Loser Generated Content

[GrahamB]

Charlie Brooker always makes me laugh - top reading people.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/ ... creen-burn


Charlie Brooker's Screen burn

Charlie's been watching TV adverts with loser-generated content


T-Mobile's simpering middle-class mop Josh and his band

TV advertising used to work like this: you sat on your sofa while creatives were paid to throw a bucket of shit in your face. Today you're expected to sit on the bucket, fill it with your own shit, and tip it over your head while filming yourself on your mobile. Then you upload the video to the creatives. You do the work; they still get paid.

Hail the rise of "loser-generated content"; commercials assembled from footage shot by members of the public coaxed into participating with the promise of TV glory. The advantages to the advertiser are obvious: it saves cash and makes your advert feel like part of some warm, communal celebration rather than the 30-second helping of underlit YouTube dog piss it is.

Witness the current Oxo Factor campaign. According to the website: "Has your Family got the OXO Factor? It's 2009. There's no such thing as 'the OXO Family' any more. We're all OXO Families! That's why we asked you to film your family performing the script for our new TV ad, for the chance to see yourselves on TV, alongside some of Britain's other brilliant families." Or "other insufferable arseholes", depending on your point of view.

End result: a bunch of wacky-doo show-offs titting around in their kitchens, each reciting the same script, which they're not allowed to deviate from. They can perform it "ironically", and indeed they all do, which somehow only makes it more horrible still: the Oxo family of 2009 may display faint traces of corporate-approved subversion, provided they adhere to the corporate-approved screenplay. Lynda Bellingham's fictional family of yore might've been insipid, but at least they weren't willing participants in a macabre dystopian dumb-show.

Phone ads are worse. Everybody's "brightdancing" according to The X Factor break bumpers. "Brightdancing" consists of shooting a video of yourself waving your mobile around while being filmed by a Talk Talk website gizmo which turns the glare from your mobile's screen into a ribbon of light. It's less creative than choosing which colour iPod you want for Christmas. "Brightdancing". Jesus.

Then there's Josh, the simpering middle-class mop who's apparently "forming a supergroup" for T-Mobile. According to the official story, Josh was strolling down the street one day when a T-Mobile film crew asked him what he'd do if he had free texts for life. Rather than pointing out that "free texts for life" means dick-all in a world containing the internet, Josh burbled something about forming a band. A few weeks later and gosh oh crikey that's precisely what's happening! And we're all invited! Hey everyone! Join Josh's Band!

As well as TV spots recounting the irritating story of Josh and his "volunteers" (Yikes! They're busking in an open-top London bus! Bonkers!), there are YouTube videos of Josh's utterly spontaneous and not-at-all-stage-managed musical quest. The group has its own song, which you're encouraged to perform and upload yourself, hastening humankind's slow cultural death in the process. The recurring melody sounds suspiciously like a seven-note ringtone, while the lyrics speak vaguely inclusion and connectivity – y'know, the sort of thing they guff on about in mobile phone ads. The third line is "I call up all of my friends". Why call anyone? You've got free texts for life, you prick.

It's so clumsily contrived it wouldn't fool a hen, yet we're meant to welcome this "supergroup" as an authentic grassroots musical phenomenon. On MySpace, Josh (or whoever's controlling him) claims, "It's a shame so many cynics think this band is completely manufactured."

So it's a genuine people's movement, then? And this band doesn't contain any paid-for session musicians? And that song wasn't written by professional tunesmiths-for-hire? And the lyrics weren't penned by some dickshoe at Saatchi & Saatchi? Hmm. Piss off, T-Mobile. Stop trying to "crowdsource". You're embarrassing yourselves. Scram. And empty that bucket on your way out.

[GrahamB]

Santavision

Santa Claus is coming to, erm, Sky channel 200

Like a giant black velvet cat whose tusk-white incisors glint malevolently in the darkness as it slinks noiselessly towards its prey, the end of the year is almost upon us. Eager to get things over with, Christmas has faded in extra early this year. Everywhere you look it's yuletide this and festive that. Each shop window sports a snowman; each street lamp a coil of winking fairylights. I had a piss the other day and a load of tinsel came out. Yippee for Christmas.

Christmas, of course, has its very own "face of the channel": Santa Claus, although he doesn't appear in adverts as often as he used to. For the past few years Coca-Cola has been aggressively pushing Santa as some kind of God of its own making, so it's hardly surprising that in other ads, for other products, he's been usurped by celebrity cameos, or in Iceland's case, Jason Donovan and a Nolan.

