Oreo Blue

February 27, 2013 5:01 PM

Oreo Blue? Really?

Why are you allowing a front-page post based on a single Youtube link to a phony viral ad on a corporate channel? Just curious.

Yeah yeah, I know. I guess I'll spare everyone the "fuck the motherfucking culture industry" rant and get back to reading Adorno, since it's profoundly obvious nobody really gives a shit.

posted by doreur to Etiquette/Policy at 5:01 PM (242 comments total)

A Hydrox fan, I presume?
posted by Atom Eyes at 5:03 PM on February 27 [46 favorites]

Metafilter is where I go to get away from that crap. Let's just not.
posted by dunkadunc at 5:03 PM on February 27

That's a, um, great way to frame a MetaTalk thread. I look forward to the thoughtful discussion it engenders from the people who don't really give a shit.
posted by eyeballkid at 5:03 PM on February 27 [29 favorites]

Very few flags and it just didn't seem deleteworthy and people seemed to be enjoying chatting about it. I'm as much a fan of Adorno as the next person but he was kind of a snob.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:09 PM on February 27 [23 favorites]

As long as they leave my Newman's Ginger-Os alone I don't care.
posted by Burhanistan at 5:09 PM on February 27 [4 favorites]

I love how Adorno is "ad, or no?" as well as "ador, no?" well, not the second so much, but i can pretend.
posted by crush-onastick at 5:12 PM on February 27 [7 favorites]

As a wise man once said "Calm down, have some dip."
posted by jonmc at 5:14 PM on February 27 [10 favorites]

Interesting that we can talk about the filling in Oreos, but not about the first inklings that a new Pynchon novel set in the high-tech sector in NYC just before 9/11 is in the pipeline.
posted by jamjam at 5:20 PM on February 27 [3 favorites]

"A thing is going to happen in the future" is much less of a good post than "Someone has done a thing you might like to see"

As usual, this has nothing to do with what you can or can't talk about. It's a big internet.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:23 PM on February 27 [12 favorites]

You know what the alternative is....MORE KITTY VIDEOS!!
posted by briank at 5:25 PM on February 27 [4 favorites]

A post about Pynchon's feelings on Oreos would be welcome however. (also, you want to know the real injustice? There's three really tasty looking potato chip flavors [voted on by fans] available, but I can't get them in New York City. That's fucked up.)
posted by jonmc at 5:25 PM on February 27 [4 favorites]

If you can't charge Nabisco/Mondelez Corporation for the ad, it shouldn't be here. If it hasn't been heavily flagged (I just discovered it three minutes ago and IMMEDIATELY flagged it), then this doesn't represent as much a decline in the standards of the site as a decline in the standards of the membership.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:25 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Or maybe most of us saw something about "Oreos blah blah" and just didn't bother to click in the first place?
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:27 PM on February 27 [19 favorites]

I'd be more accepting of an FPP about the Lay's flavor contest. Maybe I need to make one.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:28 PM on February 27

If you can't charge Nabisco/Mondelez Corporation for the ad, it shouldn't be here.

People like talking about books or music or movies or video games or television shows. Does metafilter need to get ad revenue any time a non-critical post about one of those shows up? What's the difference here?
posted by juv3nal at 5:31 PM on February 27 [6 favorites]

I didn't flag it immediately when it went up because I'm not interested in oreos or junk food, and I'm not into the cute little things people do with them. Had I clicked on the video and seen that it was an ad from Oreo Official, I would have flagged it immediately.
posted by dunkadunc at 5:32 PM on February 27 [4 favorites]

As usual, this has nothing to do with what you can or can't talk about.

I appreciate the reassurance, Jessamyn, but I do generally take it for granted that I can talk about whatever I please in private, and when I write "we" in a comment on MetaTalk, I also take it for granted that it will be understood that I am referring the collective membership of Metafilter.

Am I mistaken in that assumption?
posted by jamjam at 5:34 PM on February 27 [5 favorites]

But Oreos are for dunkadunc-ing!
posted by jacalata at 5:35 PM on February 27 [9 favorites]

Free advertising is free advertising. The only reason this video exists at all is to push product.

So if Pepsi Blue had been shrewd enough to do a video of some hipster's really kewel steampunk Rube Goldberg machine pouring the shit into the mouth of a passing dog on a skateboard, you'd all be fine with a FPP on that too?

Got it.
posted by doreur at 5:37 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]

This has come up a number of times before and my recollection is the consensus has generally been that if it's something cool, it's fine even if an ad agency did it to promote a product. Why should the creative efforts of marketers be excluded from this site if they're interesting?
posted by TungstenChef at 5:37 PM on February 27 [15 favorites]

Because they're marketers.
posted by dunkadunc at 5:38 PM on February 27 [7 favorites]

Horkheimer and Adorno’s Culture Industry:
Loss of Genuine Dialogue and Variation Due to Media and Mass Marketing

posted by doreur at 5:41 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

So? You may have an ideological reason to think their work shouldn't appear on this site but what site rules or norms is it violating as long as it isn't astroturfing?
posted by TungstenChef at 5:43 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Am I mistaken in that assumption?

Your assumption just doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything that actually happened, is the confusing thing. There's no injunction against talking about Pynchon's upcoming book; the post you're referring to was just a lousy post, being as how its whole content was "Pynchon's next book will come out in a few months" in paragraph form. I imagine someone can make a very nice post about it when it's out, or sooner if there's some interesting content out on the web on the subject, that just wasn't it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:46 PM on February 27 [4 favorites]

Am I mistaken in that assumption?

Your comment started "Interesting that we can talk about..." and concluded with a pretty strong insinuation that advertising is okay but complicated topics are, somehow, not. So no, I did not assume you were talking for MetaFilter. No one is stopping anyone from talking about anything. Period. We deleted a thin post about a thing that is happening in the future. It had nothing to do with the SRS BZNS nature of the topic. Likewise the non-deletion of the Oreo post was more likely because people just skipped it (it appears) and not because we're secret shills or so overcome by the mass opiate effects of marketing that we've somehow missed the fact that the thing linked to is an advertisement.

I grow weary of the implications in MetaTalk that by comparing two totally dissimilar posts, people can somehow divine the secret will of the moderators that has heretofore been obscured by us and not revealed in the literally thousands of comments on MetaTalk and elsewhere on the site that we've made.

There is nothing in the guidelines that says "If it's an ad, we'll delete it" If people find ads-as-posts noxious then they should flag them and/or discuss their worthiness as posts here, not make false equivalencies as if it's revealing a secret truth about the way this site operates. Ads are part of culture and are a thing that some people like to talk about, for better or worse.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:48 PM on February 27 [70 favorites]

So if Pepsi Blue had been shrewd enough to do a video of some hipster's really kewel steampunk Rube Goldberg machine pouring the shit into the mouth of a passing dog on a skateboard, you'd all be fine with a FPP on that too?

Got it.

Is this really the hill you want to fight on? Maybe you could dial it back and actually engage in a conversation instead of trying so hard to alienate people.
posted by OmieWise at 5:51 PM on February 27 [16 favorites]

I liked the analogy. I'm picturing the machine right now.
posted by dunkadunc at 5:53 PM on February 27

I liked the analogy. I'm picturing the machine right now.
If you look real close, it has a sticker on it that says "This machine kills fascists neo-Marxists"
posted by juv3nal at 5:56 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]

I'm now pondering if I would eat blue Oreos.

I think probably not.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:01 PM on February 27

I like the Oreo Machine.

I'm no huge fan of The Advertising Machine, but if more ads were even as mildly entertaining as this one was (to me, though of course, not to everyone, ymmv, etc.) then I'd be appreciative. So I don't mind when MetaFilter occasionally points me towards someone maybe having done something a little better than usual. Even if it's advertising.

If you can't charge Nabisco/Mondelez Corporation for the ad, it shouldn't be here.

Actually, if MetaFilter did get money for that link, then that would bother me a whole lot more, given the nature of the site I signed up for.
posted by juliplease at 6:01 PM on February 27 [9 favorites]

I looked up a few random old posts for comparison:

Blendtec
Dove
Old Spice
Skittles

My personal thoughts are that these ads are all much better than the Oreo ad, and the Old Spice and Skittles posts are the best because the OPs provided additional context.

I wouldn't flag the Oreo ad, because ads can be interesting or fun, because sometimes MeFites have interesting or fun things to say about them, and because whatever.

But I can see the argument that this particular example barely skates by under the whatever clause.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 6:07 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

So if Pepsi Blue had been shrewd enough to do a video of some hipster's really kewel steampunk Rube Goldberg machine pouring the shit into the mouth of a passing dog on a skateboard, you'd all be fine with a FPP on that too?

Yes, every time a new OK Go video comes out, it's posted here.
posted by mkb at 6:07 PM on February 27 [18 favorites]

Not on board with the way this complaint was made, because, yeah. But I do find myself in some sympathy with the sentiment that advertising designed expressly so that people will discuss it on the internet, which people then do, kinda skeeves me out in general, and the marketers get a win, which rankles. If that's the argument here.

But it's a knotty issue, because advertising is indeed -- in ways that are worth discussing -- part of our collective culture, and the line between falling into the manufactured-mindspace trap and innoculating ourselves against them by understanding their objectives is a pretty narrow one.

