Why this Zoosk ad makes me suicidal:
Dear Zoosk:
This is your current advertisement. I hate it. I do not hate wantonly, but I freely and unabashedly hate this ad. It makes me want to jab pencils in each ear so that the last sound I hear is the sound of HB graphite in stereo. It makes me want to give myself a new optical prescription by scraping a potato peeler against my corneas. It makes me want to swallow one hundred “Do Not Eat” silica desiccant packets so that my last bowel movement will violently rocket a dusty puff made of my intestines and what’s left of my soul into the sewer. Let me tell you what is wrong with this ad.
0:00 : Here are 4 attractive women in a coffee shop. They are there, I assume by the sunlight, around mid day? Let me start again: Here are 4 attractive unemployed women. You can tell they are unemployed because they are dressed casually, they all appear to have nothing better to do, and one of them is sitting on the floor for some reason.
The floor!
No matter how fashionable the coffee shop, I have never once, EVER sat on the floor. The floor of the coffee shop is dirty. Maybe it’s because I live in Canada, and I know that the floor is covered in road salt and gravel from the winter no matter how many times it has been mopped with that mop-head that needed to be changed out 5 years ago and smells like somebody puked up a sweatsock as soon as it hits the pine-sol. Note to janitors of the world: I was a janitor for a year. Mop heads are not expensive. Throw out the old one.
Lady: He likes camping!
Main Lady: meh…
Here is a stereotype right off the bat. She’s too pretty to go camping! What a catch these Zoosk people have found! A high maintenance woman who hates the outdoors! At least her friend has the balls to sit on the floor, which I would freely do while camping and not wearing my good jeans… especially if I was unemployed and couldn’t afford to ruin my good jeans. It’s not like my wealthy spouse will buy me new pants, because I am single and slumming it with Zoosk. What kind of PC is that by the way? It is growing webcams and plastic bumps like warts. There is a reason people choose macs for ads, they have less visual clutter. Even your average Dell has less weird clutter than that. The monitor looks like a hallway aboard the Nostromo.
Only non-white lady: What about that guy?
0:04 Main Lady: Ho yeah! I definitely go for some serious romance!
A mere 4 seconds in, Main Lady leans on her hand in and tilts her shoulder in the most implausible manner. Watch the ad again and ask yourself if you have ever once leaned on your hand like that. What an uncomfortable position to be coy in. Furthermore, what an uncomfortable performance to be marketed as coy. I was very concerned about her hurting her wrist, her possible bone-snapping osteoporosis, and her dislocated shoulder from this point on. I was not aroused or interested in dating this woman who is apparently a Zoosk customer at this point, nor was I inclined to find her funny. If she was funny, I would assume that her awkward positioning was part of a lighthearted joke about taking her seduction too seriously. She does not give a funny performance, and thus, I am only worried about her bone density.
GAAAAHHH! Lighting!
0:07 Zoosk, who is your director of photography? This reasonably attractive woman has been rendered frightening by your “romantic” lighting. There is a reason why ghost stories are primarily told with a flashlight lighting your face from underneath. It’s spooky. She is spooky, do not want. Also, what is she wearing? Is it cotton? What is it? Is it lingerie? Maybe I’m being unfair, she is unemployed.
0:08 She is unemployed, but she has a very expensive house with a dangerous number of candles. She also has a man fellow in her bedroom. This man fellow has no shirt, he may also be unemployed. He appears to be glistening with what cannot possibly be sweat yet, unless he had a very hard time taking his shirt off. He is pulling off a goofy-coy look with some success, thus suggesting to me that the advertisers hoped that the upcoming sequence would be funny, which they utterly fail to do…
0:09 Look at all those candles. Honestly, that doesn’t seem safe.
0:10 Violent Kiss Punch! A kiss at that velocity would be tooth shattering, and everyone in this universe seems to need more calcium. I have occasionally kissed someone too hard and done a head bump, it happens, but never at 40 miles per hour. That is just unsafe. Violent Kiss Punch are playing the Republik tonight with DOA I believe.
0:13 Are you okay? She says yes from behind her hand. I think we are supposed to be amused now. We are not. Sometimes directors hire actors and expect them to be funny, and they forget that it is actually hard to be funny. You can’t take a adult-learning course at the community college for funny. Okay, you can take a course, but it won’t guarantee results. Why not take calligraphy, or French?
planning, physics, other concerns.
0:15 So, they are leaning back onto the bed. This I have accomplished on occasion, but never with a bench and a sleigh bed frame in the way. Where was this guy going? In order to lower her onto the bed, he would have to climb the bench, step over the bed frame, and then lower her down, defeating the advantage of leverage he would have had by standing lower than her. No wonder she bumps her head, where else could she physically go? Boo.
0:16 In rapid succession, Main Lady and Man Thing pull back from an ill-conceived bed attempt, Man Thing throws out his back (more calcium!!!!), they cross to the right side of the room in literally no time, and Main Lady’s foot knocks over many candles which I have already pointed out are a fire hazard, especially since that room appears to have one of those fashionable 5 years ago white shag rugs that has been just waiting to burst into flame since its purchase. Then, in another act of impressive teleportation, they fall backwards over a chair.
0:19 Main Lady: (as unfunnily as possible) Maybe just a movie date?
Her friends all nod in agreement. Here is the part that really enrages me.
This was all obviously Main Lady’s fantasy about her date. Why would anyone have such a disastrous shitty fantasy? Especially one in which you, as the sexy protagonist, were so ill lit and had arterial wounds from the broken glass. None of my fantasies are ever that much of a mess. That’s why I have a fantasy life, so that my real life can be a hilarious contrast.
My next question is why do her friends agree so quickly? Did they share this fantasy somehow? They haven’t moved, so not much time has passed in the coffee shop. Did they use one of those Inception doohickies? Did Main Lady describe her self-reinforcingly negative sex dream to the ladies while they sat in the coffee shop? Do they all assume the same level of failure is typical in the dating world, and having had time to consider their own concerns about osteoporosis, the only logical date option was to get away from the dangerous bedroom environment and further away from their soy milk lattes which don’t have enough calcium to encourage better skeletal health, and go to a movie which is internationally recognized as a bad first date because no talking can occur?? No wonder these ladies are unemployed, they have no cognitive capability for logic.
Zoosk, I have been single for a while, and I have come to the determination that I would rather be violated by giant scorpions than use your service. I want my epitaph to read “RobbieRobTown: Dead, but never had to use Zoosk.” Watching this ad took 30 seconds off of my life literally, and took years off my life in sheer existential horror. I have food issues, and I have pooped less despairing things than this ad. Lovecraft has written about things which are less nightmarish than this ad. I am so very terrified of your advertising agency which surely must have offices in the sunken city of R’lyeh. When I wake up screming, as I often do these days, I will forever more be screaming “Zoosk!”.
With my sincerest concern for your immortal souls,
RobbieRobTown
