The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
We've all seen the public service TV ads that go much further than most ads could get away with - people getting physically crippled in car accidents (or pub table accidents), nasty fatty goo squeezed from arteries and all the others on the theme - violence and gore with abandon, in the name of saving lives.
Today I saw a new one:
Guy hits on a pretty girl in a pub, she's feeling it, suddenly he pulls away, makes his excuses and leaves.
Cut to the girl with a cigarette and the message - "If you smoke, you stink".
When it was graphic violence and gore, I was surprised how far they were going, but it seemed acceptable given the message.
As soon as it gets personal, I find myself starting to reconsider.
We're not giving people a hard-hitting message that forces them to accept the dangers of smoking to their own health and others'.
We're not providing compelling life-saving information about in a hard-hitting format.
This is all about making people feel social shame. Making them feel socially rejected, objects of disgust, people so unpleasant everyone else will try to avoid them.
This just seems like victimisation.
If people aren't harming other through passive smoking, and they realise the health issues, they have the right to smoke if they want to. Civil liberties, as the law in this country has defined them.
Ram the health message down peoples' throats, in an emotive 'sit up and listen' way designed to make sure it hits home. It forces them to understand the consequences to their health.
But cheap personal shots designed to chasitse and humiliate smokers? Isn't that just below the belt.
We're not talking about education or information any more. We're talking about trying to manipulate, through shame and fear, people into compliance with how certain individuals have decided we should live our lives.
Those people can go to hell.
But wait!
Isn't that what pretty much *any* TV ad is all about - trying to coerce and manipulate someone into compliance to buy a specific product or service?
Yes. But can they go so far as to shame and ostracise the non-compliant - to do so in such a direct, explicit and personal way?
I don't think they'd get away with it.
But isn't this one justified on the grounds that it's for peoples' health?
It may be distinct from the previous public service ads by its commmercial use of manipulation, but it's the same as normal commercial ads. Only taken much further.
And isn't going much further justified by all the lives it'll save?
Or are we back to trying to powerfully shame and manipulate people out of engaging in one of their civil liberties?
We don't have the 'right' to stop them damaging their health like this if they choose to do so.
But if it's normal for commercials to try to manipulate people out of engaging in their civil liberties, say the liberty not to buy product X, then is this ad so different?
What do you make of it all?
[I'm a non-smoker]
Today I saw a new one:
Guy hits on a pretty girl in a pub, she's feeling it, suddenly he pulls away, makes his excuses and leaves.
Cut to the girl with a cigarette and the message - "If you smoke, you stink".
When it was graphic violence and gore, I was surprised how far they were going, but it seemed acceptable given the message.
As soon as it gets personal, I find myself starting to reconsider.
We're not giving people a hard-hitting message that forces them to accept the dangers of smoking to their own health and others'.
We're not providing compelling life-saving information about in a hard-hitting format.
This is all about making people feel social shame. Making them feel socially rejected, objects of disgust, people so unpleasant everyone else will try to avoid them.
This just seems like victimisation.
If people aren't harming other through passive smoking, and they realise the health issues, they have the right to smoke if they want to. Civil liberties, as the law in this country has defined them.
Ram the health message down peoples' throats, in an emotive 'sit up and listen' way designed to make sure it hits home. It forces them to understand the consequences to their health.
But cheap personal shots designed to chasitse and humiliate smokers? Isn't that just below the belt.
We're not talking about education or information any more. We're talking about trying to manipulate, through shame and fear, people into compliance with how certain individuals have decided we should live our lives.
Those people can go to hell.
But wait!
Isn't that what pretty much *any* TV ad is all about - trying to coerce and manipulate someone into compliance to buy a specific product or service?
Yes. But can they go so far as to shame and ostracise the non-compliant - to do so in such a direct, explicit and personal way?
I don't think they'd get away with it.
But isn't this one justified on the grounds that it's for peoples' health?
It may be distinct from the previous public service ads by its commmercial use of manipulation, but it's the same as normal commercial ads. Only taken much further.
And isn't going much further justified by all the lives it'll save?
Or are we back to trying to powerfully shame and manipulate people out of engaging in one of their civil liberties?
We don't have the 'right' to stop them damaging their health like this if they choose to do so.
But if it's normal for commercials to try to manipulate people out of engaging in their civil liberties, say the liberty not to buy product X, then is this ad so different?
What do you make of it all?
[I'm a non-smoker]
Page:
Smoking for lower birthrate.
I'd heard similar stuff before.
I feel concerned at the ease with which people can have kids. You hear about people doing stuff like this, and having kids to secure themselves a soft life on benefits. (It may be far from a life of luxury, but it's a safe way out, easier than actually standing on your own feet, and most of all is a financial burden on everybody else).
Obviously preventing people from having kids isn't good either!
It's a very difficult situation - you can't refuse financial help to the mother without penalising the baby.
But you don't want to reward her or encourage others.
Plus - and this might be my Daily-Mail-esque paranoia coming into play - the comparative birth rates play on my mind.
'Normal' people are waiting until later in life to have babies.
Teen mothers are knocking out more kids and from an earlier age.