I suspect the Great Battle is one that is already lost, though, so I try not to get too worked up about it. Despite the fact that I watch a lot of 'television' exclusively on my computer machine, I only see a handful of TV ads a week, if that, and the ones I see are all Korean, during the 20 minutes or so I watch of Korean broadcast TV. So I'm not swimming in it every day in the most folks are, perhaps.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:09 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

oh, look, blue oreos

so there
posted by pyramid termite at 6:09 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]

We like to talk about cool things on the web here. Sometimes those things are ads. Ads can be discussed as cool things if they are actually cool things. There was nothing to discuss in the Pynchon post - it just a short piece about a forthcoming book (like, an ad!), and it wasn't even neat in and of itself.
posted by rtha at 6:10 PM on February 27 [14 favorites]

Adorno wasn't real fond of Ding Dongs, Bugles, or Berliners, either. But I have a sneaking suspicion that he was mad about Little Debbie.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:24 PM on February 27

Aren't we all? That minx!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:28 PM on February 27

Jonmc, would you like a care package of novelty flavor chips?
posted by boo_radley at 6:30 PM on February 27

I love how Adorno is "ad, or no?"

I WAS IN GRADUATE SCHOOL FOR 6 LONG YEARS AND DIDN'T NOTICE THIS WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH ME?
posted by googly at 6:34 PM on February 27 [23 favorites]

lemme get back to you, boo radley.
posted by jonmc at 6:36 PM on February 27

Did he harness up a pet pig?
posted by Ideefixe at 6:43 PM on February 27

Unless something is made in a coop or by monks pretty much everything we link to is a product. I just posted a video by a band that is probably on a label owned by a label owned by a label owned by an evil multi-national. There are daily videogame posts about products probably made by the same chain of multi-nationals, and that's not even getting into the usual Apple and Google-filter.

I'm not sure if everyone can watch this, but the advertising panel show The Gruen Transfer did a whole episode on the Felix Baumgartner jump and what it takes to manufacture something like this. I was away at the time, but I assume the jump was posted here?
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:43 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

You know who else didn't like jazz?

Sorry.

More seriously, if I understand Pepsi Blue aright (and this would be a useful thing for me to clarify), it's not about whether or not the link is to promotional content, but rather the intent of the person posting it, right? You aren't supposed to post content which might suggest a conflict of interest?

So, if someone who worked for Wieden + Kennedy, or someone who worked at General Mills, posted that FPP, that would be Pepsi Blue, right, and an instant delete and ban? And if someone who was friends with David Kneevel or with a bunch of guys at Wieden + Kennedy posted it, that would not exactly be Pepsi Blue, but it would be a conflict of interest sufficient to have it removed, and that person banned or at least warned, also right?
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:44 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Your comment started "Interesting that we can talk about..." and concluded with a pretty strong insinuation that advertising is okay but complicated topics are, somehow, not. So no, I did not assume you were talking for MetaFilter. No one is stopping anyone from talking about anything. Period. We deleted a thin post about a thing that is happening in the future. It had nothing to do with the SRS BZNS nature of the topic.

Actually, I'm highly interested in advertising myself, as a Pynchon fan would almost have to be given the attention he pays to it, and I have no objections to talking about Oreo filling ads (in fact, I was planning to look that thread over later to see if anyone had mentioned that the fat in that filling was at one time lard-- if that's even true, though I read it in a more or less authoritative source, I thought-- supposedly around the time I was eating them, and whether that was a part of the implicit, unconscious antisemitism of the times and ever became a source of consternation among Jews), but I also am very interested in Pynchon novels, and think there was at least as much there there there in the Pynchon novel post as in the Oreo filling post.

As for the "SRS BZNS" business, I am a little surprised any such issue would cross your mind. I certainly was not thinking in those terms; I don't believe such distinctions are valid or can ever be made valid.
posted by jamjam at 6:51 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]

I'm going to have to agree that a new Pynchon novel is a serious cultural event, and does deserve to be discussed on Metafilter. Does this mean all posts about upcoming things are forbidden? I was thinking about posting about The National announcing a new album.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:54 PM on February 27

"You know who else didn't like jazz?"

Johnny?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:56 PM on February 27 [4 favorites]

There's three really tasty looking potato chip flavors

At least two of those flavors are decidedly 'meh.' If I down an entire bag of Sriracha-flavored anything, I expect my mouth to be on fire. It was not.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:56 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

I tried the Chicken & Waffles potato chips. My first thought was "these are awful!"

Then I ate the whole bag.

The funny thing is, I honestly still don't know whether I liked them or not.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 6:58 PM on February 27 [14 favorites]

I'm going to have to agree that a new Pynchon novel is a serious cultural event, and does deserve to be discussed on Metafilter

Sure. When it actually comes out.
posted by LionIndex at 7:02 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]

Does this mean all posts about upcoming things are forbidden?

No. Be serious.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:02 PM on February 27

I keep reading this in my head in a painfully fake Italian accent, like the Olive Garden ads or Super Mario.

Bongiorno! It's a'Dorno!

That's all I got. No other opinions on OK Go, Pepsi, Oreos, BOP's chicken waffle chips, Pynchon, and the motherfucking culture industry.

No, wait. BOP, what the hell, how is that a real thing? Are you makin this up?
posted by cmyk at 7:07 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

cortex explains here why the Pynchon post was deleted.
posted by rtha at 7:07 PM on February 27

I love commercials, I love brands, I love social media and corporations. I just checked one page of posts in my profile and many are about a product of some sort. I don't see a problem. Hell, I've linked to ad campaigns I like.

I figure if I can put up with sorts links I should get the marketing ones I enjoy.

IN short: Why are you ruining people's fun!
posted by cjorgensen at 7:13 PM on February 27

Off to google Adorno by the way. I hope it's something tasty!
posted by cjorgensen at 7:14 PM on February 27 [3 favorites]

...I guess I'll spare everyone the "fuck the motherfucking culture industry" rant and get back to reading Adorno, since it's profoundly obvious nobody really gives a shit.

posted by doreur to Etiquette/Policy...

This made me laugh out loud. Thanks for cheering a sick guy up.
posted by davejay at 7:17 PM on February 27 [9 favorites]

Where does it say in the FPP that the video was produced by Oreo's advertising/marketing departments? It doesn't.

"David Neevel only likes the chocolate cookie part of the OREO, so Nabisco hired him to build a machine to remove the creme as part of their "Cookie or Creme?" promotion."

THAT would have been a massively more honest post.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:18 PM on February 27 [6 favorites]

So if Pepsi Blue had been shrewd enough to do a video of some hipster's really kewel steampunk Rube Goldberg machine pouring the shit into the mouth of a passing dog on a skateboard, you'd all be fine with a FPP on that too?

Yes, and as a result of this fucking metatalk thread, I'm eating Oreos, drinking a Pepsi and crying quietly to myself.
posted by empath at 7:25 PM on February 27 [4 favorites]

Where does it say in the FPP that the video was produced by Oreo's advertising/marketing departments? It doesn't.

I guess that's an argument against embedding. Click through and they aren't hiding anything. I don't see a problem with the framing though. If it had been a link to a movie trailer I don't need to be told the people in the movie aren't really vampires.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:26 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

I ate lobster-flavored potatoe chips once. I thought they'd be pretty good but they were a little gross, actually,
posted by octobersurprise at 7:27 PM on February 27

I thought they'd be pretty good but they were a little gross, actually,

I felt the same way after eating the Big Bite flavored potato chips from 7-11.

In my defense, I was drunk.
posted by empath at 7:28 PM on February 27

So if Pepsi Blue had been shrewd enough to do a...

I wouldn't call it shrewd, but I made a post about Pepsi.I learned the term weasel word from that post.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:29 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

I am disappointed. I thought that there were now blue Oreos. Oh wait, there are!
posted by Wordwoman at 7:32 PM on February 27

some hipster's really kewel steampunk Rube Goldberg machine pouring the shit into the mouth of a passing dog on a skateboard

Y'know, if Luis Buñuel had thought of this, it'd be a fucking classic.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:33 PM on February 27

My curiosity was piqued by the mention of this Adorno fellow (So that I too could do the intellectual mic drop should the opportunity arise), but when I looked him up I found that his works were in books - BOOKS I WOULD BE EXPECTED TO PAY FOR.

Curse you/well played, sneaky marketer!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:37 PM on February 27 [21 favorites]

Free advertising is free advertising. The only reason this video exists at all is to push product.

But I love product! I purchase product with salary! Take product home and enjoy!
posted by griphus at 7:38 PM on February 27 [15 favorites]

I'd have liked more context in the post, but among other signals, the guy says in the ad that he's a "physicist and copywriter." They're really not hiding anything about its phoniness or relationship to the culture industry.

Since we're talking culture theory a little here, there once was a conference where one of Stuart Hall's students gave a talk about gender and reversals of expectations and whatnot in The Crying Game. And Stuart Hall's comment afterward was, "But Matilda(*)! It's innnnnn the moooooovie!"

Cultural theorists are really doing their job when they explain something that's not obvious, e.g. Adorno 70 years ago. Otherwise it's pretty boring.

(*) Name changed to protect the innocent.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 7:39 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]

MetaTalk? Really?

Why are you making a passive-agressive callout about a stupid Oreo post people seem to be enjoying and will have forgotten about by Friday? Just curious.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I guess I'll spare everyone the "flag it and move on" rant and get back to eating these Mega Stuf Oreos, since it's profoundly obvious nobody else in the office is going to (because, honestly, they're kinda terrible. Trust me, kiddos, stop at Double Stuf.)
posted by maryr at 7:40 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

I miss hydrox
posted by The Whelk at 7:47 PM on February 27 [3 favorites]

You guys see the Oreos where they put Oreos in the creme? They are actually made with rejected oreos. They aren't called oreoceptions but they should be.
posted by Ad hominem at 7:48 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Also, due to lactose intolerance, Oreos are one of the few cookie-based snacks I can eat because the 'creme' is entirely soy-based.
posted by griphus at 7:49 PM on February 27

A metatalk on a product thread is sort of like protesting the release of a movie. Effective, jut generally not in the desired manner.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:51 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Mr. Christie, you make good cookies; Mr. Nabisco, not so much.

