Advertising's Got You On The Run

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is adverts. Again.

I know I've talked about adverts before and that it's lazy and boring.

So, adverts. I got so annoyed about seeing them on TV that I stopped watching it, and turned instead to the internet. But, here's the weird thing, they have adverts here as well! The wild-eyed hunch-backed parasites who make adverts have ventured out of their castles made of money and posters of Jon Hamm for long enough to see that, actually, the internet is pretty popular. As a result, you can't watch a stupid YouTube video or write an abusive  Facebook comment without someone telling you to buy something, or sign up somewhere, or sell your organs to someone. Here are 5 adverts that make you wish that the internet would explode, killing everyone in an almighty blast of kittens, tweets and pornography.

5. 

Wow! What a bunch of cunts! What would Don Draper say if you suggested the slogan "Shoot Wow! Share Now!" 

4. 

I got this Zizzi advert as an email, and I've been sat here for days and days wondering if there's something I'm missing. "A game of two offers." Surely it can't just be a play on the phrase "a game of two halves." Because that DOESN'T FUCKING WORK. "A game of two offers." I'm still confused. I've been staring at it for what seems like a lifetime. I haven't slept, I haven't eaten, I've just been reading it, again and again and again. I won't get that time back. In that time, I could have cured cancer, or written a beautiful novel, or (perhaps more likely) watched Peep Show for the thousandth time. "A game of two offers." I don't understand...

3.

I listen to a lot of brilliant, free podcasts, and I don't mind hearing the occasional advert if it means they stay free. But the Absolute Radio podcasts seem to have gone out of their way to intentionally make my ears bleed.

Gym by Minimeier on Mixcloud

PayasUgym. I don't know what the rest of the advert says, just because my brain hears "payasUgym" and deploys a painfully high-pitched screeching tone as a form of defence mechanism.

2. 


Facebook never ceases to be a source of self-mutilation levels of anger, and amongst the pictures of people trying desperately to convince the internet that they're having a great time (such a great time that they just had to take a photo and upload it to Facebook just in case anyone was in any doubt over just how great a time they were having), are adverts. And even worse, they're targeted adverts, so they use an ingenious algorithm, which studies my online activity, pinpoints all my interests, and works out exactly what it is that I need.

No actually Facebook, I don't "Need local Digger." But thanks anyway.

No actually Facebook, I don't "Need local Pest Control". But thanks anyway. And thanks also for resisting the temptation to put a mangled, bloodied rodent in that mousetrap.

Actually I quite like this one, because it looks like it's just an advert for the fact that there are some girls on Facebook.


1.

So I'm trying to watch Peep Show for the thousandth time, when this comes on; it appears to be an advert for mothers. "Now thank your mum." No I won't, bossy advert. "Proud sponsor of Mums"? It's so confusing it makes that Zizzi advert seem positively sensible. This just makes me want to cut off the hands of everyone in the advert so that when they try to make that heart shape, they just bump their stumps together while crying and bleeding everywhere. I hate all mums.


Thanks for reading, the title of this blog is from the System of a Down song Chic N' Stu, with which I will leave you. Enjoy! Oh, and this blog is sponsored by Mums.

Without A Face(book)

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is Facebook.

So here we are are, at the final chapter of my trilogy of blogs that I'm calling: Failing My Degree. And what a ride it has been. Remember how it all began? Two days ago, we began this saga. They said we'd never make it. "You're crazy," they said, "get out of my bedroom." But we persisted. We never gave up, even during that difficult middle section of our journey. Yesterday. Dark times indeed. But we made it out the other side, ready to face the biggest evil of all: Facebook.

Last month I blogged about Twitter, and now I turn to Twitter's sex-offender uncle, Facebook. Don't get me wrong, I love The Social Network. But I often wonder what it is that I really hate: Facebook, or most people that I know. The answer is both. The former because of the way it constantly restyles itself like a fucking celebrity, because of the way it shows everyone exactly what you're reading and watching and wanking over, because of Facebook Chat acting like a temperamental, uncooperative, moody teenager. We're all "experiencing some problems" Facebook Chat, get over yourself.

But what really makes me want to put my hand in a toaster is that persistant irritant, Other People. With their Facebook Statuses. The kind that make me want to comment saying "CUNT" and then claim I was fraped. The kind like these: The 10 Worst Kinds Of Facebook Status - Oh and if you're thinking, "why don't you just hide the people who piss you off?" Fuck you.

10. The Mundane - eg. Loving X Factor and pizza tonight - People complain that Twitter is full of mundane "I am eating" style tweets, but clearly they're not friends with the same people as me on Facebook. Every other status is "I am in a library" or "I am bleeding to death, please get help." YAWN

9. The Wry Observation - eg. How come the more you sleep the more tired you are?! - This covers "that awkward moment when..." statuses too, which I've complained about before. "That awkward moment when you walk into a room and forget why you went in there!" Thanks Michael McIntyre.

