Commercials That Annoy, Irritate or Outright Enrage

[callmebetty]

4 minutes ago, LoneHaranguer said:

ITA. I hate that "hashtag" has become another name for a '#' since it can be ambiguous whether someone is talking about a message tag that starts with the hash character (aka "pound sign" among many others) and the character itself. It's clear what this guy is doing, even though it doesn't matter in this context.

Not to get off topic I still say pound sign .  Or even as a number quantity sign.

The kids are brats but some of the commercial is sweet. The younger kids seem to be having a good time . 

[Brattinella]

Of course they are having a good time!  Grandma turned their house into Disneyland.

[Mabinogia]

OMG I have never seen that one. It's TERRIBLE!!!!

I do agree about the love for pound sign.

This just adds to my desire to cancel my cable. Good job Comcast.

[janie jones]

If that quote is from Home Alone 2, then the function isn't that great, because it brings up the first movie when grandpa says that.

Also, that commercial kind of ruins "Home" for me.  Also also, that song doesn't really fit the commercial because "home is wherever I'm with you," meaning that no matter where you are, whether you are or are not on the grid, you're home because you're with the other person.

But I agree that the longer version isn't as bad as the shorter version.

[theatremouse]

3 hours ago, LoneHaranguer said:

ITA. I hate that "hashtag" has become another name for a '#' since it can be ambiguous whether someone is talking about a message tag that starts with the hash character (aka "pound sign" among many others) and the character itself.

It's stupid anyway because the character if anything, in this context, is a hash symbol. The combination of the character and some other phrase is a hash tag. Because you tag a thing with the phrase by prefacing it with the hash. It's almost like people unfamiliar with the term hashtag, and somehow also unfamiliar with the term hash for the symbol heard the phrase "hashtag" and incorrectly inferred that because when people say it outloud they say "hashtag" as well the word or phrase that follows it comprising the tag, that that must be how you pronounce the symbol, rather than simply being indicative "I am not just saying this phrase, I am indicating this phrase is a hashtag". And then somehow the wrong-inferred-from-context usage became standard in a matter of months. I mean, if I'm reading something that says "& pedantic much" I wouldn't say outloud "ampersand pedantic much", I'd say effing AND. So even though now it's a sort of de facto make fun of older people not hip with the social media lingo if they reference an actual hashtag by saying 'pound sign' <whatever the tag was> those people are saying it in a more sensible way, damn it! I wonder if we could revert the trend by just calling them fucking tags, since there are other ways to tag stuff, not just hashtags, and the fucking symbol doesn't really matter unless you're trying to make it explicitly clear you're speaking twitter aloud, or specifically telling someone to use your tag to promote something. Any show or ad that has someone saying "pound sign" has my (metaphorical) high fives all around. Much more sensible.

Also I used to walk 6 miles in the snow.

Also get off my lawn.

[Brattinella]

The telephone company still calls it a pound sign.

[theatremouse]

As they fucking should do. :)

[Moose135]

34 minutes ago, Brattinella said:

The telephone company still calls it a pound sign.

A couple of years ago, to promote some NASCAR social media thing, the race at Pocono was called the "#400" and referred to as the Hashtag 400.  I kept calling it the Pound Sign 400.

[riley702]

10 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

*squints at avatar* Is that really what Frodo's dad looked like?

That's Drogo, a damn gorgeous man on Game of Thrones (even if he is dead, damn it).

[bilgistic]

35 minutes ago, riley702 said:

That's Drogo, a damn gorgeous man on Game of Thrones (even if he is dead, damn it).

Spoiler alert.

[riley702]

Oh, c'mon, he died 5 seasons ago!

[Prevailing Wind]

Pound sign, hash tag.  The Georgia Dept. of Labor has y'all beat. Many years ago, when I was looking for a job & collecting unemployment, you could call in every Sunday to declare that you've been looking for work and they'd send you your check. No lie, the recording said to "enter your social security number, followed by the tic-tac-toe sign."

You can't make this stuff up.

Edited December 2, 2016 by Prevailing Wind

[friendperidot]

thank you for the laugh Prevailing Wind! I guess if people in Georgia are out of work the Dept of Labor must think they are not smart enough for a pound sign!

[Dirtybubble]

15 hours ago, Brattinella said:

Of course they are having a good time!  Grandma turned their house into Disneyland.

