If you’ve ridden the redline on the MBTA in the past month, you’ll have seen Dentyne’s new advertising campaign. The new campaign, with the slogan “make face time” is splattered in every frame of advertising space. Look eye level at all and you’ll see picture after picture of happy couples(possibly aryan), friends(multiracial friends!), “making face time”.
It’s the scariest thing I’ve seen all year.
All the ads focus use the rhetoric of technology to describe age old social interactions. Super-imposed on a picture of two couples is the phrase “The first instant message”. Above two interracial friends hugging, is the familiar facebook message — “Friend Request Accepted”. The idea, as Dentyne states above two kissing lovers(heterosexual) is to reconnect with the world: “power down. log off. unplug. have mercy on your thumbs. browse the world wide something else. send some not so instant messages. undo. hit cancel. be together. make face time”
The campaign imagines a culture, and presumes a society, where people are permanently networked to mediums destructive of meaningful social interactions (hugs, kisses, love). The campaign proposes as a solution, to suddenly “unplug” and buy lots of gum. Instead of alienation via substitutive human interactions(such as ims, voicemails), Dentyne proposes commodity fetishism. “Buy gum! For it will make you loved”
How can people be bamboozled by this shit?
(Dentyne tastes bad too!)