He doesn't show up in films so much these days, either. It's been 15 years since the last remake of Miracle On 34th Street, and almost a quarter of a century since Santa Claus The Movie. Part of the problem is that you can't really do much with Santa himself. He's not a cop on the edge trying to outrun his own demons. He's a laughing fat man. In character terms, Santa is bollocks.

If you really want to see Santa on screen in the run-up to 25 December, your best bet is to tune in to Santavision (Sky Channel 200), where he's preparing for the yuletide season by sitting in an unconvincing living room mercilessly wringing money from as many people as possible with an interactive text-to-TV dedication scheme. Merry Christmas!

The idea is simple: you text him the name of your kiddywink, accompanied by the words "NAUGHTY" or "NICE", and Santa duly enters them on to his "Naughty" or "Nice" list, scrolling up the right-hand side of the screen. He'll also say their name aloud, usually as part of a sparkling ad-lib such as, "Ho, ho, ho! I see GREGORY has been a naughty boy! Naughty GREGORY." This bespoke improvisation costs £1.50 a pop and, as the website is keen to point out, you're not allowed to include the names of more than one child per text, which seems a tad unsporting, since the largest families are often the ones most financially stretched at Christmas. It's almost as if, contrary to everything we've been led to believe, Santa doesn't give a shit about kids after all.

Perhaps that's why he's lost weight. Apparently these days Santa looks like a skinny bloke in his 20s in a cheap beard, sweating his way through what amounts to a televised prison sentence. Sometimes he switches his microphone off and holds lengthy mysterious conversations with someone on the end of a phone, live on air. Possibly his lawyer.

At least you can keep his spirits up by sending in inappropriate names. I fearlessly borrowed someone's phone and used it to trick Santa into admonishing the serial murderer Dennis Nilsen for being a naughty boy. He also read out a follow-up name – the rather puerile "Carmen Mite-Hitz" – but sadly blew it by mispronouncing the forename as "Cameron". A subsequent attempt to get him to read out the name "Ivana Fahkz-Humbaddi" failed completely; they wouldn't even add it to the list, the cowards. If you fancy a laugh and don't mind pissing money up the wall like a champagne socialist, you could do worse than spend this afternoon texting in innocent-looking but obscene-sounding names for Santa to babble at his audience of oblivious children.

Currently, Santavision only runs from 4pm to 7pm. In an ideal world it'd come back on air at closing time, with an "Adult Santavision" service modelled on Babestation and the like, in which nihilistic drunks text in increasingly demeaning physical commands for him to obey, such as stuffing his goods into a stocking or coming down the chimney. Or let's dispense with the wordplay entirely and just make him roll around on the floor, clapping and farting until Christmas at £1.50 per emission. The perfect metaphor for the entire season

[Darth Rock&Roll]

I personally get perplexed by the current mayonaisse commercial that tries to tout mayonaisse as teh rebelious condiment and they're "not going to tone it down".

It's the height of absurdity really. I mean fuck, it's mayonaisse! The intentionally bland and lifeless egg spread for sammiches.

yeesh.
ah well, we seem to live in the age of "let someone else do it, I'm getting my bum rubbed and running up my debt!"

[GrahamB]

Don't you get Salad Cream over there? Fuck Mayonnaise.

[meeks]

Don't you get Salad Cream over there? Fuck Mayonnaise.

uh - no... could be because 'tossing your salad' is often a euphemysm for masterbation (also for vomiting) I don't think 'salad cream' would be an instant hit.

[Bär]

I thought "salad tossing" meant a far, far nastier sexual practice. Meeks, I expected more from you.

[GrahamB]

I agree, he's a weak ass salad tosser.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

Dear Meeks

prepare for shock.

salad tossing is commonly the description of a rim job being performed on the tossee by the tosser.

It is also used as a term to describe double penetration from behind and from the mouth. The person being penetrated is the salad being tossed.

masturbation ain't really in there, unless of course, one is watching. In which case, go ahead! please use a towel afterward.

[meeks]

whoa - hold on... any of you salad tossers realize that GrahamB is extolling the virtues of salad cream...?

*exit, stage left...*

salad tossing is commonly the description of a rim job being performed on the tossee by the tosser.

It is also used as a term to describe double penetration from behind and from the mouth. The person being penetrated is the salad being tossed.

can any of you guys explain why you're so knowledgeable on the subject?

[Ian]

Dear Meeks

prepare for shock.

salad tossing is commonly the description of a rim job being performed on the tossee by the tosser.

specifically, analingus in prison. with jelly or syrup (I prefer syrup).

It is also used as a term to describe double penetration from behind and from the mouth. The person being penetrated is the salad being tossed.

dude, that's spit-roasting...