6 Ad Campaigns That Prove Humanity Is Doomed

"Buy an SUV to Please Your Awful, Spoiled Kid"

Everyone in America knows the intolerable little bastard in these car ads. For many of us, the first time we saw one of his commercials was the first time we legitimately wanted to punch a child in the face.

Don't get me wrong, the "horrible, spoiled child" character has shown up in commercials for decades ... as the villain. Before, the whole point was to see the little shit get his comeuppance (usually using the product being sold in the ad). Not here.

No, these ads are based around this entitled little jackoff being embarrassed of his parents because of what they drive. He refers to them as "lame," and is ashamed of their very existence ... unless they spend $35,000 on a Highlander so that he can show his face around his equally entitled douchebag friends. Warning: This commercial will make you set something you love on fire. Put your cat outside before clicking the play button.

It's not enough that he lives in a neighborhood of some of the wealthiest people you're ever likely to meet. Or that his parents seem to just put up with his bullshit (there's a distinct lack of bruises on his face). No, he won't be happy until he gets to ride around in a vehicle that costs more than the average yearly income of most people I know. And he's what, like, eight-years old?

But it gets even worse as his parents give in. In another commercial, he says, "I know what you're thinking: 'Cool parents,' right? It's a new thing. They used to be total dorks." He talks about how he changed them into real people by getting them to buy a Highlander -- because it's a common practice among adults to take the advice of an eight-year-old on a $35,000 purchase. And then changing everything else about their life.

Don't bother telling me that this is all just a joke -- I know that. But behind that joke, the central selling point is absolutely that you should buy this vehicle, not because it's practical or a good value or reliable or any of the other reasons you should take on a $600 monthly car payment -- but because you'll otherwise lose the respect of the type of people who will judge you based on what you drive. Therefore it assumes that we, the viewer, want the respect from shallow cock holsters.

And the fact that the ads were successful enough to spawn follow-ups says they're right.

"Our Phones Will Eliminate All Human Empathy"

In this line of cell phone ads, we start with a couple sitting down to lunch as the woman breaks up with her boyfriend via text, email, Facebook and a call. She smiles gleefully, oblivious to his feelings, telling him not to worry about the messages because they didn't cost her any extra money to send. I dunno -- maybe he beat her or something and she just finally lost the ability to feel empathy.

But that would be the best-case scenario because at least that would make her the good guy. She's become empowered, and finally setting straight the wrongs that life has dealt her. At least that would justify her actions and make her somewhat likable. But judging from that guy's face, I'm guessing this isn't the case.

But Sprint isn't satisfied with having just one callous demon representing their company. In case you missed the black, seething indifference from that character, they created a doctor who is breaking the news to an athlete that he's out for the season. Something that could potentially end his career.

Same thing here. The athlete says that he just got the doctor's email with the bad news, and the Antichrist of emotional sterility responds with, "Oh, don't worry about that. I just switched to Sprint so I get unlimited email." When he asks what that means, the doctor responds, "It means I'm dropping you from my fantasy team, that's for sure." And he's the one we're supposed to empathize with.

And if that wasn't enough, this self-centered cocksucker ends the commercial with, "Relax, it's not costing me any extra" and slaps that poor bastard's shattered knee.

Again, it's played for laughs, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what the selling point is here. In these ads it's always the customer who's 100 percent in the wrong, the victim is always blameless and enduring some kind of tragedy. And in every case, the customer's dickish indifference is due to his Sprint phone.

This is different from, say, the ads where the dude steals some Bud Light because Bud Light is so amazing that it tempts an honest man to theft. That actually makes sense in the commercial universe. Here, there's nothing connecting the awesomeness of the phone to the dickish behavior. It just exists. "Our phone will turn you into a dick, we don't know why. It just will."

So what's the point, unless it's appealing to people who like the prospect of being more of a dick than they are now? And that lots of us fall into that category?

"Our Soft Drink Will Make You Good at Lying."