(Hooray for coconut oil!)
posted by Sys Rq at 7:51 PM on February 27

God I miss Swiss Rolls. I am now angry at this MeTa for reasons entirely unrelated to the matter at hand.
posted by griphus at 7:52 PM on February 27 [3 favorites]

oreos, oreo video
posted by Greg Nog at 7:54 PM on February 27

I love how Adorno is "ad, or no?"

I WAS IN GRADUATE SCHOOL FOR 6 LONG YEARS AND DIDN'T NOTICE THIS WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH ME?
posted by googly at 9:34 PM on February 27

I want to say this is eponysterical, though I can't say exactly how.
posted by sweetkid at 7:58 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]

The new Grey Poupon viral is way better.

Just sayin'.
posted by spilon at 8:00 PM on February 27

The new Grey Poupon viral is way better.

For me to Poupon!

sorry
posted by jonmc at 8:03 PM on February 27 [22 favorites]

Yeah yeah, I know. I guess I'll spare everyone the "fuck the motherfucking culture industry" rant and get back to reading Adorno, since it's profoundly obvious nobody really gives a shit.

Make the switch to decaf, man.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:04 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Man the last time I got all gakked up I just killed a fifth of Meyers rum with my buddy and was mega-emphatic about how good Kraftwerk was, but I guess getting all cranky at mefi is a choice too, never know when you're gonna hafta quit that, might wanna make it count.
posted by Divine_Wino at 8:11 PM on February 27

Also, Johnmc, right on!
posted by Divine_Wino at 8:11 PM on February 27 [2 favorites]

Wow, weird, I was just reading Negative Dialectics and came across this:

The will without the bodily impulse, which lives on weakly in the imagination, would be none at all; at the same time however it arranges itself as a centralizing unity of the impulses, as the authority which restrains and potentially negates them. This necessitates its dialectical determination. It is the power of consciousness, by which it leaves its own magic circle and thereby transforms what merely is; its recoil is resistance. Is anyone else totally jonesing for an Oreo right now? No doubt the memory of this always accompanied the transcendental rational doctrine of morals; as in the Kantian avowal of the given fact [Gegebenheit] of the moral law independent of philosophical consciousness. His thesis is heteronomous and authoritarian, but has its moment of truth in that it limits the pure rational character of the moral law. If one took the one reason strictly, it could be no other than the unabbreviated, philosophical one. The motif culminates in the Fichtean formulation of the self-evidence of what is moral. As the bad conscience of the rationality of the will, however, its irrationality becomes crumpled up and false. Jesus, I could eat like a hundred of those things. In a heartbeat. If it is once supposed as self-evident, exempt from rational reflection, then what is self-evident affords shelter to the unexamined residue and to repression. Self-evidence is the hallmark of what is civilized: good is what is one, immutable, identical. What does not fit into this, the whole legacy of the pre-logical natural moment, turns immediately into evil, as abstract as the principle of its opposite. Got milk.

posted by gwint at 8:18 PM on February 27 [10 favorites]

I have no oreos in the house. Stop talking about oreos! I'm dying for a damned oreo now.
posted by zarq at 8:22 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

I would love to have a biscuit of any sort in the house but we're out :(
posted by arcticseal at 8:32 PM on February 27

Wait, Oreos with Oreos in the creme? Tell me more!

Also, the mega stuf Oreos are too much, in general, but at least I can stop with one instead of wanting 4 or 5 like I do with regular or double stuf.
posted by Night_owl at 8:34 PM on February 27

The concept of separation of the Oreo components has always been a mystery to me. The cookie alone bears no resemblance to chocolate and more to, well, I don't know, dust? The creme alone tastes like shortening. Together it's a damned tasty cookie and I'm not above eating a dozen.

I would've posted this in the FPP had I bothered to click. Thanks for the opportunity, I guess.

jonmc, in the pre-Triumph days my thing was to pass the jar and exclaim, "Poupon your food!"
posted by wallabear at 8:55 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

The cookie alone bears no resemblance to chocolate and more to, well, I don't know, dust?

OMG yes. (Sure I've eaten dust. Who hasn't?)
posted by sweetkid at 9:28 PM on February 27

Yes, but what does the blue muppet say about this?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:34 PM on February 27

Maybe it's just that my college degree is technically an advertising degree (well, an advertising concentration anyway), but I feel that marketers are the best and most interesting sorts of people, and find it odd that you peons so desperately crave new content to cram down your sensorholes yet feel yourself above we who are talented at content generation. In this case, thou hast been blest twice: first with the amusing video of the man that does the thing, and next with the rows upon rows of Oreos, carefully manufactured to allow you to consume them forever without halt.

What would you eat without Oreos? What would you watch without videos of men doing extraordinary things to Oreos? Do you not seek elevation from the mundanity of reality? Do you not enjoy seeing how a simple Oreo can be turned into a hobby, a pursuit, an obsession, a purpose? Where you see something dirty and corporate, I see God: the God that might only be found in unusual revelations within the usual.

I will point out additionally that said Oreo marketing video contains samples of [ASCII Art] and [Chiptune BGM], each of which are not only Added Value Points that are noteworthy in their own right, but which together combine to create a richer, more consumable good, full of nuance and care, through which you might understand that the Oreo itself is a pinnacle of sorts, a physical peak, a manifestation of a complex and rich universe into a sensory, textile, and digestible sermon. You may choose not to make the pilgrimage yourself, but the divine path is always open to you – waiting, as any true God waits, for you to make the choice. In the meantime there is an immaterial world of culture and style and taste just waiting to be unpacked within that video, offered free of charge, as many times as you would like to see it.

If you wish to know what the future will look like, play it, and, five minutes later, play it again. We have all the time in the world, or all the time that matters to you anyway. You may leave when you wish. The Oreos are out there, you know where they are, you may purchase them anyti
posted by Rory Marinich at 9:42 PM on February 27 [17 favorites]

"The aim of Oreos is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive cookie, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike layering of the Oreo cookie and creme strata both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite." — Theodor W. Adorno (talking about taking off the cookie part of an Oreo and then eating only the creme)
posted by Falconetti at 9:43 PM on February 27 [5 favorites]

wait
what wait WHOA

GUYS when you crumble an oreo into a vaporizer everyhintg gets all
posted by Rory Marinich at 9:46 PM on February 27 [9 favorites]

I hate you all, all of you, with your working digestive systems that allow you to eat Oreos in all their gluteny splendor.
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:03 PM on February 27 [3 favorites]

That's an interesting coincidence, Sidhedevil, because I hate them for being able to eat things with processed sugars in them without having to stay awake for days afterwards.
posted by koeselitz at 10:37 PM on February 27

Let's start a gang called the Oreoless Warriors!
posted by Sidhedevil at 10:54 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Don't worry, you two; you will have less regrets about what you eat in the middling-distant future.
posted by solarion at 10:57 PM on February 27

Okay, Sidhedevil, but I wanna be Rembrandt.
posted by koeselitz at 11:00 PM on February 27

BitterOldPunk:
I tried the Chicken & Waffles potato chips. My first thought was "these are awful!"
Then I ate the whole bag.
The funny thing is, I honestly still don't know whether I liked them or not.

This was exactly my reaction to the BLT flavored Lays. They really do taste like a BLT, from the bread and mayo to the tomato and even lettuce. I spent the whole bag trying to decide whether or not they were good.

I have since chosen to spend my chip money on chips that aren't so confusing.
posted by ApathyGirl at 11:03 PM on February 27 [5 favorites]

I'm thisclose to posting an AskMe re the lyrics to the Oreo jingle that begins "Little girls have pretty curls but I like Oreos". This has been driving me nuts for the past hour or so and I don't trust the responses I found via a quick google.

I'm not going to do so because I know that tomorrow morning I won't care anymore. It's just a silly earworm jingle and not worth troubling anyone over.

I respectfully suggest that the OP take a similar attitude re the post on the blue.
posted by she's not there at 1:26 AM on February 28

Regarding the sirracha flavored Lay's chips... I never get excited about chips but seeing those out of the corner of my eye while standing in line at the store, i was very surprised and intrigued. Disappointed to find they contain dairy, which i don't eat. Guess I'll have to stick to squirting it directly on plain chips. Why dairy anyway? Weird.
posted by orme at 2:25 AM on February 28

I grow weary of the implications in MetaTalk that by comparing two totally dissimilar posts, people can somehow divine the secret will of the moderators that has heretofore been obscured by us and not revealed in the literally thousands of comments on MetaTalk and elsewhere on the site that we've made.

As a test specialist, my recommendation is to instead take the available specifications and documentation, then test against them. That way you actually know which posts are supposed to fail and you're not arguing about whether or not a given result is a fence post error.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:38 AM on February 28

The Garden Tomato & Basil Lays are better than those new flavors anyway.
posted by Burhanistan at 2:44 AM on February 28

Sidhedevil, as a person with Celiac, my only reason for living are these Glutino cookies.

That and my kids, I guess.
posted by kinetic at 2:45 AM on February 28 [4 favorites]

Rory, you're supposed to eat the oreos. Not crumble them into lines of chocolatey dust and snort them.
posted by zarq at 3:17 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

My curiosity was piqued by the mention of this Adorno fellow (So that I too could do the intellectual mic drop should the opportunity arise), but when I looked him up I found that his works were in books - BOOKS I WOULD BE EXPECTED TO PAY FOR.

On top of that, to really get the most out of Adorno you (or some generous government institution) need to shell out for hundreds more books and several years of graduate education, preferably at an expensive private university such as Yale or the University of Chicago. It makes those Get Rich Quick in Real Estate scams look like child's play.
posted by drlith at 3:42 AM on February 28 [2 favorites]

My curiosity was piqued by the mention of this Adorno fellow (So that I too could do the intellectual mic drop should the opportunity arise)

The only thing I know about Adorno is that he hated jazz and pop music, and that his criticisms of jazz were based on a really rigid and already out-moded understanding of music theory.
posted by empath at 3:49 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Off to google Adorno by the way. I hope it's something tasty!

