Occasionally, I feel the need to post, but don’t feel the need to produce something original for the site. Thus a segment I like to call “Those Crazy Internets!” where I troll the Internets for other things that I didn’t create and talk about them here, on my own website. Cool idea, huh?
Today’s subject for consideration is a commercial, produced for the web and not for television, for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 web browser software. The ad promotes a feature in IE8 that lets you hide your browsing history, presumably from anyone else who might be using that particular computer. I understand and wholly agree with our distinctly American concept of a right to privacy, but frankly I can’t think of any other reason to use this feature than to hide your sick tastes from your family and coworkers. Fair enough, I guess. The ad features a wife and husband sitting at the kitchen table, the husband casually surfing the web on his laptop. The wife asks to use his laptop, he happily gives it to her, she sees what he’s been browsing and finds it so repellent that she loses her lunch (or breakfast?) right then and there. Hilarity ensues.
Problem is, Microsoft got a little queasy (that’s right, I went there) about the ad themselves and pulled the ad. It’s still available on YouTube, which I will provide a link to within the next few words, after I WARN YOU BEFOREHAND that you may find this ad ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING and IN EXTREMELY POOR TASTE. Okay, here it is…
I can’t decide if I think this ad is pure evil or absolutely brilliant. Maybe it’s both?
The ad openly acknowledges the shadiness its software promotes, and for that I respect it. It’s no surprise that they pulled the ad; I’m actually impressed someone gave it the “OK” in the first place. Kudos for pushing the envelope, ad people.
My biggest complaint is about the puking, but it’s based more on comedic preference than on any true sense of disgust. I happen to think that American humor relies way too much these days on bodily fluids.
But otherwise, I think this is a pretty funny ad. My favorite part is how the husband so casually sates his perverse desires while his wife is sitting right next to him. And he has no problem handing the laptop right over to her without closing the website. I also like how they try to insert OMGIGP into the web lexicon. I hate internet slang, but I may start using that one.
IE8 apparently provides a great feature for kids and young adults, since their parents will have absolutely no way to spy on them (forcing them to actually talk to their children to find out what they’re into). Although, now that I think about it, most kids already know how to run circles around their parents when it comes to computers, so maybe it’s not that big of a score for them.
Again, I just can’t believe someone thought they could get away with this. In a way, they succeeded. Even though they had to pull the ad from their own site, it’s still on YouTube and generating a buzz. And how else do you advertise a browsing feature whose sole purpose is to hide its user’s shame?
Oh yeah… and Superman is in it. Nice touch.
But I’m still using Firefox.
-Luke-
