Red Bull gives you nauseau

In general, my complaints about television commercials revolve around quality. I maintain the belief that if I were in advertising I'd make a mint, because I'd say things like "No, why don't we just cut Jared. Honestly, a hell of a lot of people hate him." I'm not the type of person who calls in to say that I was offended by the inappropriate nature of the commercial. In fact, I was furious when Aspercreme changed their recent ad campaign. It used to say "Can a cream that stops your pain really smell good? You bet your sweet Aspercreme!" Apparently some clowns complained and the new jingle is "You bet if it's Aspercreme." Great. All of the commercialism, none of the humor.

Recently, though, I've been seriously put off by an ad. This Red Bull advertisement strikes me as unbelievably tacky. Regardless of the poor animation and desperate attempt to appeal to hipsters, there's a nasty reference present. The Kitty Genovese case is a fairly popular reference used to highlight the callousness of mankind. I had a professor in college give a (wildly overrated) lecture each year in his philosophy class about the scenario, pointing out that humans had a responsibility to each other. A woman is stabbed and her neighbors hear her cries. They do nothing, ignoring her plight. The attacker leaves (possibly after being yelled at by someone) only to return later and stab her (again) multiple times and sexually assault her. She died that night.

Maybe if you don't know the story, the ad is less offensive. I'm not going to call Red Bull, but I will post a critical blog entry. Take that, Corporate America.

By the way, if you didn't check out the "some clowns" link before, you need to read this guy's blog. Straight up crazy. Oh, I see what you did there. You ripped off a mediocre comic to point out your conservatism. Brilliant.