Love on Line in Normal entries

I’ve been kind of obsessed with commercials of late, obsessed in the most indifferent and lazy sense of the word, drawback of living in an attic I think. When I watch TV on my computer I can’t really get a snack between commercials; four flights of stairs and 250 steps. It’s a big house. I can stop the show and cook a stew or drive to Detroit for a meal, but the commercials will still be there waiting for me.

eHarmony has a campaign right now, a handful of spots, with this guy with High Moussed bangs, a bit of a lisp, and “regular people” on the street. Mostly the campaign is for a fairly invasive app that shows you if you crossed paths with other eHarmony members (I hope it’s just other eHarmony members, they never say it outright). One of them is just an ad for eHarmony. The first couple look like models, I mean the makeup and pose. The guy for instance is to the woman’s right, neck turned to look at her. He never says anything nor does his profile change. She says something to the effect that she likes that eHarmony costs money because it means … yeah, I was waiting for what she’d say too, I keep expecting her to say that it means they are employed. She says the same thing every time like it was a recording or something. Because if you pay it means the idea, the site, by association herself, has value.

The second couple are less attractive and their marks seem to profile their worse features. Both talk but the guy talks most, to a grand audience his words are almost meaningless. Something like “Three siblings and three matches, life partners”. I think the intent is to show the diversity of attitude or something, but one could easily mistake it as eHarmony set his chinless ass up with his mousey sister or that eHarmony doesn’t discriminate against the unattractive and inarticulate.

The last one, um, in the same thirty second spot, shit maybe fifteen, look like two actors picked because they look like normal people. I’m drawing a blank on a description, but she does most of the talking and it’s basically advice; you should check your matches often, with some work and diligence you’ll find a life partner. Body language wise these two are the furthest distance from one another.

So, if that were it you might just leave the commercial feeling eHarmony is for snobs, incestuous idiots (though I’m pretty sure dude meant he had two additional siblings and they also hooked with partners as unattractive as themselves — not the guys fault, someone wrote the script and someone decided it was good enough to keep) and, depressingly, even with the lazy approach to dating you still have to be diligent.

But wait, that’s not all! The ad ends with words on the screen and a voiceover reading the words (I imagine if you need the voiceover that might be the clue as to why you’re single) that says something very much like Try eHarmony For Free, it’s Easy and you’ll be dating in no time! If they added “your sister is on there too” they would have effectively contradicted everything their “real people” said. Wait, no, sorry, that ad they never claim has real people. That means an advertising agency put together a campaign, probably several, and eHarmony chose that one as written and filmed.

I saw this pharmacological ad that surprised me as it was different from all the others but followed the same path, just a slight bit off trail. Like most of the others there is a voiceover as they show the subject going about her day, but, unlike the others there are no sad kids or spouse not playing in the pool because mommy has stink foot, diabetes, yeast infection, fibro myalgia etc. and by the end they are all splashing in the pool as the voiceover happily tells you the drug can cause rectal itching, loss of vision, time travel to war zones, hallucinations and death. The lady has cancer that has metastasized and … then they lose me. I know how to look up words I don’t understand, but this is like chart verbiage, very specific to … I don’t know, certain DNA strands, I’d quote directly but I can’t even follow as it’s happening it’s like “Dire M7 trichomes in the p14 alignment of the greater fifth chakra albino m7-p14 combine with secondary Labrador. My bad, the dog. Instead of kids and spouse she has a dog and the drug lets her teach class and run with her dog. It’s much better than the standard commercials and the drug is NOT Lyrica. I swear to sweet baby bejesus Lyrica has like five ads for treating five different diseases. My favorite is for fibro because it’s a bit like the eHarmony ad in its contrariness. There’s this line “Fibro is thought to be a nerve disorder, Lyrica is believed to ease symptoms.” Heh. Although vague on whether fibro is a nerve disorder and whether Lyrica does anything for it except as a faith based treatment, they are just as positive of the side effects as they are when Lyrica is treating diabetes, which is believed to have something to do with blood sugar levels, water retention and being a maiden aunt.

Ok, now that’s out of my system, how’re you doing?