Well, it's not delivery.
posted by that's how you get ants at 4:44 AM on February 28 [12 favorites]

The Metatalk Pick 'n' Mix Thread-o-Matic!

Pick ONE option from each of sections 1, 2 and 3 to construct your own Metatalk thread!

1. I guess I'll ...

[  ] spare everyone the "fuck the motherfucking culture industry" rant,
[  ] let you inbred sheeple continue marching blindly toward the pseudo-food industry's abattoirs,
[  ] ignore your prostitution of yourselves to the racist, sexist, antisemitic neo-Hitlers who run the Google Play store,
[  ] weep hot salty tears as you ignore the REAL victims of American Idol, i.e. the polar bears,
[  ] continue to fight for FREE SPEECH while you wallow in comfortable conformity, you fungus-fucking mind-sloths,

2. ... and I'll get back to ...

[  ] reading Adorno,
[  ] giving Žižek a handjob,
[  ] cutting a hip-flask-shaped hole into the pages of my copy of Being and Time, so I can hide a hip-flask in there - 'cos that's how Dasein rolls, motherfucker -
[  ] correcting other people's pronunciation of "Gilles Deleuze" by adopting the most outrageous, over-egged French accent imaginable,
[  ] polishing my collection of Routledge Classics,

3. ... since it's ...

[  ] profoundly obvious nobody really gives a shit.
[  ] another fifteen minutes to my Introduction to Philosophy class, and no-one wants to play hacky-sack with me.
[  ] the bidding of the scientist who constructed my robot body (in the likeness of his dead son) to fight crime, and also he made machine guns that shoot outta my ass, which is pretty weird when you think about it.
[  ] not like anyone is going to vote #1 quidnunc kid to rescue us from the gosh-darned mess the world is in *sigh*.
[  ] "Hammer Time".
posted by the quidnunc kid at 4:51 AM on February 28 [101 favorites]

Now I'm hungry....
posted by HuronBob at 5:14 AM on February 28

Free advertising is free advertising. The only reason this video exists at all is to push product.

So if Pepsi Blue had been shrewd enough to do a video of some hipster's really kewel steampunk Rube Goldberg machine pouring the shit into the mouth of a passing dog on a skateboard, you'd all be fine with a FPP on that too?

Got it.

See, the irony here is that, with a little understanding of the basics of advertising to other humans, you might have had a productive discussion about what's bothering you. Instead, you chose contempt as your weapon of choice and got a very predictable response.
posted by Rodrigo Lamaitre at 5:22 AM on February 28 [3 favorites]

I dunno about you guys, but I'm thinking this might fall into the category of the 50% of advertising dollars that is wasted . . .
posted by gorbichov at 5:48 AM on February 28

The only thing I know about Adorno is that he hated jazz and pop music, and that his criticisms of jazz were based on a really rigid and already out-moded understanding of music theory.

Actually, as someone who read Adorno first while deep in the clutches of a traditional music theory education, I think it was because he was a racist. His music theoretic orientation merely reflected that.
posted by spitbull at 5:51 AM on February 28

Also, if you think about it, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is Christianity Blue.
posted by spitbull at 5:53 AM on February 28 [2 favorites]

3. ... since it's ... [ ] "Hammer Miller Time".
posted by octobersurprise at 5:57 AM on February 28

So now that the barn is open and the ponys are out frolicking about I would like to know if when you post a post to the Blue, and have second thoughts about it, and have notified the mods through the usual channels to delete the post but they decide to let the post stand, despite the fact you've followed all the rules for the most part, and maybe commented in the post thinking it was going to be deleted but then it isn't and some of your comments from the post are gone, leaving you looking like some sort of disgruntled poster when you really aren't, should you just accept that that is the way MetaFilter works, and being a relative noob I should already know that? Or was there a different form I was supposed to fill out?

I mean, If I post to the Blue then have second thoughts, isn't a note to the mods enough to pull the post?
posted by Sailormom at 6:03 AM on February 28

The irony is that I didn't see the Oreo post on the Blue, but now that it's hit MeTa, I now have a hankering for some cookies from the National Biscuit Company. *ding!*

Most things are ads these days. TV shows are ads for the ads on a network. Music videos are ads for an album. The articles they give you for free on a newspaper website are a come-on for their subscription service. They all can have a reason for being outside of simple "BUY THIS PRODUCT!"
posted by inturnaround at 6:05 AM on February 28

And how soon we forget that metafilter is ad supported too.
posted by spitbull at 6:07 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I mean, If I post to the Blue then have second thoughts, isn't a note to the mods enough to pull the post?

I think it kind of sinks or swims on its own at that point. Once you click "submit", you no longer control it. If it's a good post and gets some discussion, then despite your misgivings, it spurred some activity and has become part of the site.
posted by inturnaround at 6:12 AM on February 28 [3 favorites]

Free advertising is free advertising. The only reason this video exists at all is to push product.

So if Pepsi Blue had been shrewd enough to do a video of some hipster's really kewel steampunk Rube Goldberg machine pouring the shit into the mouth of a passing dog on a skateboard, you'd all be fine with a FPP on that too?

Cadbury Creme Egg?

(See also.)
posted by Sys Rq at 6:15 AM on February 28

Oreos taste like charcoal smeared with sweetened spackling compound. Newman-Os or gtfo.
posted by Burhanistan at 6:16 AM on February 28

Sailormom, it's usually okay to ask for something to be deleted right away (ie, it's just been posted and has no comments), and it's also okay to ask for a deletion because something was not what you thought it was (turns out the video was faked or whatever), and that may or may not happen... but the thing that we pretty much never want to do is to delete a post because the poster doesn't like the way the comments are going. So about this the conventional wisdom is you just gotta let it go.

You can choose to ignore the thread entirely at that point, and just take it off your recent history, but if we deleted posts just because the comments didn't match the posters hopes or expectations, all discussion would be held hostage by the OP: discuss it my way, or it goes.

I don't think there's anyone who posts much at all who hasn't had the experience of posting something they thought was cool or interesting, and the discussion going someplace else entirely. It's happened to me more than once, certainly.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:24 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Thank you taz. Maybe it's different across the site, AskMe MeFi and MeTa.

You would think I would have learned my lesson the first time I posted using the words Neil Gaiman. But like I said, I'm a noob around here.
posted by Sailormom at 6:32 AM on February 28

You know what the alternative is....MORE KITTY VIDEOS!!

Or a link to a Cheap Trick song.
posted by juiceCake at 6:54 AM on February 28

Could somebody photoshop a picture of Adorno eating an Oreo? It would help a great deal.
posted by Jehan at 7:01 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

taz: " I don't think there's anyone who posts much at all who hasn't had the experience of posting something they thought was cool or interesting, and the discussion going someplace else entirely. It's happened to me more than once, certainly."

*raises hand*

Several dozen times.

Have actually tried begging commenters not to derail a thread. Or making snarky comments about other snarky comments. That nearly always backfires, since you're blatantly trying to steer the thread. Not cool.

As always, Taz has the best advice: Once you click "Post" the FPP isn't yours anymore. You're just a spectator. The community gets to decide how they interact with it. Sit back and observe, or simply walk away for a while.
posted by zarq at 7:02 AM on February 28 [2 favorites]

...and don't take it personally. :)
posted by zarq at 7:02 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it's somewhat different between the sites. We don't like to delete without good reason anywhere, but on Ask Me, people are often asking about highly personal issues, and we may delete on request while warning them that we don't want to be doing that again so they need to work out their privacy issues before posting in the future. On the blue, links are presented specifically for people to view and discuss, so it's not a question of privacy or personal issues. Though, yeah, if you have a personal or protective feeling toward the subject of a post, you might want to think twice because it could get ouchy.
posted by taz (staff) at 7:07 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

As posts go, I found it thin and unsatisfactory - like some kind of confectionery with an important ingredient missing.

Just going to wash my brain now.
posted by Segundus at 7:19 AM on February 28

If I post to the Blue then have second thoughts, isn't a note to the mods enough to pull the post?

Most of the time, on any part of the site, for any post that is more than a few minutes old, we'll counsel you to maybe take a walk and come back in a bit and/or just leave the post alone as a first option. If you're a person who has frequent poster's remorse (and we see this a lot more on AskMe than MeFi) we will start being a lot more hardline about not deleting questions for you after we've done it once.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:26 AM on February 28

Could somebody photoshop a picture of Adorno eating an Oreo?
posted by octobersurprise at 7:36 AM on February 28 [2 favorites]

If anyone wants to try the flavor of the chicken and waffle chips but can't get a hold of them I thought they tasted like Post Waffle Crisp cereal with chicken grease poured over it.

And seriously guys I haven't been here that long but I quickly figured out that moderation on the blue, aside from the few hard rules spelled out in the guidelines, is largely driven by flagging and feedback from the users as a group. Yes it's subjective. Why is that so hard to deal with?
posted by Wretch729 at 7:57 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

And part of the confusion with that post was that you didn't (out of honest confusion over contact form vs. mefimail, I know, so no worries) see and respond to the basically immediate response from me to your contact form note, which would have made it easier to work out in a little more detail exactly what your feelings were and where I was coming from on thinking it'd make more sense to leave that up. That's not really a conversation we're gonna have in the middle of a thread itself and it'd have been better if you'd skipped the comments about how the thread would/should/will be deleted in the actual thread since it creates that weird situation of one side of a conversation and the feeling of a user trying to mod their thread by proxy.

