Obsession!
By Wayne Maruna
I enjoy reading various news services on my iPad. It’s just like reading the local newspaper, except you don’t get printer’s ink on your fingers and you get your news a day earlier. I’ve come to expect the advertisements running alongside the articles – somebody has to pay for the service, and I’m glad to let the advertisers do it - but now those ads are breaking up the flow of text in the articles. There may be three column inches of text broken up by an equal amount of ad space, then back to….what was it I was reading? To catch the attention of my glazed-over eyes, the advertisers use the tools available to them: images and words. The images tend to be of Beautiful People, perhaps a glamorous woman in provocative dress, pitching plumbing fixtures or HVAC units. I’ve become adept at blocking such things from my consciousness. So the admen rely on attention-grabbing words designed to flirt with my eyes. The word of choice currently seems to be ‘obsession’.
I like the definition of obsession offered up by Dictionary.com:
“The domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, or desire.” There’s the element of compulsive, unreasonable preoccupation with an idea or emotion.
I can’t help but laugh at how the genius admen make use of the word ‘obsession’. Let me share some examples. Perhaps the first one that really jumped out at me, solely because of its stupidity, was the ad for Mack Weldon, which is a brand of men’s underwear. “Here’s why guys are obsessed with this underwear”. I could not tell you what the ad went on to say because there was no way I was clicking on their link. Trust me, if men are obsessed with any underwear, there is more likely to be a VS logo on the clothing. I’ve been trying to imagine what could be so special about Mack Weldon underwear that would cause me to be dominated by persistent thoughts and feelings, but I’ve come up empty.
In a similar vein, a January 22nd ad from Bombas tried to tempt me to click on the ad that would explain the “8 Reasons why people are obsessed with these socks.” Maybe if they were wool, and it was a really, really cold day – but only maybe. No, I take that back. No way am I going to be obsessed with socks, under any circumstances. No foot fetishes here, bub.
Then there was the article that appeared in the Jan. 11th issue of HuffPost: “Conservative Men are obsessed with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Science tells us why”. Would that be Poli-Sci perhaps? Can’t say, didn’t read. (That reminds me of a piece of new-to-me internet shorthand I’ve been coming across: “tl;dr”. It turns out that stands for “too long, didn’t read”. I wonder how that would have gone over with my English Lit profs. I would have used it a lot.)
This message came via email: “Celebs are obsessed with this Denim brand – including Reese Witherspoon.” I can’t tell you what brand it was because the message came with a red warning that said ‘This message may be a scam.’ You think?
But the most absurd obsession ad came from Food Network online on January 9th:
“I’m Obsessed with this Self-Cleaning Water Bottle”. The author, T.K. Brady, really needs to seek psychiatric help if he/she is truly having persistent thoughts about the Larq Self-Cleaning Bottle, which incidentally one can buy at Bloomingdale’s for a mere $95. I admit, I had to read that ad because it was so outrageously absurd.
I suppose we all have our obsessions, and if yours tends toward men’s underwear, socks, freshman congressional members, denim, or self-cleaning water bottles, understand that I mean no harm. I used to be obsessed with computers, but now I’m just ‘involved’. Perhaps there’s a Hallmark movie in there somewhere. I know for the longest time, every late January or early February, I’d have a compulsion to build a new computer. I finally got over that, and good thing, too, because it was expensive.
I was recently shopping on Amazon for Bluetooth speakers. I don’t have one and further don’t need one, having already owned and sold or returned more than I could ever reasonably want. So maybe there is some obsession at work there too. If so, I am not alone. While reading customer comments for various models, I’ve discovered there are people who have purchased as many as 40 Bluetooth speakers, I guess because they like writing reviews about them. I think that qualifies as an obsession.
So what’s your obsession? I can picture a few spouses around here pointing to the other and saying “Golf!” Do you exhibit patterns of obsessive cleanliness, perhaps? Can I get a vote for chocolate?
Whatever it is, I would encourage you to NOT post it on Tabmail, even though it would make for fascinating reading and brisk conversation.