See that's my main problem with the commercial.  It's the idea that you have to have all this stuff to have a merry christmas.  My grandma and I did puzzles together to pass the time.  This idea that we need wifi and Netflix to be happy is just sad.  Like I said earlier yeah if you are staying for a week eventually you'll need to check your email and a couple episodes of Stranger Things would be nice but good grief this crazy jubilation over Home Alone is just bizarre.  

[proserpina65]

 

Quote

On ‎11‎/‎21‎/‎2016 at 4:34 PM, Brattinella said:

That is the most ridiculous affectation I have seen a 'celebrity' assume for a long time.

 

It's right up there with wearing a wall clock around your neck.

Hey, Flavor Flav needed to know what time it was!

[random chance]

24 minutes ago, Dirtybubble said:

See that's my main problem with the commercial.  It's the idea that you have to have all this stuff to have a merry christmas.  My grandma and I did puzzles together to pass the time.  This idea that we need wifi and Netflix to be happy is just sad.  Like I said earlier yeah if you are staying for a week eventually you'll need to check your email and a couple episodes of Stranger Things would be nice but good grief this crazy jubilation over Home Alone is just bizarre.  

I think that sadly, that commercial is 100% accurate. I think the internet is like electricity, you don't realize how much you take it for granted until it's out. I recently spent a few hundred years in a wifi-free, cell-free zone, and it was like the world suddenly went black and white and sound-free. And I'm closer in age to the grandparents than the kids, so it's not even a generational thing. It's not just Netflix, it's books, music, games and communication. It's ordering pizza, looking up store hours, checking whether the poinsettia is poisonous to cats, getting a prescription refilled, and a thousand other things that you don't realize you can't do until you can't do them. We've moved on from encyclopedias and phone books and so on - the world has changed, if you've got grandchildren just suck it up and get the wifi!

[proserpina65]

Quote

I think that sadly, that commercial is 100% accurate. I think the internet is like electricity, you don't realize how much you take it for granted until it's out. I recently spent a few hundred years in a wifi-free, cell-free zone, and it was like the world suddenly went black and white and sound-free. And I'm closer in age to the grandparents than the kids, so it's not even a generational thing. It's not just Netflix, it's books, music, games and communication. It's ordering pizza, looking up store hours, checking whether the poinsettia is poisonous to cats, getting a prescription refilled, and a thousand other things that you don't realize you can't do until you can't do them. We've moved on from encyclopedias and phone books and so on - the world has changed, if you've got grandchildren just suck it up and get the wifi!

Books, music, games and communication can all be done without wifi; I do most of things everyday without wifi.  If someone visits a relative without wifi, just suck it up and talk to each other, play non-internet games, read actual books, use your phone to order a f-ing pizza or get a prescription refilled.  No one should shell out big bucks for Comcast's crappy Xfinity service just so that their special snowflake relatives can spend a holiday not talking to other human beings.

Edited to note that I hate this commercial, mainly because the kid posts her whiny complaint about Grandma's house where Grandma can see it.  It would still annoy me if the kid was just complaining to her friends, but the fact that her grandparents can read it too is what makes this a "fire of a thousand burning nuns" hate situation.

Edited December 2, 2016 by proserpina65

[peacheslatour]

Quote

Edited to note that I hate this commercial, mainly because the kid posts her whiny complaint about Grandma's house where Grandma can see it.

If grandma is so tech illiterate, whet the heck is she doing on Facebook? In for a penny in for a pound, as my own grandma used to say.

[LoneHaranguer]

14 hours ago, Moose135 said:

A couple of years ago, to promote some NASCAR social media thing, the race at Pocono was called the "#400" and referred to as the Hashtag 400.  I kept calling it the Pound Sign 400.

Looks like "Number 400" to me. There were better choices for a prefix character that you wouldn't normally see; e.g. unlike "#", a "!" usually only comes at the end of something, so a "bangtag" or "smashtag" wouldn't have the same problem.

[Bastet]

Quote

See that's my main problem with the commercial.  It's the idea that you have to have all this stuff to have a merry christmas.  My grandma and I did puzzles together to pass the time.  This idea that we need wifi and Netflix to be happy is just sad.  Like I said earlier yeah if you are staying for a week eventually you'll need to check your email and a couple episodes of Stranger Things would be nice but good grief this crazy jubilation over Home Alone is just bizarre.  

I'm not clear what they're doing that they couldn't have done without whatever service Grandma shelled out for.  Watching a movie together could have been done with a DVD rather than Netflix (hell, for It's a Wonderful Life, they could just turn on the TV).  Taking a picture of an old picture (this is a thing?) didn't require any technology beyond what she came in with.  Eating cookies, goofy dancing, and just enjoying each others' company certainly didn't require wi-fi.