And again, no biggie. But that's part of what made it a little odd.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:57 AM on February 28

Well I didn't watch the video, but I read this thread and now I'm sitting the table with a glass of milk and half a dozen oreos.
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:05 AM on February 28

A New Pynchon Novel!!!!!!!!!!!
posted by angrycat at 8:11 AM on February 28

And again, no biggie. But that's part of what made it a little odd.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:57 AM on February 28 [+] [!]

I've been called worse.
posted by Sailormom at 8:15 AM on February 28

So, if someone who worked for Wieden + Kennedy, or someone who worked at General Mills

Oreo/Nabisco is owned by Kraft Foods, not General Mills. General Mills and Kraft foods are like the Hatfield and McCoys of the Consumer Packaged Goods world. Also Weiden seems to have done this and the Superbowl stuff as a one or two-off but DraftFCB is their agency of record still.

I know no one cares but General Mills was a former client and I work in advertising and know people at all these places so felt compelled to clarify.
posted by sweetkid at 8:16 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I don't have many more details about the elusive oreoceptions besides this picture. It seems the creme is meant to be like Oreo cookies and creme ice cream. I hope this isn't completely fake because I intend to find some of these and crumble them up and put them on top of some cookies and creme ice cream.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:25 AM on February 28 [2 favorites]

I work in advertising

J'ACCUSE
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:50 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

J'ACCUSE

yea I know advertising creates/Metafilter hates. Meh
posted by sweetkid at 8:54 AM on February 28 [6 favorites]

My real name is Dick Whitman!

/passes out
posted by roger ackroyd at 8:56 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

My real name is Roger Ackroyd!

/huffs Scotch Guard
posted by slogger at 9:21 AM on February 28 [4 favorites]

pouring the shit into the mouth of a passing dog on a skateboard

WAIT. How come no one has addressed the really important question here? WAS THE DOG WEARING SUNGLASSES?
posted by phunniemee at 9:35 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

My real name is Scotch Guard!

/huffs Macallan
posted by Etrigan at 9:42 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Is there a definitive list of who we hate? I think it looks like this, from most to least

Anyone who works in finance
Advertising
....
Programmers
Librarians
Teachers
Graduate Students

It would be nice to flesh that out because there is a huge jump between kinda a lot with advertisers and not much at all for programmers.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:46 AM on February 28 [3 favorites]

Any rich person who is doing something charitable with their money.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:47 AM on February 28 [6 favorites]

The list is certainly headed by "hipsters," even though the definition of same is inchoate and misunderstood. This makes them both easier to hate and the group larger, so it's a win-win.
posted by OmieWise at 9:51 AM on February 28 [4 favorites]

I am definitely interested in the Chicken and Waffles Lay's potato chip, though I'd probably eat the Sriracha one on a more regular basis. I don't know, though. I'm hooked on all of those BBQ ones, and they're usually really sweet.
posted by small_ruminant at 9:52 AM on February 28

I thought they tasted like Post Waffle Crisp cereal with chicken grease poured over it

Mmmm...schmaltzy.
posted by dersins at 9:59 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Addition to the list: Anyone who uses the word "inchoate" like it ain't no big thing.
posted by Etrigan at 10:00 AM on February 28 [4 favorites]

I only kid hipsters because I love. But yeah, onto the list they go. I guess we should find Bros a place as well if we are including "scenes" in the list.

We should also include "makers", not because what they are doing is bad, but because the term "maker" is kinda offputting.

I believe people who use the word inchoate are under graduate students.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:04 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I have seen the Oreoceptions in stores and can verify their existence, but despite my love of novelty Oreos (particularly the seemingly heretical Neapolitan Triple Double Oreos, which I liked enough to send to a friend in France), I did not purchase the Oreo-within-an-Oreo Oreos.
posted by maryr at 10:24 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Economists probably falls somewhere around finance, which hurts my tiny, utility-driven heart.
posted by Rodrigo Lamaitre at 10:28 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I've tried just about every novelty Oreo but the coconut ones, and liked them all, but you guys probably knew that.
posted by jonmc at 10:36 AM on February 28

I hate everybody
posted by angrycat at 10:36 AM on February 28

I hate everybody more and better.
posted by Burhanistan at 10:37 AM on February 28

Anyone who uses the word "inchoate" like it ain't no big thing.

Seriously, dude. The preferred nomenclature is "nascent".
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:46 AM on February 28

I only hate a pretty obscure group of people, you probably haven't heard of them.
posted by Infinite Jest at 10:47 AM on February 28 [7 favorites]

I stopped work on my oratorio
To write this poem in praise of Oreos
They're good enough to anchor a porno
But don't take my word for it, ask Adorno
posted by "Elbows" O'Donoghue at 10:50 AM on February 28

eyeballkid's been hatin' on everyone since way before any of you were even thought of. Possibly since before time began.

I did not know that Oreos had a coconut flavor. This is bad knowledge for me to have.

In England a couple of years ago, I tried some crisps that were allegedly roast chicken-flavored. They were terrible.
posted by rtha at 10:51 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I wonder in which year of undergrad you make the transition from actually engaging in an Adornian culture industry rant to merely gesturing at it ominously. Baby steps, right?
posted by invitapriore at 11:08 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Wow, rtha! I too missed the invention of coconut oreos. How did this happen?
posted by small_ruminant at 11:28 AM on February 28

Could somebody photoshop a picture of Adorno eating an Oreo?
posted by moonmilk at 11:37 AM on February 28 [5 favorites]

There are more flavors in heaven and earth, small_ruminant,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
posted by griphus at 11:38 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Anyone who works in finance
Advertising
....
Programmers
Librarians
Teachers
Graduate Students

How do we feel about poets? What about people who call themselves poets?
posted by dersins at 11:39 AM on February 28

There are only three real poets, and we cherish them all. But none of us agree which three among all the pretenders are real.

(Mine are: Richard Siken, Stephen Dobyns, and Jeff Mangum's prenatal child with Stephin Merritt, but a sinking feeling in my chest tells me even these are pretenders.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 11:44 AM on February 28 [2 favorites]

Look, at this point I think it might be easier to list who we don't hate:

FILE NOT FOUND
posted by griphus at 11:47 AM on February 28 [4 favorites]

Robert Frost is one, but only precisely during those moments he spent writing "Directive." He asked if I would include his lunch breaks in the tally, but I told him to get lost.
posted by invitapriore at 11:48 AM on February 28

I like the Dead Trees, though I suspect their concerts are attended by hipsters. Strawberries are awful, raspberries are great.
posted by juiceCake at 11:48 AM on February 28

Anyone who works in finance
Advertising
....
Programmers
Librarians
Teachers
Graduate Students

Fashion people would probably go up high on the MF hate side. Also where exactly would a "showrunner" go?
posted by sweetkid at 11:54 AM on February 28

Right next to "warfighter."
posted by griphus at 11:56 AM on February 28

I thought MeFi loved showrunners. Now I'm getting confused. sweetkid, are you authorized to add to that list?
posted by OmieWise at 11:58 AM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I thought we don't believe showrunners exist.

We like Dan Harmon and Stephen Moffat, and probably Ken Levine (well maybe not if his screed on Google Glass gets linked), but hate Russel T Davies right?

I am releasing my base list under a creative commons copyleft gnu open source license, feel free to add, remove, or adjust and republish as you see fit.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:02 PM on February 28

FOURTH CITIZEN: For your dwelling, briefly.

CINNA THE POET: Briefly, I dwell by the Capitol.

THIRD CITIZEN: Your name, sir, truly.

CINNA THE POET: Truly, my name is Cinna.

FIRST CITIZEN: Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.

CINNA THE POET: I am Cinna the poet! I am Cinna the poet!

FOURTH CITIZEN: Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
posted by Sidhedevil at 12:08 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure we love showrunners. It's showruiners we hate.
posted by maryr at 12:09 PM on February 28

I hate people who purposely use Papyrus.

I just purposely used Papyrus.
posted by slogger at 12:15 PM on February 28

There are more flavors in heaven and earth, small_ruminant,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

This list doesn't include rainbow sherbert Oreos. I had one of these last summer and it really made me question my life.
posted by jeoc at 12:17 PM on February 28

Anyone who works in finance
Advertising
....
Programmers
Librarians
Teachers
Graduate Students

Those that have just broken the flower vase
posted by zamboni at 12:26 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Those that have just eaten that plum I was saving.
posted by OmieWise at 12:36 PM on February 28 [2 favorites]

I quit watching the video once it was clear it wasn't going to send the Oreos over the internet into my waiting hands.
posted by deborah at 12:41 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

That's a job for Nabisco's new Oreo over IP or OoIP protocol if you will. For $19.95 a month you get a box that you plug into your router and you get unlimited long distance double stuff Oreos.
posted by Talez at 12:50 PM on February 28 [3 favorites]

I'll take three!
posted by Etrigan at 12:54 PM on February 28

It's not showrunners themselves, it's people who use the term "showrunners". See, I've been paying attention.
posted by Curious Artificer at 12:55 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Do they still make Oreo-O's cereal? It doesn't really taste like Oreos, but it's part of a nutritious breakfast.
posted by usonian at 1:00 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Shoot, we've had FPPs about entire afternoons of ads.

I tried the Chicken & Waffles potato chips. My first thought was "these are awful!" Then I ate the whole bag. The funny thing is, I honestly still don't know whether I liked them or not.

This is actually the exact reaction I have to Dr. Brown's Cel-ray Soda. I keep ordering it for the novelty of "a soda that tastes like celery whaaaaaaat" and then I get about ten sips in before I remember that "wait, I do not like celery-flavor soda".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:01 PM on February 28

It would be nice to flesh that out because there is a huge jump between kinda a lot with advertisers and not much at all for programmers.

Well except for us programmers who work on ads.

