Assvertising

I get user-generated adverts on my webmail, which are totally creepy just in principle, but this ad was extra distubo since I have no idea why it generated, unless Comcast now has an algorithm to serve up misogynist ads to irritate feminists:


If you can't see the image, it's an advert for an insurance quote generator, featuring a picture of a distraught-looking little girl (in what appears to be fake lashes and purple eye shadow!) who's holding the hand of an otherwise unseen adult, with a caption reading: "Dad, what would happen to me and mommy…if you died?"

Obviously, little girl, if your daddy died without an enormous life insurance policy, you and your mommy would end up penniless, homeless, and blowing hobos for tins of beans, because mommies are stupid and helpless.

I don't approve of fearmongering in advertising, but just to illustrate how the same (objectionable) concept could work without being misogynist, it would take just a minor copy change: "Dad, what would happen to me…if you and mommy died?" (And taking out the "and mommy" altogether would erase the heterocentrism.)

It's astoundingly easy to make things not offensively retrofuck. Of course, that doesn't matter a hell of a lot when the whole point is to be as smarmy as possible.

[Assvertising: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty, Thirty-One, Thirty-Two, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five.]