To fall back on a concept that’s sadly becoming cliche’, I really hate when our society starts resembling something out of the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy.
Last week, Intel—the people who made the insides of the computer you’re probably reading this on (unless you’re part of Apple’s Church of Steve Jobs and Latter Day Turtlenecks)—named Will.I.Am as their Director of Creative Innovation. For those of you with cultural relevance of my mother, Will.I.Am is a member of the pop band Black Eyed Peas. This is the second such announcement in technology since the new year started, the first being singer, attention glutton and likely hermaphrodite Lady Gaga getting crowned as a new Creative Director for Polaroid.
And to those reading this that have already screamed the obvious, you’re right: neither of those people have any documented credentials/achievements in the respective tech field to which they’ve been assigned. But let’s not play dumb here; we all know the real reason these people are now on their respective payrolls isn’t anything more than a couple of thinly veiled endorsement gigs. Instead of Polaroid just handing Lady Gaga a giant bag of money with a dollar sign on to go around and blow hermaphrodite kisses at people while holding one of their cameras, they make up a bullshit title for her to give off the image that she works for the company. That way, people associate the two brands (and yes, a brand is all that Lady Gaga really is) with one another and Polaroid gets to exploit Gaga’s built-in customer base—in Lady Gaga’s case, a customer base mostly consisting scheeching gay men and teenage girls with glitter glued around their eyes, but a viable customer base nevertheless.
But shrewd (and let’s face it, pretty clever) business tactics aren’t my gripe. My gripe is the fact that these companies have such little faith in their current customer base that they feel that the only way they can sell the average person a computer is by telling them Will.I.Am had something to do with it. I’m tired of the fact that companies think so little of consumers that they think we’re going to be fooled into thinking popular celebrities are actually taking part in the creation of necessary products, but more importantly, I’m getting kind of disgusted that we live in a society so celebrity obsessed that this kind of marketing tactic actually works.
When Dwayne Alexandro Camacho, five-time Ultimate Smackdown Champion is elected to president someday, make sure you thank Intel and Polaroid for starting the trend.
Posted by assaultonthesenses 
