Enter the pet peeve thread

[Jesusabdullah]

I sometimes wish I was happy and stupid too. The more you know, the more irritating things are.

Why don't you just take soma? One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments, which is certainly more than one.

Edit: Me paraphrasing Brave New World is soon gonna be a pet peeve of yours, you just wait.

[McDuffies]

I am annoyed on daily basis by advertising mentality. The one that thinks that you can make up for all flaws of a product by advertising the hell of it. The one that thinks that no publicity is bad publicity.

My pet peeve is that they're right. Terrifying indeed.

To some extent maybe. But there's a line after wich it doesn't make any sence anymore. Either people are being put off, or, more often, they don't even remember the name of the product, just the controverse.
But the attitude remains because it's a good crutch. As long as our commercials are loud and shocking, we don't have to bother making them good. Just have two young people half-naked or something and you've done the job.

[Garneta]

If I find the ad to be crappy, I'll stop buying their product for a while, like the fake Japanese Jimmy Johns ads. And in the case of Skittles and their old man milk, I'll never buy their product again.

Ditto on that. Bad commercials are also why I'll never eat at Hardees again either.

[Dr Legostar]

If I find the ad to be crappy, I'll stop buying their product for a while, like the fake Japanese Jimmy Johns ads. And in the case of Skittles and their old man milk, I'll never buy their product again.

Ditto on that. Bad commercials are also why I'll never eat at Hardees again either.

see i loved those commercials, cause they all came across as "hardees? they suck. wait? they have bigger burgers now? oh, cool, i'll eat there now, cause bigger means the taste improved."

that's just plain hilarious.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

If I find the ad to be crappy, I'll stop buying their product for a while, like the fake Japanese Jimmy Johns ads. And in the case of Skittles and their old man milk, I'll never buy their product again.

Ditto on that. Bad commercials are also why I'll never eat at Hardees again either.

see i loved those commercials, cause they all came across as "hardees? they suck. wait? they have bigger burgers now? oh, cool, i'll eat there now, cause bigger means the taste improved."

that's just plain hilarious.

I thought those ones were funny (didn't convince me to go there). The ones I don't like are the ones where they resort to using sex, like the paris hilton one and some other recent one that was also banned. They should spend more money on making their hamburgers not suck.

[Dr Legostar]

Ditto on that. Bad commercials are also why I'll never eat at Hardees again either.

see i loved those commercials, cause they all came across as "hardees? they suck. wait? they have bigger burgers now? oh, cool, i'll eat there now, cause bigger means the taste improved."

that's just plain hilarious.

I thought those ones were funny (didn't convince me to go there). The ones I don't like are the ones where they resort to using sex, like the paris hilton one and some other recent one that was also banned. They should spend more money on making their hamburgers not suck.

it's just another in the long list of disgusting things paris hilton has put in her mouth.

[Garneta]

Have you noticed the sound they make in the commercials? Every time someone bites into a burger, it sounds like they're crunching on a cockroach.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

Mmm, crunch patties!

[Yeahduff]

I am annoyed on daily basis by advertising mentality. The one that thinks that you can make up for all flaws of a product by advertising the hell of it. The one that thinks that no publicity is bad publicity.

My pet peeve is that they're right. Terrifying indeed.

To some extent maybe. But there's a line after wich it doesn't make any sence anymore. Either people are being put off, or, more often, they don't even remember the name of the product, just the controverse.
But the attitude remains because it's a good crutch. As long as our commercials are loud and shocking, we don't have to bother making them good. Just have two young people half-naked or something and you've done the job.

Sometimes the line is crossed. Like when the studios wanted to put Spider-Man 2 ads on the bases in Major League Baseball games, fans outright rejected that. But the job of marketing is to push buttons and see which one gets the response they're looking for. And we as consumers are often too happy to give it to them.

[Rkolter]

The new Hardees burgers are really pretty tasty. But, for the first few months they actually made them like the commercials show. Now, they're all pre-made and stuff and just aren't up to par.

I was happy to buy their six-dollar burger for $3.95. There was a time that it WAS like a six dollar burger. Now, it's like a two-dollar burger for four bucks.

[Noise Monkey]

for $4, that thing better clean my windshield first!

[NakedElf]

I like the one with the moving beard. The milk one is pretty icky, though.

Our society spends way too much on advertising, and most of it is useless. I mean, if it's a new thing no one's heard of, then advertising is useful. But if it's just trying to convince you to buy Coke instead of Pepsi, on a societal level it's money down the drain.

Well, unfortunately it's not.

