Normal post?

I love people who type really hard.

I'm sitting in the Wilk (supposed to be studying, as is normal this week, but I'm not, as is normal this week) on my computer, and there's a guy next to me on his computer. He's writing a paper. Also, I think they've reinforced his keys with steel guards underneath. Because, if they haven't, I'm sure his hard drive is suffering some major blunt force trauma.


I think it's really important, even if you're part of a large, successful company, for people to look over the images and ads you send out to the public.

For example, Kagan and I were driving the other day and I saw a sign that left me feeling used and stereotyped. It was a billboard, made by a housing company, and the point of the ad was to get people to want to buy houses in their subdivisions. The text of the ad said, "We're like, everywhere, and stuff. Whatever." I think the purpose of the ad was to tell the consumer, "Hey, you should buy our houses, because anywhere you want to live, we're there! We have awesome houses! We can relate to the younger generation! BUY OUR HOUSES PLEASE." But instead, it said, "Hey, you up coming generation of lazy texters and disrespecters, we can be just as disrespectful as you. We'll insult your intelligence by assuming that all of you are apathetic bums. You don't even know what buying a house entails, and that's why we're going to rip you off, and you won't even see it coming. Oh yeah, and buy our houses. We guess." I don't know about you other "Generation Y's/Millennials" out there, but I found this extremely offensive.

I think what bugs me about it more than anything is that a company that sells HOUSES (especially in Utah) targets the 'young family' audience--people recently married, maybe with 1 or 2 kids, looking to buy their first house and settle down. Generally, those people are at least fairly responsible adults. They're not looking to be targeted into the apathetic teenager category anymore. And this ad does just that--demotes those people back down to the apathetic teenager category. I don't know about the (probably) hundreds of thousands of people who see that ad, but it made me not want to ever buy a house from that company. Just based on that one billboard.

Ok. I'm done with that example. Lets try another one. Check out this picture:



The description for this shirt is "V-neck tee with gathering detail at neckline and shoulder seam."

I'm not going to tell you what company I saw this at because I do like this company's clothing in general, but seriously? Based on your picture, there is NO WAY the consumer would have been able to tell that there was gathering detail at the neckline and the shoulder seam. If you look really closely at the right side, you can see some of the said gathering on the sleeve. I just wish they'd had someone look at that picture and say, "So, you've got a girl in a white shirt with a white background. Not the best option for showing people the detail on your clothing." That's all it would have taken. But instead, I have no idea what the front of the shirt actually looks like.

I'm sure that you're probably thinking that maybe they only sell that shirt in white, or that maybe they only had a white background, etc. Even if they did only have a white background for her to stand in front of (which isn't true, most of their pictures don't have a white background), this shirt came in 6 different colors.

Sometimes this stuff makes me think I should pursue a career in advertising. But then I realize that I'm only good at finding the ads that are sucky, and not good at thinking up good ads. Oh well. Back to zookeeping for me.