I tried to read this thread but I am pretty sure I've read it 20 times before...
posted by wildcrdj at 1:08 PM on February 28

It would be nice to flesh that out because there is a huge jump between kinda a lot with advertisers and not much at all for programmers.

Well except for us programmers who work on ads.

I'm a digital producer who works with programmers on ads.
posted by sweetkid at 1:13 PM on February 28

You know, I saw this show up on MeFi and knew what it was right away, even though I hadn't watched it (saw what I assumed was this video posted to Some Other Site). I wish I had flagged it right away, and am doing so belatedly, and I'll offer this justification by DFW:

"An ad that pretends to be art is – at absolute best – like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair."
posted by antonymous at 1:24 PM on February 28 [2 favorites]

An ad that pretends to be art is - at absolute best - like "christian rock".
posted by dunkadunc at 1:30 PM on February 28

Apparently Oreo-O's went to the big cereal bowl in the sky in 2007. Too bad for Post, because thanks to this thread I probably would have gone out and bought a box!

/Makes no apologies for having been conditioned to respond to marketing as a television-watching child of the 1970s and 80s
posted by usonian at 1:38 PM on February 28

You can still get Cookie Crisp, the breakfast cereal that is probably considerably worse for you than eating actual cookies for breakfast.
posted by griphus at 1:40 PM on February 28 [2 favorites]

I hate myself, so I hate poets and hipsters. I'm not a hipster, though, just like the rest of Metafilter's not-hipster population who love microbrews and indie music and fixed gear bikes. But they're not hipsters.

The list of things MeFi hates and the list of things I hate don't overlap. My list doesn't include Tim Rogers or David Brooks.

"Advertising is the poetry of capitalism".
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 1:45 PM on February 28

An ad that pretends to be art is – at absolute best – like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you.

This is assuming that there is no overlap between art and commerce – an assumption I wholeheartedly disagree with. There is an art to admaking, in the more mundane sense of the word "art", and I do believe that advertising is capable of working as high art also, though it is difficult to find the places where high art and corporate interests merge, and exactly zero corporations give a shit about whether their advertising is achieving a higher cause. The trick – a trick which perhaps DFW hadn't seen before when he wrote that essay, in the late nineties – is that for an advertisement to be honest, it must accept that it is an ad, and work within the confines of advertising. That is, it has to deal at least in part with the fact that, yes, it wants to sell a thing, and find a way to achieve something other than merely sales while still remaining an advertisement.

I think that Tim and Eric have done better things with advertising than anybody else I know – not surprising since they've done plenty of commercial/media satires in their various shows, and have a pretty solid understanding both of how ads work as ads and how they affect culture. Their Absolut commercial was great, but when Old Spice hired them to follow the famous "Man Your Man Could Smell Like" ads, their Terry Crews series both parodied the original ads (which themselves were parodies of commercials in general) and advertising as a medium. Their Charmin ad from last year is especially wonderful. Another terrific surreal ad that's completely effective is David Lynch's coffee commercial – though Lynch has done a number of ads for companies which do the Lynchian thing of capturing the absurdity of surface perception while still acknowledging their seductiveness. Odd how Lynch, one of DFW's idols, goes so well with perfume spots.

Wieden+Kennedy (who did the Old Spice campaign) and Crispin Porter Bogusky have an impressive record of making ads which are entirely comfortable being ads. WK's Michael Jordan and KobeSystem campaigns both make you very, very aware that you're watching an ad, that they're doing ridiculous things to make you pay attention, and that there's a contract implicit in ad-watching: more than any other agency know, they understand that they have a responsibility to make an ad worth your time, and that if they don't, you'll stop watching. CPB goes kind of the opposite route – they like to make ads which feint in one direction, then twist at the last second to reveal what they're really selling. Their classic Lamp and Safe Happens spots are good examples. And what's interesting about CPB is how willing they are to risk completely fucking up for the sake of getting the balance they're looking for. I loved the idea behind their Groupon ads, for instance, but the execution pissed everybody off, and their Bill Gates ads were just weird. But I appreciate their attempts – they make me think.

And then there's I Feel Great, which is just one of my favorite things ever. I think if I ever had doubts about whether or not advertising could be great, this is what dispelled it for me at an early age.

The mistake that DFW made is thinking that an ad "pretending to be art" is an ad that is also pretending not to be an ad. The best ads are the ones which embrace their ad-ness and spiral out from there; there is such a thing as making a sale sincerely, and contrary to popular belief, ads which are less full of shit tend to sell a hell of a lot more product than ads made by people who think they're pulling one over you. Sales are not the only thing in the world and it's a shame that capitalism is the lifeblood of our society, but hey, every age has its bullshit to deal with.
posted by Rory Marinich at 2:05 PM on February 28 [19 favorites]

Rory, you are really knocking it out of the park in this thread. Kudos.
posted by sweetkid at 2:07 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

I'd eat Cookie Crisp about once a year if I could get it by the bowl, but even I don't like it enough to eat a whole box of it.
posted by usonian at 2:12 PM on February 28

I tried the Chicken & Waffles potato chips. My first thought was "these are awful!" Then I ate the whole bag. The funny thing is, I honestly still don't know whether I liked them or not.

This is actually the exact reaction I have to

Pine soda. When I lived in Québec, a friend of mine told me about this and I thought they were fucking with me. Then I saw a two-liter bottle in the supermarket, bought it, and tried a sip in the parking lot. It tasted like floor cleaner with sugar. The combined tastes were so confusing that I bust out laughing. And kept drinking. Laughing, and drinking, until I started thinking that it actually might very well be floor cleaner and sugar, and put the bottle down, walking away. I haven't tried it since.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 2:22 PM on February 28 [5 favorites]

I have never had pine soda, and now I am wondering if it's like birch beer, which I love. Must find pine soda next time I'm in Quebec. If it goes well with smoked meat and poutine, I may never leave.
posted by Sidhedevil at 2:30 PM on February 28

It tasted like floor cleaner with sugar. The combined tastes were so confusing that I bust out laughing. And kept drinking.

See also Retsina
posted by Greg Nog at 2:34 PM on February 28

The trick – a trick which perhaps DFW hadn't seen before when he wrote that essay, in the late nineties – is that for an advertisement to be honest, it must accept that it is an ad, and work within the confines of advertising. That is, it has to deal at least in part with the fact that, yes, it wants to sell a thing, and find a way to achieve something other than merely sales while still remaining an advertisement.

The problem here though is that you get a sort of infinite regress, because one can always counter that the projected honesty is itself a deceit designed to manipulate you into buying the product, to which you would counter that the ad can then be honest by being honest about its deceitfully-projected honesty, and so on. There's no real logical endpoint here, I think -- it finally just comes down to whether or not you personally feel that the sales motive is a fatally corruptive force in art.
posted by invitapriore at 2:37 PM on February 28

invitapriore – actually, I think that's what makes advertising so interesting to me. That infinite regress exists in every interaction between two people: how much is honest? How much is calculated or manipulative, and to what extent? Ultimately, communication itself is a form of manipulation, and there's no such thing as a wholly direct connection between two people; furthermore, in order to achieve a "sincere" connection with somebody you often have to work through layers of politeness and consideration and etiquette which themselves are techniques for working around somebody else's internal processes.

With advertising that process is very explicit – you have to consider it as you're working – whereas with other kinds of art you can bullshit yourself into thinking there's no barrier there, or else you can develop rather simple ways of breaching it to some extent and then sticking with it. While none of my favorite works of art are advertisements, quite a few of my favorite artists worked in advertising at some point or other, and the experience shows. I also tend to like art that feels very commercial or product-like on its surface: though I like plenty of art that isn't, I'm more receptive to songs or stories or films that meet me halfway and acknowledge that, yes, I'm the audience, no, I don't have to be here, yes, they will make some effort to engage me and draw me into their worlds. It's not necessary, no, but it always feels like a gesture of good faith, and I don't think that necessarily has to interfere with the artist's intentions with her work. Even modern artists who aren't advertisers seem to understand that more than older artists did, and I appreciate that.
posted by Rory Marinich at 2:49 PM on February 28

That infinite regress exists in every interaction between two people: how much is honest?

I dunno, man, I'm not sure I agree that personal interaction is foggy and advertising is more explicit. On a personal level, we usually have a lot more data points to work with - how long we've known them, how well, have they deceived us in the past - not to mention whole other levels of interaction (is this person my peer, my boss, my child, my friend?). Communication on a personal level, in my experience, provides a lot of resources by which we can gauge the truth of someone's expression. Advertising, by contrast, contains a great deal of obfuscation, but moreso, the power balance is very much in the corporation's favor.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:05 PM on February 28

That's a really good point, actually, though I still feel myself resisting the idea of making the barrier between art and advertising fully permeable, and I think the reason why is because it seems to me that in other kinds of art there is at least the possibility of setting down the fear that you are being had: although it's unlikely, when you are looking at a piece of art in a non-commercial context, you can convince yourself that the artist really just wanted to show you this thing and that's it. With advertising, the knowledge that the ad's very existence is predicated on its ability to get you to buy something seems insurmountable in terms of securing the trust you need to really receive something as art.
posted by invitapriore at 3:07 PM on February 28

Rory, I realize that there is an art to advertising, and I will readily admit to enjoying just about every ad you linked to above. But I just want as few ads as possible in my life, even at the expense of my personal entertainment. I know this is probably a naive position to take, especially in light of your very thoughtful response(s), but I simply do not want to see Great Works of Advertising. Perhaps the self-awareness of modern advertising makes it more sincere, but will an ad ever recognize me as more than just a wallet-carrier? To slightly riff on your above response, *I* know the purpose of advertising, and truly "clever" ads just attempt to obfuscate our relationship - so that's a net gain for sincerity?

