Infomercials
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
(click) '...out of my one bedroom apartment... (click)... and now I can fill out a sweater, and they feel so natural... (click)... until I called the caring psychic family... (click)... I hated to diet until now... (click)... I got started by placing tiny classified ads... (click)... America's walking expert Kathy Smith... (click)... Talk to one of our certified psychics... (click)... You'll get a weekly checque, like this, every week!...(click)... with the new Deal-A-Meal system... (click)'
Stop the insanity!
American television at 3am is an appalling journey through the wasteland of pop culture. I should know, I'm an insomniac - have been all my life. I've come to love infomercials with their limited time offers, six to eight weeks for delivery, results may vary. The prices they've never charged slashed to the new low prices they always were. Extra bonuses that are necessary, shipped with every unit and always have been.
The best of the bunch are the ones that try to pass as regular programming by having a studio audience, charismatic hosts, etc - it's the perfect combination of commercialism and entertainment. Why suffer the annoyance of interruptive ads in your shows when you can just have them integrated into the show itself? Infomercials show the ugly side of human nature, the ignorance of the customers, and the dishonesty and greed of these flim-flam artists.
Soulless con-men like Ron Popeil and Danny Bonaduce, selling worthless gadgetry, and pie-in-the-sky dreams to people in trailer parks and old folks' homes... the infomercial is the modern day version of the medicine show. There is no better time to rob someone than at three in the morning when they're groggy in their underwear, and quite possibly more than a little drunk. These are the people that the infomercial targets. Like a cheetah on the Serengeti, these carnival barkers know how to weed out the slow and the sick.
I don't like any advertising, and here's why: because it's designed to make you feel worse about yourself. Advertising executives are working round the clock to find new and inventive ways of making you think your life is lacking something. All advertising does this, but infomercials especially. I hate infomercials, but somehow I'm compelled to watch them; it's like a train wreck - you can't turn away from it. A train wreck between the ignorance and gullibility of the lazy American public, and the greedy corporate vultures trying to feast on them. Just like vultures, the infomericials go for your eyes first, then try to tear out your insides, but they do it in a far more insidious manner.
You're not pretty enough. You don't have enough hair. You don't have enough useless kitchen equipment. You don't have enough money. You need a combination pasta maker, juicer, sausage stuffer, and bread maker. Infomercials prey on people's insecurities, destroying their self image to hock tooth whiteners, spray-on hair, food dehydrators, exercise machines, and fake breasts. Infomercials offer us solutions to all our problems with diet drugs, pheromone colognes, youth creams, thigh creams, acne creams, hair removing creams, hair growing creams, and get rich quick schemes. The Shiwala, the Miracle Mop, the Rolykit, Orange Glo Aquabells, Healthrider, Power Rider, Fliptrack, Nordicrider, Nordictrack, Nordicflex, Soloflex, Bowflex, Bodyflex, Abflex Abcrucher, Abroller, Absculptor, Abmaster, Stairmaster, Thighmaster, Thighs of Steel, Buns of Steel!
Suzanne Summers, L Ron Hubbard, Don Lapre, Tony Little, Marshall Sylver, the Juiceman, Dick Cavett, George Foreman, Kevin Trudeau, Zemfir master of the pan flute, the Seventies Preservation Society!
These people must be stopped!
Ideally I would like to cut off their heads with a handy-to-use trimmer/mower, and then have their hollowed-out skulls filled with home-made beer from The Beer Machine! I wanna see Danny Bonaduce's brain box used for a beer stein!
Don't let these shysters fool you, you are good enough, you do have enough hair, your butt isn't too big... so put down that phone and step away from the credit card!