If you watch TV, you’ve probably seen the ads. The ones that try to get you to purchase an expensive automobile for a loved one as a Christmas gift. They deeply disturb me.
“Hey hon, don’t worry about that $33,000 loan I just took out. You’ll be surprised Christmas morning and agree what I secretly did for you with the funds we’d set aside for retirement was worth it.”
Not only are the advertisements stupid and unrealistic, they’re also demeaning. They demean just about everyone, except the 2 percent of the population that can go out and purchase a vehicle on a whim.
Because that is realistically the only group of people they target. Think about going out for Christmas, and you decide unbeknownst to your wife that you’re going to secretly buy her a car.
I don’t know about you, but if I came home with a vehicle and a bow tied around it without consulting my wife first, my head would be on the platter. Sure, if we’d talked about it before, that might be a different story, but even then, I’m not making that decision without full input.
That’s just part of the reason these asinine ads are so bad. Christmas should make people feel good. It’s a positive time of year.
The car advertisements make us feel bad. Because so few can afford to go out and buy something for $36,718 on a spur of the moment, which is the current average price of a new vehicle, BTW, we know we can’t afford the truck being advertised. This in turn makes us feel poor. Which in turn makes us feel unworthy and bad about ourselves.
Christmas is a time of year to celebrate the birth of Christ. As a society, we’ve overdone the gift giving in celebration to the point where these types of ads don’t seem to raise any sense of outrage. They should.
One of the most over-the-top ads, if you haven’t seen it, doesn’t stop with the young couple (where does that young couple get ALL THAT MONEY?) buying just one vehicle. Instead, it has to be two. And WHOA, the wife puts the face claw on the husband and takes the one that he wanted for himself and he barely bats an eye. I guess that’s him turning the other cheek.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m the scrooge. I know a lot of people who grumble and grouse this time of year, the stress of getting just the right gifts for their loved ones. Putting up the Christmas lights sure leads to a lot of people telling me their stories of aggravation.
It’s nice to give in the spirit. We all appreciate the thoughts behind getting something that means a lot to us. That’s the type of gift you’ll remember long afterwards and to which we attach supreme significance.
Not a car or a truck though. They are “things.” Inanimate objects that move us through time a space. Certainly an expensive necessity for almost everyone who lives in a modern economy.
Maybe there will be a silver lining in Covid as people drive less and less and the automobile is no longer featured this time of year. Maybe we should all buy someone an ugly sweater, I don’t know.
The car manufacturers should pull these types of ads, and put out a public service announcement instead. It would get a lot more respect.
“Hey hon, don’t worry about that $33,000 loan I just took out. You’ll be surprised Christmas morning and agree what I secretly did for you with the funds we’d set aside for retirement was worth it.”
Not only are the advertisements stupid and unrealistic, they’re also demeaning. They demean just about everyone, except the 2 percent of the population that can go out and purchase a vehicle on a whim.
Because that is realistically the only group of people they target. Think about going out for Christmas, and you decide unbeknownst to your wife that you’re going to secretly buy her a car.
I don’t know about you, but if I came home with a vehicle and a bow tied around it without consulting my wife first, my head would be on the platter. Sure, if we’d talked about it before, that might be a different story, but even then, I’m not making that decision without full input.
That’s just part of the reason these asinine ads are so bad. Christmas should make people feel good. It’s a positive time of year.
The car advertisements make us feel bad. Because so few can afford to go out and buy something for $36,718 on a spur of the moment, which is the current average price of a new vehicle, BTW, we know we can’t afford the truck being advertised. This in turn makes us feel poor. Which in turn makes us feel unworthy and bad about ourselves.
Christmas is a time of year to celebrate the birth of Christ. As a society, we’ve overdone the gift giving in celebration to the point where these types of ads don’t seem to raise any sense of outrage. They should.
One of the most over-the-top ads, if you haven’t seen it, doesn’t stop with the young couple (where does that young couple get ALL THAT MONEY?) buying just one vehicle. Instead, it has to be two. And WHOA, the wife puts the face claw on the husband and takes the one that he wanted for himself and he barely bats an eye. I guess that’s him turning the other cheek.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m the scrooge. I know a lot of people who grumble and grouse this time of year, the stress of getting just the right gifts for their loved ones. Putting up the Christmas lights sure leads to a lot of people telling me their stories of aggravation.
It’s nice to give in the spirit. We all appreciate the thoughts behind getting something that means a lot to us. That’s the type of gift you’ll remember long afterwards and to which we attach supreme significance.
Not a car or a truck though. They are “things.” Inanimate objects that move us through time a space. Certainly an expensive necessity for almost everyone who lives in a modern economy.
Maybe there will be a silver lining in Covid as people drive less and less and the automobile is no longer featured this time of year. Maybe we should all buy someone an ugly sweater, I don’t know.
The car manufacturers should pull these types of ads, and put out a public service announcement instead. It would get a lot more respect.