The Disconnect Between Commercials and Real Life

Television is intentionally packed full of some crazy shit to get our attention as the fleeting commercials cycle by. But have any of us ever stopped to question what we're seeing? My attention has been recently captured by the multitude of truck commercials that appear on nearly every single commercial break. These commercials ask us to invest $30,000.00 on a brand new, diesel truck that has an interior that will blow us away. This truck doesn't just have leather and 350 HP standard, it has all sorts of technological innovations that eliminate sway, increase towing reliability, and at the same time increase fuel economy.

What they show then during the explanation of all the updates to the new truck is somewhat surprising to me. It's quite typical in GMC commercials and Chevy commercials to see the owner of a brand new beautiful truck thrash the shit out of it. The commercials in question show the proud owner of the new truck going to a job site to pick up a pallet of bricks one day, about 25 tanks the next day (followed by a nice mud burnout through the construction site), and then the guy heads out to an open field where he removes a huge stump and dumps it in the back of his truck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfSnuR6EzUs&feature=related (Sorry I can't properly link this video!)

This one is my absolute favorite though. Same brand new beautiful truck goes to a construction site to load up on materials. This time it's about a ton of mulch dropped from 20 feet into the truck (AWW FUCK! I just had this shit washed!), unsecured 20 pound rocks that are just dumped into the truck's bed, and then the truck is shown towing huge tubes in what the manufacturer creatively calls 'tubesday' while simultaneously driving through the biggest mud bog he can find.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfSnuR6EzUs&feature=related

This may be the type of activity one engages in with a rental car, but definitely not with their very own brand new truck. Most people don't allow smoking in their vehicles, but these commercials take that sort of dedication to keeping a vehicle clean in an entirely new direction. I think half the things they do constitute lunacy on the part of the vehicle owner. Who the hell would haul 4,000 pounds of rocks in the back of their brand new truck without securing the load? Or simply buying a few tie downs that would prevent the rocks from smashing through the back window.

The problem with these ads is that they're slightly misleading. Maybe they mean to say that your new truck is so awesome that you'll lose your mind once you sign the papers associated with its purchase. Maybe you'll try to drop cinderblocks from a three story building into the back of your truck. Don't worry, this truck is super duty. Maybe it means to put our fears to rest about the possibilities of something bad happening. I don't know about you, but by showing a brand new truck doing donuts on gravel with 200 unsecured bowling balls in the back they take great strides in quieting my mind. In fact, I think I'm going to do just that if I ever buy myself a brand new half ton pickup.

The truth of the matter is that if anyone owned that brand new truck they would only treat it like that if they were about to junk it. I understand that the argument of contractors using their vehicle for work is going to be raised, and rightly so. But what is depicted in these commercials is outright aesthetic insanity that would not happen in ordinary life. If your boss, head of a construction company, told you to pick up a pallet of bricks from the brick yard, you definitely wouldn't have the loading guy let the whole pallet slam down on the bed of your brand new truck. You might take extra pains to prevent that. And I also doubt that the same contractor would feel uneasy about plunging his truck into a huge mud puddle in order to prove a point. But what would be the point in a commercial depicting a sensible man sensibly driving his clean, pristine truck down a clean freeway? We all want some dirt dumped into the beds of our television trucks from 40 feet. Insanity gets our attention... at least for now.