8. The Copied Joke - eg. David Cameron's wife has given birth. I didn't even know Clegg was pregnant! - Yeah we've all seen Sickipedia.

7. The Link To The Thing I Hate - eg. I love this new Florence And The Machine song! - Followed by a YouTube video. Equally awful is when someone I hate posts something I like. Shit, THEY like Fight Club? Time to find a new favourite film. And stab myself in the leg with a corkscrew.

6. The "Ironic" - eg. S Club 7 back together. Life is complete. - That one is a genuine status from someone I hope never reads this blog.

5. The Smug - eg. That's 8 hours in the library done, time to start another essay! - Like I don't feel bad enough about doing fuck nothing with my day.

4. The In-joke - eg. Shoelaces! LOL @Jamie Jameson - I hope your head gets stuck in a boiling kettle.

3. The Lazy Frape - eg. I love cock. - New rule: Only Dan is allowed to frape. He is the master. He fraped someone when they were LOGGED OUT of Facebook. And even if he does just do an "I love cock", it's funny when it's Dan.

2. The Pretentious - eg. Now dance like a dandelion in the wind on the hill underneath the pines, yeah move like the river flows, feel the big drum down deep in your toes. - Another genuine status. From a male. These statuses could be song lyrics or a nonsensical quote. "'Healing yourself is connected with healing others.' - Yoko Ono". Just because it's incomprehensible doesn't make it clever. Statuses like this are just pretentious, meaningless, smug, attention-seeking, self-absorbed, self-centred, self-involved piles of nothing.

1. The Night Out - eg. Can't wait to get on it tonightttttttttt! - When the last letter of a word is held down like that I always hope it's because they've collapsed in pain on to their keyboards. But no, because the next day they have statuses that just say things like, "Hanging." Which leaves me hoping it's literal. These boring cunts have mistaken telling everyone about how drunk they get for a personality.

The name of this blog is a genius play on the Rage Against The Machine song with which I will leave you, enjoy!

Thinking About Things

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is having to come up with something to write here for every fucking blog.

Anyway, I've been, to quote the band Catch 22, 'Thinking About Things.'

'You idiot,' I hear you say, 'you clearly just can't think of anything to blog about, and are attempting to hide that fact behind the veil of what is actually one of Catch 22's worst songs, from the largely underwhelming 2000 album 'Alone in a Crowd,' despite the obvious importance of the band's contribution to third-wave ska.' Well firstly, I reply, you know an impressive amount about ska/punk. Secondly, shut up. Here's 5 'things' that I've been 'thinking about.'

1. Facebook is a depressing place at the best of times, but now it's full of groups and statuses which go, 'That awkward moment when...' For instance the group, 'That awkward moment when you send a text to the wrong person.' My problem with these is mainly grammatical. It isn't a sentence. I wouldn't mind if it was, 'I hate that awkward moment when you send a text to the wrong person', or even, 'That moment when you send a text to the wrong person is awkward.' But it's always just, 'That awkward moment when you send a text to the wrong person,' which leaves me thinking, '...go on? What about it?' But they have nothing to say about it, it's always just an ill-conceived piece of forced observation.

2. On a happier note, I've been watching the brilliant US sitcom Community, which I love. But british comedian John Oliver is in it, and I remember him from Mock The Week, and now he's in a massive American TV show! It makes me worry that Frankie Boyle could pop up in Boardwalk Empire.

3. I was using some soap, but it wasn't called soap, it was called a 'Dove Beauty Cream Bar.' Which makes it sound like a delicious item of confectionary you'd get from a vending machine. But it didn't taste delicious, because it was soap.

4. Free Schools are concerning. I have all the usual worries about how the funding should be used to improve existing schools, rather than giving it to what will largely be middle-class ventures; about the proportion of Free Schools which are geared towards religion; about the use of unqualified teachers. That seems like an odd idea. Also, the Tory focus on 'discipline' is one that sets me slightly on edge.

5. The Tories also want to scrap the 50p tax rate, one such Tory being Nigel Lawson. When Nigel Lawson - a man so arrogant, my politics teacher used to say, that he named his daughter after himself - agrees with a policy, it may be time to abandon it. The 50p tax rate affects the top 1% of UK earners, with whom it is hard to sympathise when they complain about being 'punished,' given that the government's cuts will not affect them. Also concerning is the way the BBC use headlines like, 'Top 50p tax rate damages UK, say economists.' Oh, 'economists' say that do they? Well who are we to argue with 'economists'? Gramsci would be spinning.

Thanks for reading, I will leave you with the excellent So Cold by Catch 22 seeing as you love them so much. Enjoy!