So you can start to see the point. It's not just that these ads exist, it's what they say about us as a people. They're obviously working, or they wouldn't still be paying multi-millions of dollars to produce them -- some of these campaigns have been running for years, across multiple ads. Have we all really become such unbearable twats that we look at this ...

... and think, Yeah. I totally identify with those guys. I want to buy what they buy. That's a commercial about a guy at a job interview. The hallway is lined with potential employees, all awaiting their turn. The first guy goes in, and when the door shuts, starts screaming and making it sound like he's getting his ass kicked ... knocking shit off of the shelves and destroying the office.

One by one, all of the other interviewees leave until there's just one guy left.

It turns out that the guy pretending to be beaten up was his friend, driving off all of the competition because they knew that this turd was no match for respectable, educated adults. His only chance at securing a job was if there was literally nobody else in the world interviewing for it.

But wait, it gets worse. In another one, they trick a bar full of the stupidest, drunkest people on the planet into thinking that the world is coming to an end so that their friend can bone some chick right there on the bar floor.

It's made very clear at the beginning of the commercial that the woman wants nothing to do with this pulsating cockwad, as she doesn't even let him finish his offer to buy her a drink. It is a painfully clear "no." So the guy's friends, who are set up in the back with video cameras and a makeshift news set, broadcast a live feed onto the bar's television, proclaiming that an asteroid is about to hit the Earth, and there is only a few minutes to live.

Nobody questions the fact that there is a camera in space, following and filming the asteroid as it blasts towards the planet at 25 kilometers-per-second. Everyone loses their shit and riots, but of course the guys don't care about the massive property damage and potential injuries because their friend is about to pound some hot ass in public.

And he does. After his orgasm inside a panicked and emotionally scarred supermodel, he leaves her and goes to the back room to high five his friends and dance. And drink Pepsi Max in celebration.

So once more, getting the product has nothing to do with their goal. If they'd been setting up the complicated scam to score some delicious, refreshing Pepsi Max, then that just puts it right into the same well-worn format as Barney stealing Fruity Pebbles from Fred. No, the message instead is that this soft drink will give you the ability to lie your way to success in the job market and to deceive emotionally vulnerable women into sex on a sticky barroom floor.

"The Ice Cream for Terrible Children"

It's not hard to sell ice cream. We're a very, very fat country. The biggest concern for a chain like Dairy Queen is the increasing problem of customers ravenously biting the fingers of the person handing out the Blizzards through the drive through window before they can let go of the cup. So all you need as far as an ad campaign is something along the lines of, "Yes, there's still probably a Dairy Queen in your town, and we still have the ice cream. Remember not to eat the huge ice cream cone we have out front. It's made of plastic."

But apparently even ice cream doesn't sell without the promise of douchebaggery. I call this first ad, "Child Whore" because I want to see that Google search traffic show up here. An eight-year-old girl gives a flirty look to an eight-year-old boy, and he buys her some ice cream like a bar drunk looking for a quick bathroom handjob. Unfortunately, I'm not exaggerating.

The mother starts to order two "fudge brownie temptations" (which by the way is almost certainly another porn search term) but the little girl stops her and says, "Mom, just make it one." When they get to the table, the mother comments pleasantly that she's surprised her daughter wanted to share. The gold digger in training says, "Actually, I don't." And right then, a Dairy Queen employee brings the girl a sundae, saying it was from the boy, who gives her a "let's get some people arrested" look. It ends with her telling her mother, "It's like shooting fish in a barrel."

Ha! You know what women are like, right guys? Now let's go get some ice cream.

The lesson is a little less clear in "Asshole Dad Raises Asshole Baby." (Note: Also do a Google Image search for "Asshole Baby" with safe search off, let me know what you get.):

It starts off with a dickhead carrying around his kid in one of those baby slings that straps across the chest, comfortably holding your child and suppressing the screams of the suffocating man trapped inside your chest. Since that isn't bad enough, then he eats a Blizzard right in front of his face -- eye level. When the kid tries to grab it, the dad pulls it away, telling him "This is not for babies." What? It's ice cream. It doesn't get any more for babies than that, you soulless shit stain.