The population is becoming lop-sided towards single-mother-chavsville.
Woah! That's not PC. But the statistics are pretty sound.
There are increasing numbers of single working class mothers, and their children are statistically **much** more likely to be criminals, volent offenders, and the vile lowlives that make everyone else unhappy.
Has anyone read Steven Levitt's Freakonomics?
Incredible book, I'd recommend it.
It the book, as one of many adventures in weird applications of principles of economics, Levitt shows how the sudden fall in the crime-boom in America in the late 90s was attributable to the legalisation of abortion 15-20 years earlier.
Essentially, young teenage mothers, whose kids were most likely to become criminals, didn't have to have their babies. Those babies didn't grow up to be lowlives, and a generation of criminals was 'prevented'.
(All of which doesn't mean that any one such baby is very *likely* to become a junkie mugger killer, just that they're much more likely to become one than the average baby.)
If we're going through the opposite of what America experienced 20-30 years ago, what does that mean for our future?
But it's a very difficult issue to handle.
I'd heard similar stuff before.
I feel concerned at the ease with which people can have kids. You hear about people doing stuff like this, and having kids to secure themselves a soft life on benefits. (It may be far from a life of luxury, but it's a safe way out, easier than actually standing on your own feet, and most of all is a financial burden on everybody else).
Obviously preventing people from having kids isn't good either!
It's a very difficult situation - you can't refuse financial help to the mother without penalising the baby.
But you don't want to reward her or encourage others.
Plus - and this might be my Daily-Mail-esque paranoia coming into play - the comparative birth rates play on my mind.
'Normal' people are waiting until later in life to have babies.
Teen mothers are knocking out more kids and from an earlier age.
The population is becoming lop-sided towards single-mother-chavsville.
Woah! That's not PC. But the statistics are pretty sound.
There are increasing numbers of single working class mothers, and their children are statistically **much** more likely to be criminals, volent offenders, and the vile lowlives that make everyone else unhappy.
Has anyone read Steven Levitt's Freakonomics?
Incredible book, I'd recommend it.
It the book, as one of many adventures in weird applications of principles of economics, Levitt shows how the sudden fall in the crime-boom in America in the late 90s was attributable to the legalisation of abortion 15-20 years earlier.
Essentially, young teenage mothers, whose kids were most likely to become criminals, didn't have to have their babies. Those babies didn't grow up to be lowlives, and a generation of criminals was 'prevented'.
(All of which doesn't mean that any one such baby is very *likely* to become a junkie mugger killer, just that they're much more likely to become one than the average baby.)
If we're going through the opposite of what America experienced 20-30 years ago, what does that mean for our future?
But it's a very difficult issue to handle.
It does crap on the 'evil greedy taxing government' bull that a lot of people who get carried away by their politics tend to gravitate to.
It's nice that occasionally there's something to restore a sembalance of moderation to peoples' views.
It's nice that occasionally there's something to restore a sembalance of moderation to peoples' views.
I'm always suprised that the government even bothers with their anti-smoking campaigns, given that they will end up harming themselves. Without the millions of pounds worth of tax revenue from cigarettes (and to a greater extent, beer), there wouldn't even be an NHS.
Did you hear about that on the radio this morning? I did...
... I was putting my socks on at the time, I heard the woman read out the news bit... I laughed, got my feet stuck and twisted and fell over.
Good times...
... I was putting my socks on at the time, I heard the woman read out the news bit... I laughed, got my feet stuck and twisted and fell over.
Good times...
Machie wrote:
> Views?
Are they really that stupid?
> Views?
Are they really that stupid?
Surely they can't be all there in the head, these girls? Probably all got pregnant at 12 anyway, I guess.
PREGNANT teenage girls are deliberately smoking because they think it will make their babies smaller � and births less painful.
But medics warned yesterday that it could KILL their tots.
The worrying trend was highlighted by Health Minister Caroline Flint, who said girls had misinterpreted official warnings that smoking caused low-weight babies.
She stressed: �Childbirth is no less painful if your baby is low weight.�
Her concern was echoed by Dr Virginia Beckett of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists, who said smoking can cause cot death and asthma in tots.
She said: �Some teenagers tell me they think that smaller babies mean less painful births.
�But the size difference is too small to make any difference. Giving birth is always going to hurt.�----
Views?
Kawada wrote:
> Sibs wrote:
> But something like a Triple Big Mac With Cheese And Bacon (I'm
> not sure if it actually exists, but I'm sure something similar
> does...) isn't 'necessary'.
> I'm just saying, based on your argument for
> banning smoking there are a hell of a lot of other things that
> should also be banned...
>
>
> But eating a Big Mac with Cheese and Bacon doesn't affect anyone
> else, just you. (though granted i haven't read the whole topic
> and just responding to this one specific point so don't have the
> backstory of it so if there's something missing, my apologies)
And, despite TV trying to tell us different, eating a moderate amount of junk food isn't actually bad for you and is actually getting healthier all the time as new laws are passed. Whereas smoking isn't good for you, even in a moderate amount and smoking pot is even worse due to the (now scientifically documented) psychological effects it has, plus the fact that you usually need a small amount of tabacco with it anyway.