[proserpina65]

2 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

If grandma is so tech illiterate, whet the heck is she doing on Facebook? In for a penny in for a pound, as my own grandma used to say.

Grandma clearly has internet access from her cellphone because we see her reading spoiled snowflake's post on it.  She just doesn't have the super fancy, extra expensive Xfinity service that Comcast is pushing.  Spoiled brat snowflake has no business complaining.

[iMonrey]

Quote

Ladies and Gentleman I present the world's most hated commercial:  (all though I must say I like the grandparents saying pound sign instead of hashtag)

The teen girl texts her friends "Pray for me." Yeah, I'll pray for you all right. I pray that someday when you're a grandmother, your grandchildren dread spending time with you because you don't have the latest technology, like a proper holodeck or a flying car or whatever the hell they'll have by then that kids can't live without.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

On 11/27/2016 at 9:27 AM, bilgistic said:

Breaking the diamond chains that bind her, poor thing. I don't know.

I'm surprised Roberts doesn't chew through the chains. With all her five hundred and eighty two teeth, she could probably manage it.

[proserpina65]

Having recently seen her latest annoying Old Navy commercial, all I have to say to Amy Schumer is "good luck convincing people that you're not plus sized".

[random chance]

I would really love to know what market research resulted in all these perfume commercials of women escaping their golden diamond-encrusted prisons. It's like "Calgon take me away" except you can't figure out why they want to get away. "Chanel, take me away from this rich husband and fancyass ball."

[captain1]

In the Xfinity commercial I love how the one granddad pronounces "bruh"  - that made me LOL!

Edited December 2, 2016 by captain1

[chessiegal]

We took the Queen Mary 2 to England in May (I know, poor us) and I bought 70 minutes of Wi-Fi for $49. It was an 8 day crossing, and each morning we checked our email quickly and logged out. And, the Wi-Fi was really slow. I was so happy when we got to Europe and all our hotels had free Wi-Fi. We're the grandparents age, and I miss the internet when I can't get to it.  But I agree, the commercial is annoying.

[Silver Raven]

2 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

Having recently seen her latest annoying Old Navy commercial, all I have to say to Amy Schumer is "good luck convincing people that you're not plus sized".

Hard to believe, but I just read that Amy Schumer is going to be starring in a live-action Barbie movie.  I am boggled.

[janie jones]

8 hours ago, random chance said:

I think that sadly, that commercial is 100% accurate. I think the internet is like electricity, you don't realize how much you take it for granted until it's out. I recently spent a few hundred years in a wifi-free, cell-free zone, and it was like the world suddenly went black and white and sound-free. And I'm closer in age to the grandparents than the kids, so it's not even a generational thing. It's not just Netflix, it's books, music, games and communication. It's ordering pizza, looking up store hours, checking whether the poinsettia is poisonous to cats, getting a prescription refilled, and a thousand other things that you don't realize you can't do until you can't do them. We've moved on from encyclopedias and phone books and so on - the world has changed, if you've got grandchildren just suck it up and get the wifi!

I think this is a good point about internet use in day-to-day life, but most of the things mentioned here aren't things you're going to be doing when staying the night at a relative's for a holiday (or however long they're there for).  There are a lot of things that are part of your normal routine that you don't do when you're a guest at someone's house.  It doesn't look like they're the type of family where everyone goes off and does their own thing, so it makes the girl seem especially bratty that she would want to be spending the entire time on her phone or whatever, instead of interacting with relatives who clearly expect to interact with one another.

[Blergh]

Anyone see the one in which the mother has invited the entire extended family to celebrate the holidays and is PROUD that her young son wants to spend EVERY WAKING MOMENT playing some handheld game? She actually considers all these relatives giving him advice on HOW to play the game to be the SAME as him interacted and behaving like a human being with them even though he never so much as looks up or nods at anything anyone else says.  I don't know what's sadder: the fact that she (and her family )seem  to be in complete denial re the slug she's raised OR the fact that the company seems to think that THIS is a good way to sell their games!

[DrSpaceman73]

One of the Christmas jewelry commercials bugs me for a dumb reason :  its one about how the husband and wife are best friends and shrare the good and bad times, clichéd stuff.  At one point they show them spontaneously, because they are so WHACKY TOGETHER !!!!!, jumping into a lake with their clothes on. 