I just don't want to take part in a society where the only mechanism for artists to showcase their talents is by selling me NutriGrain bars, and where my sole purpose is to buy them. Advertising attempts to narrow the gap between human and corporation, and that's a concept I actively oppose elsewhere, why would I make an exception just because I got a cheap laugh out of the deal?
posted by antonymous at 3:09 PM on February 28 [3 favorites]

Communication on a personal level, in my experience, provides a lot of resources by which we can gauge the truth of someone's expression.

The flip side of this is that with advertising we're rarely in any kind of immediately vulnerable position: ads exist pretty much by definition at a distance, in a context where any but the most naive media consumer understands that ads exist, that they exist to sell, and that what's on the table is not personal stakes or the question of whether to trust someone or open your heart to them or whatever. With an ad, you don't need to gauge the nature of the interaction because you know it's an ad and it knows you know.

Which may come back around to why people are sometimes so bothered by stealth virals and so on—there is that question of whether someone once fooled into treating something credibly as a non-ad will feel more betrayed on revelation than they otherwise would be by something that broadcast its nature-as-advertisement clearly from the first moment.

And I can dig that, though to some extent I feel like it's easy to magnify that sense of duplicity or betrayal into something more than what it is—to let a distaste for advertising/marketing/sales to inflate the actual heft and force of the thing being encountered—and that leads to these mixed reactions of "it's a goddam ad!" vs. "it's...just an ad."

Media frontiers are where you're going to find the newest experiments in form, in both art and commercial work, so for me mostly it feels like part of the cost of being into pop culture (and even kind of part of the adventure) to see the ways that marketing ends up intersecting with culture in real time, even if I find some of the actual practical goals and implementation of ads/marketing obnoxious. Sort of the same way I both loathe spam and enjoy seeing the clever new twists spammers or spam-theorists approach the problem.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:18 PM on February 28 [2 favorites]

The flip side of this is that with advertising we're rarely in any kind of immediately vulnerable position: ads exist pretty much by definition at a distance, in a context where any but the most naive media consumer understands that ads exist, that they exist to sell, and that what's on the table is not personal stakes or the question of whether to trust someone or open your heart to them or whatever. With an ad, you don't need to gauge the nature of the interaction because you know it's an ad and it knows you know.

But at some point you need to decide your process for how you trust an ad. On a personal level, we have plenty of resources to work with. On an advertising level, reaching for resources gets considerably harder, especially with the money and technology available to some of the larger entities out there.

I do appreciate advertising as an art form. I just think getting to truth, in advertising, it's not really practical or helpful to treat all ads equally - we do need to buy things - and while the consumer isn't totally helpless, they do have the deck already stacked against them.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:25 PM on February 28

But at some point you need to decide your process for how you trust an ad.

I feel like this sounds glib and so I want to be clear that I don't intend it that way, but I find that fundamentally distrusting them works pretty well. I don't look to ads for any kind of trustworthy communication; I avoid them where doing so takes less energy than not doing so, and I judge the ones I encounter on their merits as entertainment-or-not and I make my actual purchasing decisions based on totally different channels.

An ad does it's job on me I guess if it introduces me to a product I was unfamiliar with in a way that doesn't actively generate within me annoyance at the product, but I'm never going to trust an ad for information about that product. I'm certain I'm not totally immune to branding and manipulation and so on, but I also do close to zero impulse shopping and it only takes me a little bit of effort to be pointedly attentive when I'm treading into unfamiliar purchasing territory. So my level of concern on that front is pretty low; the emotional energy required of me to be bothered by ads is generally more then the emotional energy required to just do some basic vetting on an unfamiliar product niche. That that's the case for me is probably informing considerably my take on all this, though, and I can dig that people are different and that balance is probably different from person to person.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:54 PM on February 28

What? Lays has new chip flavors? Is this like an arthouse film that only opens in NYC type of thing?

Luckily I can eat my Roast Chicken flavored snacks that are shaped like chicken legs. And they are hollow. I win at snacks.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:00 PM on February 28

We just ate some lobster-flavored Lays that a friend brought us back from Thailand the other day. They were pretty weird. The lobster flavor hit kind of late, at first it just seemed like a slightly odd chip.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:02 PM on February 28

I don't look to ads for any kind of trustworthy communication; I avoid them where doing so takes less energy than not doing so, and I judge the ones I encounter on their merits as entertainment-or-not and I make my actual purchasing decisions based on totally different channels.

I think we're in agreement here. I don't think the choices are "trust the ad vs. don't trust it" but rather, try and discern what the truth is about an introduced product. My issue was with the idea that personal communication is somehow more obfuscating than advertising, which has been the opposite of my experience, especially when factoring in the resources for deception available to advertisers, when compared to the resources available to consumers in gauging the true nature of a product.

As a side note, ads and advertising in and of themselves don't annoy me. I am not anti-advertising beyond the extent of being anti-capitalist. Like, I find this ad fucking hilarious, while at the same time realizing that Thule is horrid and tastes like strained beer vomit.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:04 PM on February 28

I like slick advertisements. The ones I don't like are amateurish ones, or ones that betray cultural assumptions that I hate. A well-crafted short film is preferable to some yelling man talking about big deals or a 'bloke' buying beer.

I suggest everyone watch the Gruen Transfer, the Australian panel show on ads.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 4:05 PM on February 28

My issue was with the idea that personal communication is somehow more obfuscating than advertising, which has been the opposite of my experience, especially when factoring in the resources for deception available to advertisers, when compared to the resources available to consumers in gauging the true nature of a product.

I think I follow you. I guess maybe I could restate my counter-argument like this: ads are routinely much more objectively obfuscatory/deceptive/manipulative than an honest, straightforward person, but people are not always honest or straightforward and the level of personal vulnerability one person can easily induce in another is much higher than that that an ad can reasonably achieve.

Basically, we're more likely to trust people than we are to trust ads, and when we trust people we trust them with much more than we're willing to trust ads with. When an ad lies to you, you're mostly expecting it; when an ad lies to you successfully, you're mostly just duped out of some proportion of your discretionary spending. When a person lies to you, it's more likely to be a violation; and someone's motives (and the negative outcomes for you) in lying to you can go a whole lot deeper than e.g. seeing a movie that turns out to be lousy or buying the second-best major brand of something.

The error bars for personal communication are a lot wider than those for ads, in other words, even if the median level of duplicity is generally a lot lower. If I distrusted people as much as I distrust ads, I'd be a profoundly cynical person, even though people have hurt me now and then far, far more than an ad ever could, but it's all a bit apples and oranges.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:18 PM on February 28 [2 favorites]

Laver-laced Lay's are pretty damned tasty, especially if you like laver. If you don't like laver, well, that's a shame.
posted by Burhanistan at 4:24 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Cortex is right, as usual. You can trust ads - you know exactly what they want. You don't know what people want. Hell most of the time they don't know what they want.

I remember distrusting an ad for Fallout: New Vegas and missing out on a great game for a few months.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 4:26 PM on February 28

When an ad lies to you, you're mostly expecting it; when an ad lies to you successfully, you're mostly just duped out of some proportion of your discretionary spending. When a person lies to you, it's more likely to be a violation; and someone's motives (and the negative outcomes for you) in lying to you can go a whole lot deeper than e.g. seeing a movie that turns out to be lousy or buying the second-best major brand of something.

Well, there's flip sides to both of those scenarios - maybe it was a friend who told you that Love Actually is a great movie, while an advertiser sells you a product that they know to be laced with carcinogens. Not all deception in advertising is relatively harmless, just as not all personal deception is emotionally wounding. I think the fallout from being deceived by a person you know as opposed to an advertiser can vary greatly, on a case to case basis.

But that's a separate issue to the resources question - the resources available to us for discerning who's telling us the truth, as well as the resources available to the party trying to convince us - when it comes to people versus ads. And again, I say this as someone who's generally pretty "eh" about ads and the concept of advertising in general.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:32 PM on February 28

On the other hand, resource availability is also pretty case-by-case. There's no Consumer Reports magazine for my circle of friends, for example.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:36 PM on February 28

But that's a separate issue to the resources question - the resources available to us for discerning who's telling us the truth, as well as the resources available to the party trying to convince us - when it comes to people vesus ads.

But you can visit metacritic or webmd or ask metafilter or any number of other resources to interrogate information from an ad, more or less at your leisure. Short of e.g. finding a bailbondsmen on short notice, most ads don't apply to the target in a state of duress.

Whereas for personal interactions we have relatively few trivially-consultable resources for additional research, and almost no such recourse when having interactions with people in real time or when interacting with a stranger. So we have a relatively rich set of paralinguistic channels to evaluation personal interactional telemetry or whatever, but it's also a much harder job in a context where the stakes can be (if generally aren't) much higher.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:39 PM on February 28

Yes indeed.

Well, this was a pretty helpful discussion about advertising.

This evening has been full of surprises.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:43 PM on February 28

I think I'm gonna have to let this go, at least as far as MetaFilter is concerned. I've seen this "viral video" on most of the big name blogs on my RSS feeds and NONE of them have bothered to say that it's a sponsored ad by Nabisco. None. And one of them did note "via MetaFilter".

If so much of the high-profile Internet is incapable of that little bit of disclosure, that's just a bad sign for everybody.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:57 PM on February 28

Correction: ONE blog has just noted the Oreo ad connection on its front page post. It's Neatorama, posted by the lovely, talented and pseudonymous Miss Cellania (former blogging buddy of mine, who has yet to disprove my theory that she's madamjujujive's twin sister, but that's another issue). My faith is semi-restored.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:22 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

So if Pepsi Blue had been shrewd enough to do a video of some hipster's really kewel steampunk Rube Goldberg machine pouring the shit into the mouth of a passing dog on a skateboard, you'd all be fine with a FPP on that too?

