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Block Those Ads!

It is a stormy night. A flash of lightning shows an old dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere. Thunder rumbles across the sky as the pretty blonde girl inside the dark house looks terrified. Suddenly there is a knock at the door. She picks up an axe and with trembling hands, opens the door. Just then the lightning flashes again and in that flash, looking at the visitor, the girl's face turns ashen-white. "Uski safai meri safai se behtaar kaise? Rin Supreme apnao..." I switch off the TV and bang the remote on the bed in frustration. Yet another commercial break.

Despite the fact that we all hate advertisements (except may be when someone posts a hilarious video of one on a social-networking site and we choose to see it), ads are present everywhere. From TV, internet, newspapers to billboards, everyone is asking us to buy something. The unbearable part is when they appear out of nowhere just when we least expect them to be.

In case of TV or internet, there are many ways to escape ads. TimeShift TV or the AdBlock extension for Google Chrome works wonders when we want a clean, ad-free environment. But what do you do in case of newspapers? There has never been a day when I have picked up the copy of Times Of India lying outside my flat's door without fliers falling out of it. Sometimes there are tens of them each asking you to join the local gym or to protect your PC by taking it to Raja Computer Institute. Its certainly does not make up for a good morning when the wind blows away all the fliers and you have to run after them lest the society members accuse you of littering. Being bleary-eyed doesn't help at all.

Nowadays there is a trend of ads being printed on pages cut in half. Just today, Salman Khan was flapping out of one informing me that Bigg Boss 4 will start tonight. These half-page ads make holding the newspaper an exercise in gymnastics. How do you hold it without removing the offending page in its entirety and thus losing the news that is in the adjoining page! I haven't figured it out till now.

Just a few days back readers in the NCR region were in a shock when their newspaper started making noises. Some even called in the police suspecting it to be a bomb. Turns out it was an advertisement for Volkswagen and they had pasted a device at the back of every newspaper, which when opened made the noise. TOI was gloating over this "innovative" way of advertising without being least worried about the hot tea that I spilled over myself when I opened it.

As R. Serling said, "It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper." Now if you don't mind, will you please click on the ads appearing on the right-side of this blog?
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Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 4, 2010 at 11:47 PM

    Hi, came here via GreatBong. Good one, totally agree. The last line was very funny!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MayankOctober 5, 2010 at 6:17 AM

    Thank you Gargi!

    ReplyDelete

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