So I went and saw a movie last night, which I'm not going to talk about because I don't particularly want to write a review of Sin City other than to say that if you liked the comic you'll probably like the movie because it's pretty much an exact frame-by-frame re-creation, and if you're like "What City?" then the chances of you liking it are pretty slim. Okay, I guess that sort of was a review but that's all I'm going to say about it because that's not my point here.
My point is that it cost me nine dollars to rent a seat in the theatre, and no sooner had I sat my nine-dollars-poorer ass down then I was forced to listen to a series of selections by the newest singing sensations that the media conglomerate which owns the theatre chain is cross-promoting this week, before being treated to fifteen minutes of commercials which preceded the trailers (i.e. commercials for movies.) Remember when they first started putting commercials before movies? How advertisers initially made a real effort to make them entertaining and "cinematic" so that people wouldn't get upset about being forced to watch them? Well, the honeymoon's over.
Watching the current generation of ads is just like watching ads on your TV at home, except the TV is twenty feet tall, there's no remote control and no volume knob, and you have to squeeze past a row of people in the dark to get off the couch to go to the bathroom. That's not to say that being able to hear ads for "movie nachos" in full 360-degree Dolby surround doesn't enhance the experience:
"Wow! It's like we're inside the nachos!"
By the way, did you know they're made with real cheese?
But I digress.
After maybe ten ads I leaned over to sgnp and said something like "Jesus! There is actually gonna be a movie after all of these, right?" and he replied:
"Ad revenues are how come we are able to see movies for free. Otherwise they'd have to charge admission or something."
Anyway, the ad that really leaped out at me was the one for online poker, because evidently while I wasn't paying attention online gambling has become a legitimate business able to afford expensive, professionally-made ads to run before movies. This is is a step up from their initial marketing strategy, which consisted of flooding every inbox and comments section in existence with misspelled, exclamation-point-laden messages in the hopes of finding the one person in a thousand with a severe gambling addiction who hasn't yet hocked their computer.
And here I must confess that my real problem with the online gambling industry, other than the hours of my life I've already lost deleting their spam from my comments section, is the fact that I didn't come up with the idea first. Because it really is the ultimate business model. You don't even have to build a casino. You just set up a website and sucke -- er, that is, customers -- customers log on and give you their credit card numbers. The money is siphoned straight out of their private accounts -- excuse me -- personal accounts -- and straight into your own offshore account. It's brilliant!
Gambling really is a way to get something for nothing!
Posted by flamingbanjo at April 4, 2005 11:18 AMwhen i first moved to the czech republic, they used to show commercials from 1970s american television. i got a certain amusement from ken nordine intoning "come to marlboro country", and felt that anyway it was the price i paid for $1 tickets.
now tickets are $4-8 and we have to sit through as much crap or more than in the states. it's all so depressing.