 

No god damn way I am doing that with my wife or anyone else.  I'd strip naked and jump in, in public, before jumping in with my clothes on.  Not summer clothers, this is long pants, long shirts, everything.  I think the take off their shoes or something.  I know they can't show it in a short commercial, they could strip down to boxers and her in shorts and a bra, something.

 

Annoys me every time.

[Mannahatta]

On 11/27/2016 at 7:25 PM, SoSueMe said:

I posted about that one before. It seems to be not directed at actual psoriasis sufferers, instead at those in their orbits. I sympathize, really, but I hate  being lectured when the commercial isn't even trying to sell to me.

My first thought when I saw that commercial was "Are they trying to make people with psoriasis a new category of victim?". Are they the new lepers while the people without psoriasis are a bunch of meanies? Then I realized that what the ad is doing is even more insidious. The goal of the ad is to make psoriasis sufferers more self conscious - "You mean people are staring at us?' - so they'll run out and buy whatever medication the ad is selling. A few years back there was a commercial directed at allergy sufferers that had this same approach. It implied that your ailment doesn't just bother you - it offends other people!

[spaceytraci1208]

I finally saw the much-discussed commercial with the kid who complains on social media about having to visit her grandparents who don't have wifi; well I saw the beginning, anyway, and said "Fuck that kid" as I changed the channel lol

[officetemp]

[Read back on the thread for a few weeks and didn't see this particular commercial mentioned, so thought I'd comment on it.]

I'm really irritated by the Volvo commercial that uses excerpts from Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road", mostly because, to me, the idea of that poem seems to be the antithesis of the lifestyle associated with the product the ad is trying to sell.  Maybe it's just me, but I've always thought that "Song of the Open Road" was about letting go of attachments and living an unburdened life, free to wander wherever one chooses.  Yet, here's this guy in the ad, driving this luxury car that costs tens of thousands of dollars, knowing his exact location at any one moment thanks to his GPS, hauling all of his electronic devices--and dragging his connectivity--with him everywhere that he goes.  Maybe a more appropriate quotation from the same poem for the commercial would be:

Quote

"(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,

"I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,

"I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,

"I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)"

The other thing that annoys me about this ad is that the voice-over is so blah.  The person reading the quotations is so expressionless that he seems as if he's some high schooler who's reading the poem as an assignment in speech class.  No sense of wonder, no joy, no eager anticipation of new experiences associated with leaving the familiar behind.

 

Another ad that really annoys:  Huggies Diapers with the drunk-sounding woman singing the jingle that starts, "We all need a hug in the morning. . ."  Have to hit the mute button whenever that commercial comes on.

Edited December 4, 2016 by officetemp

[friendperidot]

Quote

Another ad that really annoys:  Huggies Diapers with the drunk-sounding woman singing the jingle that starts, "We all need a hug in the morning. . ."  Have to hit the mute button whenever that commercial comes on.

officetemp, I complained about that commercial somewhere, but my problem is the song doesn't rhyme, it feels like a line is left out. And someone told me it was an old Irish lullaby and there are other lines. But it still annoys me.

[officetemp]

1 hour ago, friendperidot said:

officetemp, I complained about that commercial somewhere, but my problem is the song doesn't rhyme, it feels like a line is left out. And someone told me it was an old Irish lullaby and there are other lines. But it still annoys me.

I've seen two different versions of the commercial--the first one I saw is the one with the lines missing; the second one has the complete(?) verse and is about twice as long as the first version, I think.  (I say "first" and "second," but I'm not sure which is the original version, actually.)  It doesn't matter to me which version it is, though, because I just don't like the singer's delivery and, as soon as I see the beginning of the commercial, I either hit the mute button or change the channel.

[Ubiquitous]

On ‎12‎/‎1‎/‎2016 at 4:40 PM, Bastet said:

But, yes, I do love "pound sign" instead of "hashtag."

Have I been calling it the wrong thing all these years?

[Eliot]

On 11/7/2016 at 11:34 PM, TattleTeeny said:

I hate the actor's voice--of the dog--in the Beneful commercial. He's trying to sound like he's talking with his mouth full, and it just sounds dumb.

That is my pet peeve of food commercials in general. WHO in the WORLD thinks it is appealing or appetizing for actors to speak their lines like they can't stop ramming that swill into their gaping maws long enough to swallow before speaking? It is nauseating and disgusting.

They do it with people too, not just pets. One ad I will hate until my dying breath was the one with the family standing around the kitchen talking with their mouths full of gross melty chocolate chip cookies and chocolate smeared all over their faces and fingers. BLECH.