Got it.

Why are you so angry?
posted by spaltavian at 7:18 PM on February 28

People that from a long way off we despise.
posted by spitbull at 7:23 PM on February 28

I win at snacks.
posted by spamandkimchi

Eponysterical!

....and these guys are the ones who win at snacks.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:24 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Pine soda. When I lived in Québec, a friend of mine told me about this

I'VE SPENT FIVE LONG YEARS IN QUEBEC AND NEVER HEARD ABOUT...ah fuck it I'm hopeless.
posted by googly at 8:25 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

You can still get Cookie Crisp, the breakfast cereal that is probably considerably worse for you than eating actual cookies for breakfast.

I produced an ad for Cookie Crisp (also, many other high-fructose-corn-syrup-delivery-systems) when I was still doing that sort of thing.

Now I am a graduate student in a decidedly non-professional discipline. Where does that place me on the Metafilter hate-scale?

Also, I used to be a hipster but now I'm too old. :(
posted by dersins at 8:54 PM on February 28

My issue with this post is not that it's an ad, but that it's an ad that's NOT LABELED AS AN AD. Without a doubt, this kind of thing contributes to the misinformation and poor signal-to-noise ratio on the internet, and the fact that the mods don't seem to care much does, in fact, make me trust and respect the site a little bit less.
posted by speicus at 11:48 PM on February 28 [1 favorite]

Like, we're talking about this post as if it's obvious from the outset that it's an ad, but where in the post does it say it is? Nowhere, it's phrased as "neat person made this neat thing," and if that's actually an ad, then that's viral bullshit language that should be edited for clarity at the very least.
posted by speicus at 11:53 PM on February 28 [2 favorites]

Well, the poster of that Youtube video is "Oreo." That seems like a fairly clear indication that it's, well, posted by Oreo themselves. However, I'm not sure how much that detail jumps out at the average viewer; seems like a big thing, and then again it also seems like a small thing.
posted by koeselitz at 12:12 AM on March 1

I've seen this "viral video" on most of the big name blogs on my RSS feeds and NONE of them have bothered to say that it's a sponsored ad by Nabisco.

1: If it's on all the big-name blogs, why must we have it on Metafilter too?

2: If the big blogs aren't saying it's an ad, shouldn't Metafilter at very least be better than them and give people fair warning?

3: Why are we giving Nabisco free advertising to the point that big-name blogs are saying "via Metafilter"?

4: What's the point of being on Metafilter if the intellectual level is so low that viral ads are now considered to be things worth sharing?
posted by dunkadunc at 12:28 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

Well, the poster of that Youtube video is "Oreo." That seems like a fairly clear indication that it's, well, posted by Oreo themselves.

I mean in the FPP, not on YouTube. By the time you've seen who the poster of the video is, you've already unwittingly clicked through to an ad.
posted by speicus at 12:38 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

I produced an ad for Cookie Crisp (also, many other high-fructose-corn-syrup-delivery-systems) when I was still doing that sort of thing.

Now I am a graduate student in a decidedly non-professional discipline. Where does that place me on the Metafilter hate-scale?

Rehabilitated?
posted by Pudhoho at 12:58 AM on March 1

4: What's the point of being on Metafilter if the intellectual level is so low that viral ads are now considered to be things worth sharing?

There has never been a time when ads and viral stuff were not posted on metafilter.
posted by empath at 1:11 AM on March 1 [3 favorites]

Have a gander at the first month of posts on metafilter. About half of them seem to be product announcements.
posted by empath at 1:14 AM on March 1

Nowhere, it's phrased as "neat person made this neat thing," and if that's actually an ad, then that's viral bullshit language that should be edited for clarity at the very least.

That's a level of post editing we rarely engage in even for issues a little more serious in heft than "this cute video was paid for by a marketing budget", honestly. I for one don't not-care that people are annoyed at sort of stealthy ad stuff—I have complicated thoughts about the whole thing, see above—and personally I agree that if what you're posting is an ad and you know it's an ad when you post it it's a good idea to frame it more as "this is a clever ad" than as "this is clever" just so everybody is on board.

But the things I think are a good idea or are optimal post framing practice are not mandatory, and we almost never edit posts for disclaimers at a threshold lower than "there are naked people that might get you fired prominently displayed on the other end of this otherwise innocuous-seeming link", and even that only when it seems unusually problematic and because there's some handy, not-super disruptive acronymic shorthand.

Not accidentally seeing an ad is not something that reaches that level of priority. I understand having an aversion to or dislike for marketing but as insidious as marketing may be at a systemic level in our culture, encountering some marketing content on Metafilter that someone thought was interesting enough as content to share without being fully warned that it's an ad of some sort is not the kind of thing we feel like we need to make a big deal of protecting our fairly media-savvy userbase from.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:29 AM on March 1

1: If it's on all the big-name blogs, why must we have it on Metafilter too?

We don't post stuff because it has or has not been on other blogs. People post stuff because they think it's interesting and want to share it with Metafilter. When we catch actual spammers spamming, that's a problem. The rest of the time, it's someone posting something they think is interesting. Stuff that ends up on a lot of blogs is stuff that a lot of people thought was sort of interesting, is all there is to it; some stuff has more reach than other stuff. There are a tremendous number of ads that nobody posts about because nobody thinks they're interesting. There's also a tremendous amount of non-ad stuff that nobody posts about because it's not interesting either.

Sometimes people think ads are interesting, because ads are part of the pop culture zeitgeist and made by people who are often clever and creative, even if they work in advertising. There's no brightline difference-of-kinds there; ads are culture, people find culture interesting.

2: If the big blogs aren't saying it's an ad, shouldn't Metafilter at very least be better than them and give people fair warning?

See above. I think it's a good idea to say it's an ad in a post, because doing otherwise tends to annoy some folks. But Metafilter is not Adbusters or a media watchdog site, and we're not as mods going to go out of our way to unilaterally edit someone's post just to make sure no one is surprised to find out that a cute video was paid for by a business that wants you to buy a thing.

3: Why are we giving Nabisco free advertising to the point that big-name blogs are saying "via Metafilter"?

Again, people are saying "via Metafilter" because they found a thing they thought was cute enough to repost by reading Metafilter. That's it. That happens every day, because people post interesting stuff on Metafilter and other people on the internet read Metafilter. Sometimes the thing people find interesting is an ad. This is functionally true for every post ever about something commercially available, which is a lot of things, whether the link content was some creative work done by an ad agency or a snippet of the product itself or a glowing or insightful review of a product or a discussion of a scientific report showing that sector-of-products-x have some positive value y, etc.

We live in a commercial society; getting potentially commercially-tainted content off of Metafilter would be hugely disruptive to the decade-plus posting culture this place has always, always had.

4: What's the point of being on Metafilter if the intellectual level is so low that viral ads are now considered to be things worth sharing?

See previous. It's a mistake to think that there have ever not been "this product seems cool / this thing about a product is funny/neat/interesting". Conflating collective intellectual mettle with some stern, principled refusal to ever share space with an advertisement that someone thought was cute makes no sense and is prioritizing a very specific set of grumpy feelings about marketing over the actual long-standing mix of interest in pop culture's mainstream and fringes and the analysis and deconstruction as a group thereof. As a userbase we've always been more inclined to talk about why a noteworthy ad is effective or clever or sneaky or stupid in a thread than anything; that's how we deal with just about everything on the site.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:47 AM on March 1

What's the point of being on Metafilter if the intellectual level is so low that viral ads are now considered to be things worth sharing?

Ads were a part of MetaFilter's culture long before you joined. Maybe the problem is less than MeFi's intellectual level than your own biases.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 7:31 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

I'VE SPENT FIVE LONG YEARS IN QUEBEC AND NEVER HEARD ABOUT...ah fuck it I'm hopeless.

You may have also seen it called spruce beer, or bière d'épinette.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 8:43 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

But the things I think are a good idea or are optimal post framing practice are not mandatory, and we almost never edit posts for disclaimers at a threshold lower than "there are naked people that might get you fired prominently displayed on the other end of this otherwise innocuous-seeming link"

Is that really true, though? Aren't posts often edited to correct typos or misinformation? The language of the FPP is misleading, one way or another. I don't think of it as "protecting the userbase" so much as correcting an error.
posted by speicus at 9:52 AM on March 1

Aren't posts often edited to correct typos or misinformation?

Typos yes, misinformation almost never unless it's

- early in the thread
- a big deal
- the OP asking us to do it

and even then we sometimes won't. People can read the thread to get at what's going on. If we think people are deliberately posting something misleading to get a rise out of the community, we might nix it on that level but I can't think of a situation where we'd edit because of that. It's just not something we do.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:55 AM on March 1

cutting a hip-flask-shaped hole into the pages of my copy of Being and Time, so I can hide a hip-flask in there - 'cos that's how Dasein rolls, motherfucker -

Just who are you calling a motherfucker, quidnunc?
posted by Dasein at 10:43 AM on March 1 [4 favorites]

(Metafilter's Own) Adam Savage just tweeted the offending video and called it "Pretty entertaining." I always suspected he was in the pocket of Big Cookie.
posted by bondcliff at 11:47 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

Heh. Hi Dasein!
posted by the quidnunc kid at 12:36 PM on March 1

Wow, Oreo definitely should have paid me for making that post at this point...
posted by DynamiteToast at 12:42 PM on March 1 [3 favorites]

Could somebody photoshop a picture of Adorno eating an Oreo?
posted by suedehead at 7:42 PM on March 1 [2 favorites]

That is clearly a mini-Oreo.
posted by maryr at 8:10 PM on March 1

Adorno laughs at your mini-Oreo. He laughs from his mountain.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 10:06 PM on March 1 [4 favorites]