Saturday, December 29, 2007

White Ceramic Sony PSP: Geek Magnet?

The hallucinogenic properties of most soft drinks and hard alcohol are a major theme in modern advertising and I've already started chronicling the ads touting these powerful drugs in sheep's clothing (see my post on Sprite's "Falling Away" ad). Another common theme today is the ability of a product to attract psychopaths. Witness the current ad for the Star Wars White Ceramic Play Station Portable (PSP) from Sony:




Ownership of this device apparently attracts geeks. But not just any geeks. Geeks who will follow you around, harass you with the surface technical details of your latest technology purchase, embarrassing both you and themselves. I don't know about you, but in my state, they have a word for this behavior: Stalking. From the wiki entry:
According to the United States National Center for Victims of Crime, one out of every 12 women and one out of every 45 men will be stalked during their lifetime.
Now, I dunno about women (well, I know a little and I can guess the rest), but I have about a 2-3% chance of being stalked as a man. Now, if my likely stalker is Gisele Bundchen, fine. But since that's unlikely to happen (and my wife wouldn't approve, either way), I don't think I want to increase my odds of being stalked, especially by geeky losers.

And let's look at the type of tech stalking this guy is doing. At the ten second mark, he declares, "It's a tight one in here," as he rubs up behind his victim, after sprinting to catch the same elevator. He makes a declarative statement about the game, and says, "I like that," possibly commenting on being rubbed up against the stalkee, or perhaps just making idle conversation about the game. Perhaps it's double entendre. At the 14 second mark, he dips down, takes a look at his victim's crotch and says, "Nice unit!" And then, in the button, after the tag line, we leave the victim with his stalker breathing deeply in his ear.

I think I'll take the emptiness of not having a PSP, if it keeps my odds of being stalked in the <3% range.

1 comment:

hawk(lynn) said...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA you have me rolling on the floor. Thanks for the laugh today. It's nice to see you back. You think outside the box...always gets me.