Review of eBay's "Meetings" ad, from Caltrops

[Tdarcos]

Since I got no response there, here it is:

eBay is running an ad where a bunch of people are in a meeting and complaining because all of them have large PDAs or tablet computers (by large, I mean about the size of a typical 8 1/2 x 11" piece of paper), and one of the other people at the meeting apparently doesn't have one, supposedly because he's going to use a pen. They now berate this guy for apparently not using technology, even to saying how one of them was late being in the 16th century looking for the other guy's pen. Then we find the guy has a PDA, it's just as small as a typical cell phone.

First, what the hell does this have to do with the benefits of buying and selling over the Internet? If you can buy this small PDA on eBay you could do the same thing by visiting the nearest shopping mall on the way to or from work, probably for the same price, AND take the damn thing home with you instead of waiting a week to get it in the mail. What does this show us that makes us want to use eBay or gives us an advantage by using it?

Second, while I may not have been in that many meetings, and maybe the places I have been have been super competent and super professional, I have never been in an office where people berated someone who is in the meeting. Hell, you can do anything in a meeting through e-mail that doesn't require a display of something to everyone, so why pull people from their desks otherwise? And who would put down, to their face, someone they might have to work with later? Do you really want to give someone a reason to want to savage you or make you look bad?

Third, for the benefit of the imbecile(s) who spoke about pens from the 16th Century, the self-contained pen with its own ink supply is a development of the 20th Century, late 20th to be precise. I've read children's stories about life in schools up until about the 1950s and early 1960s, and student desks at that time had inkwells! This means that the pen this man would have been using, a sealed pen with self-contained ink supply - which is clearly the type of pen they would have been referring to, not a quill or fountain pen, which were common enough that kids in school had to be able to get ink to refill them, even as late as the 1950s or '60s - is only a product of the late 20th Century.

Verdict: the ad fails its intended purpose: something to encourage people to want to use eBay, because it doesn't even show us good reasons to choose it over alternatives. It also shows that the company he works for is likely to go out of business because it's staffed by morons.

[pinback]

I have declared the previous post unreadable.

[Flack]

I don't know how television critics can say the medium is dead. There's your show, right there: TDarcos reviewing ads, giving them the thumbs up or thumbs down. Maybe Starcraft 2 could sponsor it. Genius!

[Tdarcos]

I have declared the previous post unreadable.

Okay, I gave my reasons specifically why I found StarCraft 2 unplayable (it violates the 'you can't always lose' rule and make the initial game so hard you can't ever win), so now, please explain to me, exactly what is wrong with what I said that you're unable of reading it.

If you're trying to be funny, say so. Otherwise, if you find what I said unreadable, please explain to my why, that I may understand how to write better in the future. You have told me that I cannot be understood, so I want to know why.

[Tdarcos]

I have declared the previous post unreadable.

Ben, do you understand me now?
Sometimes I feel a little mad
But, don't you know that no one alive can always be an angel
When things go wrong I seem to be bad

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Pinback, please don't let me be misunderstood
- Santa Esmeralda