So the baby, in response, accesses his genetics and retaliates in the only way that this type of father could teach: He kicks him in the nuts and then headbutts him. This commercial panders so much to assholes that I'm sure if it were 30 seconds longer, we'd see the dad taking full on man-swings at his defenseless infant while screaming, "This is the world, motherfucker! This is the world!"

Actually, I do get the message of that one. Eat our product or a baby will crush your nuts.

"The Fun Snack for Petty Acts of Meanness"

These ads are a special kind of dickheadery in that they appeal to 1) people who like to be insufferable for no reason, and 2) people who like to exact passive-aggressive revenge against others.

Take Rachel for instance. Rachel walks up and says, "Hi," and the other woman calls her "Ray-ch." Rachel corrects her. Now, understand that the only thing this woman is guilty of is having an annoying voice. She's perfectly justified in wanting to be called by her actual name, but it's the other person we're supposed to be rooting for. Try to ignore the annoying voice and watch for yourself.

She then does what any mother would: She talks up her kid. She's proud of him because he's learning goddamn Mandarin Chinese, one of the most difficult languages in the world. But our main character, being a complete package of asshole, gives her a hug and purposely wipes Cheetos dust on her nice white shirt.

Seriously, those of you who are about to buy some Cheetos in the next week, do you long to be six-years old again and smear food on people who don't make you happy? Have you considered going to a counselor or something? I mean, under normal circumstances this site makes a pretty bold defense of emotional immaturity, but are you really sitting around saying, "Goddamn, if I could only be a toddler again."

But this next one ups the stakes in the "using Cheetos to ruin clothes" campaign (and again, what a powerful selling point that is). It starts with Felicia Day having to pick her laundry off of the floor because she left her clothes in a finished washer while other people were waiting for them to free up. So woman No. 2 takes them out, dropping some on the floor. When Felicia comes back and sees what happened, the woman says in a really shitty tone, "You know, other people are trying to do their laundry, too."

Felicia then looks over to see the Cheetos mascot, who tells her, "Felicia ... you know those are her whites in the drier." She smiles, opens the door, and puts a fistful of Cheetos in with the whites. Then closes the door and hits the start button.

"This Beer Will Let You Impress Horrible Women"

Once more we have an ad campaign that features a well-known fictional archetype: the nasty, dismissive, sarcastic bitch, talking down to someone who she considers to not be cool enough to inhabit her planet. And once more, what used to be the automatic villain of any story is here treated as the hero.

We're talking about the bartender:

In that one, a guy's only crime is bad fashion sense -- he wears "skinny jeans." When he orders a beer, the bartender blatantly makes fun of him even though 1) he's a goddamned customer and she's in a customer service position and 2) her entire living hangs on her tips ... which she's sure to not receive after flat-out being a bitch for no reason whatsoever.

When the guy orders, she asks, "More taste or less taste?" He says he doesn't care, and she responds, "Kind of like your girlfriend doesn't care that you're borrowing her pants?"

I'm trying to picture the board meeting here. "Guys, remember that bartender we ran into last weekend who told me I had a 'stupid hat' and that I should shoot myself in the face for even considering putting it on? I can't think of a better face for the company than someone with that kind of honesty."

And they don't stop there. They do the same thing with a guy who likes clothes with dragons on them. There's another where she berates a guy for singing a song he likes on karaoke.

That's right, fellas; if you drink this brand of beer, you'll win the heart of this horrible, horrible woman. And some day you can have her shrieking petty insults in your ear 24 hours a day. Because you hate yourself, and everyone else hates you, and drinking is your only escape. Now, back to the game!

For more on terrible advertising, check out 8 TV Ads That Hate Women. And get more from John in The 5 Most Implausible Old School Rap Songs.