When you have a family that you're ashamed of, it's easy to want to look beyond their faults and love them for just exactly who they are. That doesn't mean, of course, that if you have a relative who ?enjoys the company of children? or has ?buried another relative under their patio? that you shouldn?t report them to the proper authorities. hecklerspray does not encourage the harbouring of criminals.
We look forward to the creepy comments on this column, where you suggest that you wouldn't mind being touched up by Bill Gates.
With the help of Windows, you can now treat your entire family as though they're criminals by lining them up for an identity parade and taking a series of pictures of them from all angles with the intention of creating a family that one doesn't automatically associate with being a host of dribbling morons with all the mental capacity of a lobotomised Janet Jackson fan.
It's lucky that Windows 7 and their ?Cloud? came along when they did as previously there was no way for people to take a simple family photograph without exercising some element of parental discipline.
In ?The Cloud? campaign we see many different families being helped through the trials and tribulations of modern life from the short attention spans of teenagers (we imagine most readers will have stopped reading to check their Facebook by now) to the err… short attention spans of children who are far more interested in playing with a box than they are with a Christmas present. Given that Granddad couldn't be bothered to go round for Christmas, we're not surprised.
Of course, this particular ad deals with the very modern problem that mothers have of having the ?family photo? to upload to Facebook. Years ago, it was a sign of love and prosperity to have a heavily-filtered image of your family writhing around uncomfortably on a kind of bearskin plinth hanging above your fireplace. Now, it would seem as though if you don't have a family photo on your Facebook page then you must be an orphan. That no-one loves. You don't want no-one to love you, do you?
You?d better get on that. Why not cut and paste some of your family?s angry, sexually aggressive faces onto one of those stock images of a happy family enjoying each other?s company. That's essentially what you'd be doing if you used ?The Cloud?, a computer program which appears to transform your existing PC into some kind of spinning hyper machine with spinning tapes and an interface using a complex system of levers and pulleys like something from Stingray, is doing the very same. It's a fraud.
Naturally, images defraud us all the time by making us think that celebrities don't have cellulite or some other fatuous nonsense that implies they're somehow worthy of lording it over everyone else in the world with a bit of a flabby bum.
However, for Microsoft to imply that we should lie to our friends and families is a rich statement. Surely it's every families right to know if their relatives are deep, sink-holes of intellectual abandon?
Regardless, the woman who is more concerned with putting across a positive image of her family to the internet is representative of a message that Microsoft are at pains to send out. Not only can they bring your family closer, they can also manipulate and alter said persons both metaphorically and literally through the use of software. Windows 7 allows the user to create a perfect picture, Facebook allows to share it while your family are forced to go on living a lie that you've created.
Enjoy.
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Stu says
Wow! I’ve read some completely useless stuff in my life, but this ranks up there on the useless meter. It seemed to be a criticism of Microsoft, but yet, I found nothing critical. Surely, you weren’t suggesting that Microsoft has somehow just invented and started advertising families trying to put on a public face that isn’t true. That tactic has been used since advertising began (heck! Since families began.) so why we would single Microsoft out on this? Every photography studio does this, every image edititing software is designed for this, every camera, every video camera (well, you get the picture *pun intended*)
Writing this piece was like writing an article stating: I slept all day and didn’t dream nor did I wake, however, I’m now going to ramble on about my day as if something unusual/important happened and than actually following through on that statement.
You could have saved yourslef and all of us a lot of trouble by simply saying, “I hate Microsoft.” Wait, that was pretty much what you did. It was by far the longest winded way I’ve heard of saying it, but some people like to be melodramatic.
Oops! almost forgot one last point… Every family (in fact, every person) tries to represent themselves in a untrue light. That’s just human nature. Everyone knows that deep down, but some people like to pretend otherwise. Microsoft’s ad appeals to eeryone, including you and I, so don’t make it seem as if it appeals to some group you’re not a part of. I could go on for years listing advertitising campaigns that use this or similar tactics, but why? Lets just keep it simple and say all advertising works this way. The only thing that changes is which human flaw/trait advertisers are attempting to target in their campaign.
Ed says
Well, in a way everybody is already doing it. Microsoft is just make it simpler.
Wild hair says
Wow someone has a wild hair up his ass. Someone give you a morning wedgie Stu?
Paul Gibson says
Is this you, Heritage?
Tom J says
The fuck?
Stu says
In answer to your question Wild hair, no. I did however give you and everyone else a taste of reality. Maybe you enjoy reading a blank page, but personally, I prefer some kind of semblance of substance. Sorry if I don’t enjoy reading something that came far away from actually touching on a point. Barring be able to do that, it should at least have been entertaining in some way (funny, witty, sad, etc.) Unfortunately, it failed in every conceivable way.
Tom J says
The fuck??
Michael Park says
I love you too, gorgeous.