It's difficult. On the one hand you have people's civil liberties to think of, but this is impacted either way, and on the other hand you have health issues to think of. Is it right to 'protect' people from their own choices? Do we have the right to ban these things?
Education was thought to be the answer at first. Educate the young that smoking is bad for them. But then you take in to account the fact that teenagers often want to rebel against the 'good and wholesome' and it all goes out the window.
Make smoking illegal and people will just break the law. What are you going to do? Fine them? Might as well just keep selling the cigarettes and save all that money on paperwork. And what government would take the risk of a massive public backlash against such a piece of legislation? None that I know of (well, maybe the green party).
So perhaps the answer lies in some sort of middle ground? Why are these things so bad for us? Well, it's not actually the tobacco as such, more the mix of toxic chemicals they add to make them addictive, light easier and generally appeal more. Perhaps there is an alternative that gives the same resulting high but isn’t as bad for you or others around you? This, to me, would be the ideal answer. Cigarette companies would lose some revenue from not being able to make their product artificially addictive any longer, but may actually gain from making them healthier while retaining the same results. The government would still make their tax money and the public would still have a choice. It would be a win/win situation.
> Sibs wrote:
> But something like a Triple Big Mac With Cheese And Bacon (I'm
> not sure if it actually exists, but I'm sure something similar
> does...) isn't 'necessary'.
> I'm just saying, based on your argument for
> banning smoking there are a hell of a lot of other things that
> should also be banned...
>
>
> But eating a Big Mac with Cheese and Bacon doesn't affect anyone
> else, just you. (though granted i haven't read the whole topic
> and just responding to this one specific point so don't have the
> backstory of it so if there's something missing, my apologies)
And, despite TV trying to tell us different, eating a moderate amount of junk food isn't actually bad for you and is actually getting healthier all the time as new laws are passed. Whereas smoking isn't good for you, even in a moderate amount and smoking pot is even worse due to the (now scientifically documented) psychological effects it has, plus the fact that you usually need a small amount of tabacco with it anyway.
It's difficult. On the one hand you have people's civil liberties to think of, but this is impacted either way, and on the other hand you have health issues to think of. Is it right to 'protect' people from their own choices? Do we have the right to ban these things?
Education was thought to be the answer at first. Educate the young that smoking is bad for them. But then you take in to account the fact that teenagers often want to rebel against the 'good and wholesome' and it all goes out the window.
Make smoking illegal and people will just break the law. What are you going to do? Fine them? Might as well just keep selling the cigarettes and save all that money on paperwork. And what government would take the risk of a massive public backlash against such a piece of legislation? None that I know of (well, maybe the green party).
So perhaps the answer lies in some sort of middle ground? Why are these things so bad for us? Well, it's not actually the tobacco as such, more the mix of toxic chemicals they add to make them addictive, light easier and generally appeal more. Perhaps there is an alternative that gives the same resulting high but isn’t as bad for you or others around you? This, to me, would be the ideal answer. Cigarette companies would lose some revenue from not being able to make their product artificially addictive any longer, but may actually gain from making them healthier while retaining the same results. The government would still make their tax money and the public would still have a choice. It would be a win/win situation.
Sibs wrote:
> Machiavelli wrote:
> Their enjoyment is irrelevant when it's cancelled out by other
> people hating it.
>
> Even if they do it in their own homes or gardens when there's
> no-one else around...?
Ok, so we've agreed that it's ok in your own home or garden but nowhere else. So given thats exactly the same as pot, lets enforce the "Nowhere else" law that cannabis has.
> Indeed there are, but most of them aren't as unhealthy or as
> unsociable and those that are, are illegal.
>
> Again, I raise the point that smoking can be enjoyed
> without it impacting on anyone's health (the smoker themselves
> aside, obviously). Thus it's not unsociable if enjoyed
> responsibly.
Again i raise the point that enjoyment is irrelevant and if it's not in the privacy of your home, it is affecting someone.
> Machiavelli wrote:
> Their enjoyment is irrelevant when it's cancelled out by other
> people hating it.
>
> Even if they do it in their own homes or gardens when there's
> no-one else around...?
Ok, so we've agreed that it's ok in your own home or garden but nowhere else. So given thats exactly the same as pot, lets enforce the "Nowhere else" law that cannabis has.
> Indeed there are, but most of them aren't as unhealthy or as
> unsociable and those that are, are illegal.
>
> Again, I raise the point that smoking can be enjoyed
> without it impacting on anyone's health (the smoker themselves
> aside, obviously). Thus it's not unsociable if enjoyed
> responsibly.
Again i raise the point that enjoyment is irrelevant and if it's not in the privacy of your home, it is affecting someone.
Hehe
*Well done you've just won the gold medal, it must have taken great heart and commitment. Can you tell us some of the training you did for this event?
Oh yea i just ate a KFC bucket twice a day for 2 years
*Well done you've just won the gold medal, it must have taken great heart and commitment. Can you tell us some of the training you did for this event?
Oh yea i just ate a KFC bucket twice a day for 2 years
Page: