Friday, August 12, 2011

Drink Coke

In the brief period between tragically breaking my generation 1 Kindle and ordering a new Kindle 3, there was a moment where I considered a "special offers" model. At a decent discount from the Wi-Fi version I ultimately purchased, the idea of seeing sponsored screen saves (arguably an improvement, the normal ones are images of famous authors who, I'm here to tell you, are much better suited to their non-visual medium) and banners on menu screens sounded reasonable.

But the second I saw an "Oil of Olay" ad in a reviewer's screenshot, whatever mental antibodies patrol my conscious mind turned in mid-pass, assembled in attack formation, and struck it as one*. It doesn't matter if the ads are small, or if they're relevant, or if they provide discounts. Somewhere I decided that advertising-fueled media was bad.

I suspect Netflix Instant had something to do with it. I've been away from cable TV and its 1:3 ad-to-content ratio for so long, I can't imagine enduring it on a regular basis. It's as if we sat down to have a lively conversation, but once every 15 minutes I'd suddenly talk about 4-5 bits of inane garbage for 30 seconds each.

*And yet they can't do anything about the mixed metaphors.

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