[BusyOctober]

I can't stand Sofia Vigara one more minute.  Her latest 'Head & Shoulders' ad is almost as rage inducing as the stupid Panera "or something" twit.  Yes, I know she is from Columbia, and English is a difficult language with all its idioms and pronunciation issues. However, if she is as good an actress as some think she is, Sofia could certainly learn to pronounce the word scalp correctly (it rhymes with alp). Is it supposed to be funny or endearing to hear her say it as "sculp"?  Because it isn't.  

[Ubiquitous]

I'm tired of Sofia Viagra's "Charo routine". Surely she doesn't normally speak like that!

[Jamoche]

8 hours ago, Ubiquitous said:

Have I been calling it the wrong thing all these years?

Pound sign (5#, or 5lb), number sign (#2), hash (#) - they're all valid depending on context and dialect. "Hashtag" came about when Twitter users needed something to mark the keywords in a tweet.

[Jamoche]

1 hour ago, Ubiquitous said:

I'm tired of Sofia Viagra's "Charo routine". Surely she doesn't normally speak like that!

I have a friend who's a Latina actress, and she says no, Sofia doesn't talk like that normally any more than she does. But both of them have to turn the accent up to 11 for jobs :(

[Dirtybubble]

The problem I have with Sofia Viagra is that she is friggin everywhere!  Head & Shoulders, Cover Girl,  Diet Pepsi, Ninja Coffee PLUS Modern Family and now that it's in syndication I can't escape her.

[Ohwell]

I think that Sophia Vigara acts inappropriate and creepy with her son in those Head & Shoulders commercials.

Also, I have to admit that I'm extremely jealous of her because she's married to that hunk Joe Manganiello.  Bitch.

[ivygirl]

Speaking of celebrities who are everywhere...

I was enjoying the new Target holiday ad, which begins a dress rehearsal of the "show" all the toys are putting on. I was literally thinking "I really like this. It's nice to enjoy these commercials this year." So then, the director kid stops the show and says, "This is missing something... a star!"

Then John Legend pokes his head in, and I know what's coming. Yippee, the next commercial will feature (surprise!) Chrissy Tiegen! Yay! 

And by "Yay!", I mean groooooooooooaaaaaaaannnnn.

She wasn't even *in* this ad, and I'm preemptively tired of the next commercial already.

[Neurochick]

17 hours ago, Dirtybubble said:

The problem I have with Sofia Viagra is that she is friggin everywhere!  Head & Shoulders, Cover Girl,  Diet Pepsi, Ninja Coffee PLUS Modern Family and now that it's in syndication I can't escape her.

I get tired of seeing her everywhere too, but then I realize that women in Hollywood have a much shorter shelf life than men, plenty of men will be asked to do commercials until they're dead, but not so for women.; she's right to strike while the iron it hot.

I used to think she seemed weird with her son, until I also realized that not everybody has the same type of boundaries and I think she had her son when she was very young, so they probably kind of, grew up together. 

[Ohwell]

1 hour ago, Neurochick said:

I used to think she seemed weird with her son, until I also realized that not everybody has the same type of boundaries and I think she had her son when she was very young, so they probably kind of, grew up together. 

Yeah, I know she was young when she had her son, and I can understand the dynamic of being so close, but I think it's time to cut the strings and stop treating him like a five year old.  At least on tv.

[proserpina65]

23 hours ago, Ubiquitous said:

I'm tired of Sofia Viagra's "Charo routine". Surely she doesn't normally speak like that!

She was very good on Knights of Prosperity playing an intelligent and well-spoken character who did not have the accent dialed up to 11, but I'm sure directors are asking her to do that now.  Shame about that.

[Ubiquitous]

17 hours ago, ivygirl said:

Speaking of celebrities who are everywhere...

I was enjoying the new Target holiday ad, which begins a dress rehearsal of the "show" all the toys are putting on. I was literally thinking "I really like this. It's nice to enjoy these commercials this year." So then, the director kid stops the show and says, "This is missing something... a star!"

Then John Legend pokes his head in, and I know what's coming. Yippee, the next commercial will feature (surprise!) Chrissy Tiegen! Yay! 

Who? Who?

The only thing I remember is that homely little girl show director.

 

4 hours ago, Neurochick said:

I used to think she seemed weird with her son, until I also realized that not everybody has the same type of boundaries and I think she had her son when she was very young, so they probably kind of, grew up together. 

I think it's weird too but I assumed they're more open with their affections in South America.

[Maverick]

 Shut the fuck up, Amy Schumer.