The net whispered sweetly...

[pasithea]

Read an article about TV ads that are being run at the moment by both the right and the left to try to sway opinions.

Congratulations everyone. We are now living twenty minutes into the future.

Comments

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

What are they doing that they weren't doing in, say, the 80s? Also, I'd love to read this article. It seems to me that the left has completely sucked at media warfare for the last several decades, I wonder if this is changing. MoveOn seems to have had some success...

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Apparently there are Repubs that opposed the spending bill, then were going around telling their constituents they got all this money for it, so there are TV ads stating the truth. Also, this thing with Limbaugh being declared the defacto leader of the RNC has become a meme that's running everywhere.

The Republicans have of course, been exploiting the TV for quite a while.

But the paid targeted advertisements to cause chaos in the other party is definitely a step further than we'd been... Or at least I think. I confess that I haven't really watched TV since the 80s.

[gomezkitty.livejournal.com]

This is Edison Carter Reporting....

"Off-switches are illegal"

[sci.livejournal.com]

Tune in later for the exciting result of the new telelection vote, brought to you by ZicZac.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Amusingly enough, the net has taken the place of the TV in an increasing number of households. Taking part is more fun that passively watching what takes place.

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

I knew we'd get here if we just waited 20 minutes. They all said I was mad! Or uh... maybe I just don't understand the expression.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

The TV show Max Headroom is the origin of the phrase. Basically, it's used to mean something like, "This is a future view of a trend that exists in the present." Remember how in Robocop there were ads for an unlikely gas-guzzling road-monster called the SUX 3000 and we all laughed because that was too damn absurd to be true, and then we got the H2 and stopped laughing? Those ads could be considered twenty minutes into the future of 1981.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

The current Chrysler 300 series cars look almost exactly like the SUX 6000.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I thought '20 minutes' was a rather clever interval of time. As in, "Before this show ends, this will be reality." or "Soon enough you don't want to change the channel." It was in effect functioning as a kind of meme, re-enforcing the world it proposed.

I loved that show. It was so dark and brutally honest. Definitely one of the better shows of its era. (Though there wasn't much competition) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987-88_American_network_television_schedule

[ff00ff.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you. My short memory only remembers Max Headroom as a coca cola ad campaign.

[gomezkitty.livejournal.com]

[zeeth_kyrah]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom