammatory crap?

I know Pizza Hut won't listen to this, but I'm going to say it anyway:  Sometimes a stumble is a good reason to stop and rethink your journey.  This is very dumb and very pointless and your pizza is not worth eating and hopefully nobody who engages in regular exercise would sabotage their efforts at good health by consuming warmed-over poison-in-a-red-and-white-box just because a creep they don't know offered to to them off the street.  I don't want to knock anyone's hustle, but this is bad even for you.  

1st Advantage is to borrow from Peter to pay Paul

 

Gee, I can't imagine how this woman built up a big credit card balance- she seems to spend her money very sensibly, and really seems to be living within her means.  

In all seriousness, though- she took out a debt consolidation loan to pay off her credit cards, and now she's off doing this indoor skydiving thing, which according to a quick Google search generally runs between $50 and $80 for two one-minute sessions.  In other words, she went right back to being stupid with money.  Her VISA card had a zero balance from the time it took her to complete the debt consolidation loan to the time she could book two minutes of indoor skydiving which she calls "more important things" than the interest rate on her credit card which she is back to using. 

I understand that there's a certain personality that is on some level "addicted" to debt.  These are people who can't bear to have zero or low debt and who respond to diminishing totals on the credit card statements with impulse buying.  Paying down debt is such an established part of their routine that they feel kind of lost when there's no balance to stress over.  Maybe this woman is one of that type.  Or maybe she's like 99 percent of people with high credit card balances and is just incapable of managing her credit like a rational adult, or like 100 percent of people in debt consolidation commercials who act as if they won the lottery when they take out a loan to pay off another loan.  Either way, this is both stupid and weird. 

A few questions for State Farm after viewing one of it's moronic Batman/Bateman Commercials

 

1.  So someone in Corporate really thought Batman/Bateman was clever enough to be turned into a series of ads, huh?  Well, after the results of last November I guess I can't blame them- we are an exceptionally stupid country that likes to breathe out of its mouth, so....

2.  Glad to see Jake from State Farm doing anything that isn't stalking Pat Mahomes, I guess.  I have no idea why he's actually in this ad- he has nothing to do in it- but come to think of it, he has nothing to do in any of these ads except give us that smarmy smirk and not sell insurance.

3.  Who in State Farm thought that it would be a good idea to reference what is not only universally considered the worst Batman film of all time but acknowledged as perhaps the worst SUPERHERO movie of all time and one of the Worst Movies of All Time PERIOD?  Nobody in their right mind wants to be reminded of The One With Poison Ivy.   Is this about making us miss Pat Mahomes, or what?

Who are you going reference next, State Farm?  Howard the Duck?  

Audi's Four Rings of Despair "Legacy"

 

These are among the most expensive LookAtMeMobiles on the market, despite having terrible ratings when it comes to regular upkeep.  There's a reason why they are such popular lease vehicles; you can generally expect 2-3 years of problem-free driving before the thing starts to fall out from under you and becomes more intimate with your local repair shop than with the driveway you liked to show it off from. 

Basically, Audi presents a legacy of gaudy cars and gaudier ads littered with buzzphrases like "state of the art technology" and, most hilariously, "quattro all-wheel drive" ("quattro" means "four." You're telling us that this car has four-wheel drive.  "Quattro all-wheel" is just cringey redundancy on a whole new scale.  What else does it have?  Post-Viewing Rear-view mirrors?  Locking Security Doors?  Global Positioning GPS Location Finder View Screens?)

And of course the comment section is filled with comments like "this commercial made me cry" and "best commercial ever" and "I can't wait to sign up for seven years of payments of $1500 a month for the next Audi," etc.  Because bots are a thing and people are really, really dumb.  Dumb enough to buy Audis, even.  

Crowning the King of Depreciation Nation

 

I love reading the comments on this piece of garbage, even though I assume that 90 percent of them are from bots or paid endorsers making a nickel a post.  Of all the SUVs out there, none depreciate in value faster than the Rav 4, and the only way I can think of making this a bigger money pit is by producing a Hybrid Plug-In Model.  

Ok, maybe if it was a straight EV it might be worse.  Either way, you had BETTER like your Toyota RAV 4 because there was a reason the dealership pops champaign whenever one drives off the lot; these things are ridiculously overpriced credit busters that will leave you underwater faster than Jack Dawson after dropping Rose on top of that raft.  Here's a tip:  If you really like these things (and there's no accounting for taste, after all,) lease it and keep the mileage low enough to trade in without penalty when the term expires.  That will give you three years  to develop some sense and maybe even some of that taste I just said there's no accounting for.  I mean, come on- these SUVs are not only marked up to the freaking moon, they are ugly as hell.  It's not a Subaru Solterra- it costs more- and it's not a Nissan Cube (nothing is more painful on the eyes than a car that says "aerodynamics isn't a thing") but it's still an eyesore capable of dropping property values.  If you get one, at least try to keep peace in the neighborhood and keep it in the garage during daylight hours.