See, if Coke stops advertising, and Pepsi continue to advertise, even just to keep it's name in your eyes, maybe not YOU, but on average, people will buy more Pepsi - it's been tested again and again. So Coke has to keep their advertising up, because Pepsi does, and Pepsi has to keep their advertising up, because Coke does.

And the milking an old guy commercial bugged the crap outta me. I liked the fantasy based ones too.

You've misunderstood me.

On a societal level, it doesn't matter if we drink Coke or Pepsi. They're both soda. Economically, it doesn't matter if Pepsi absorbs all of Coke's revenue or they split into 5 different soda companies, the result in terms of production, labor, etc., is the same.

Advertising is valuable to us so long as it tells us something new--'Spandex! Now edible!' Coke and Pepsi competing for hegemony in the soda market does not benefit us. It benefits marketing execs, and produces nothing.

In short, it's money that *could have been spent* on something useful or productive to society, like lowering the price of soda (well, someone would like that,) paying higher labor or raw materials costs, development, research, charity, etc. Instead, it's spent on making sure you buy the 'right' soda.

[Rkolter]

A company, as an entity, has one, and only one purpose. To produce value for its shareholders or owners. That's it. Nothing else. If a company found it could produce more value by planting a forest than by spending an equal amount of money in advertising, the world would be covered in forests.

Companies do charitable things only so long as it increases their reputation, which in turn, convinces people to buy their products. If the dollar is better spent putting up a sign, they put up a sign.

Advertising isn't there to be valuable to you. Unless you own stock in that company. Then it's VERY valuable to you, regardless of if it's selling something new or not.

[Noise Monkey]

while we're on the subject, what is the logic behind ads designed to build confidence in a product you already own?

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

Reassurance so that you won't go over to a competitor, who may be making a better version of what you have. I see this all the time in the drum industry.

And sometimes a company can have a bad product run, so ads reassuruing the consumer that the company still cares and isn't sitting around being complacent helps.

[Leperdoctor]

One of my pet peeves (if we're still talking about that), has to do with kids in grocery stores. "Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, MOM MOM MOM..." for about ten minutes, before the parent finally answers, "WHAAAAAT?! I heard you the first time!" It gives me this permanent twitch beneath my eye, because if you hear your child the first time, why does it take five million mentions of your name to acknowledge it?

The other one has to be when parents are paying me at my job (I almost always work at the cash register), but they first give their toddlers money to give to me. Yes, it's adorable, but a high percentage of the time, the toddlers stick their fists right into their mouths afterwards...just to point out, money is gross. After a night of partying, people come to my store and pull money out of the strangest places to pay me...use your imaginations. That's like asking [gross] someone to blow their nose on a tissue and then making their kid eat it. Except the snotty tissue is probably more clean...[/gross]

[Noise Monkey]

I used to sack groceries (something I am eternally thankful I no longer have to do). That's where I learned I hate people who think bathing is optional. When people can smell you long after you've gone, it's time for the old Brillo pad rubdown.

[Garneta]

but they first give their toddlers money to give to me.

I hate this. Not only because of the reasons you mentioned, but because it slows up the line, if there is one. Plus, I never have been too awful fond of kids anyway, and the less time spent around them the better. (Not ALL kids; there have been a couple that I've liked.)

[Rkolter]

but they first give their toddlers money to give to me.

I hate this. Not only because of the reasons you mentioned, but because it slows up the line, if there is one. Plus, I never have been too awful fond of kids anyway, and the less time spent around them the better. (Not ALL kids; there have been a couple that I've liked.)

Wow, the whole toddler and money thing has made me almost queasy. When I did my stint as a cashier, I just thought it was cute. Now, eww...

[NakedElf]

A company, as an entity, has one, and only one purpose. To produce value for its shareholders or owners. That's it. Nothing else. If a company found it could produce more value by planting a forest than by spending an equal amount of money in advertising, the world would be covered in forests.

Companies do charitable things only so long as it increases their reputation, which in turn, convinces people to buy their products. If the dollar is better spent putting up a sign, they put up a sign.

Advertising isn't there to be valuable to you. Unless you own stock in that company. Then it's VERY valuable to you, regardless of if it's selling something new or not.

No offense, but not only is this very DUH, it's also completely irrelevant to what I'd said (and thus I don't really see its value as a response.) All of my points were about the value of advertising to us on a societal, economic level. Obviously companies are going to do what's in their (perceived) best interests. But the best interests of individual companies != the best interests of society as a whole.

Pet Peeve: when people make responses to my posts which ignore the entire point of my post.