Before we had YouTube, we had commercials. In fact, commercials have been a valuable resource for YouTube, serving as great pieces of nostalgia to check out for 30 seconds.
With both media, it's a simple concept: If you can't make me laugh in 30 seconds, you're not worthy of my attention. If you do, I will consider looking into more of your work, be it clicking on related videos and possibly leaving a positive comment, or searching far and wide for the nearest Sonic Drive-In.
It's the reason I may not watch this year's Summer X Games, but I will watch Darkmane break a vase and shout "I just pretended that belonged to Brian Deegan!" every time his masked face graces a TV. And, in a brilliant nod to viral marketing, the X Games people have been making the Darkmane videos appear as though they're viral videos made by Darkmane himself.
It's also the reason I will change the channel every time I see Sarah MacLachlan, because as much as I love puppies, I really would rather not have a commercial make me feel like a bad person because I'm sitting on my ass while they're suffering. Sorry, puppies. I just can't deal with that kind of guilt when I'm trying to watch I Love the New Millenium and remembering that, oh yeah, 9/11 happened in 2001, the same year Memento came out!
That's why it's so disheartening to me that Subway's hilarious commercial, which may or may not make fun of fat people and/or fast food burger restaurants, has faced protest from a bunch of humorless fat people. And before I continue, I'll allow you to double-check the claustrophobic mug accompanying this column. I'm allowed to make fun of fat people as much as I want because I've been made fun of for being a fat person since at least the seventh grade.
The commercial insinuates that fat people have low self-esteem and are likely to lose their boyfriends. This is a lazy stereotype. But who gives a crap? If you're fat, it's probably because of your own inaction. And don't pull the "glandular problem" card, because a University of Kentucky report released earlier this year says that it's unlikely that would cause excess weight.
The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) thinks fat people are unfairly discriminated against. They probably are discriminated against. But is it so unfair that the Civil Rights Act should include "weight" as a category? That kind of activism does nothing but take away from everything black civil rights activists like Martin Luther King did, heroically and deservedly. Who's their MLK? William Howard Taft?
If you want to get to the bottom of fat discrimination, maybe you should start at the playgrounds. Every day, children are unfairly targeting fat kids with dodgeballs and refusing to pick them for their teams until all the fit kids are taken.
I had the good fortune of going back to Philly last weekend and having a few drinks with my best friends from grade school, the ones who would often make fun of me for being fat. That's right -- I went so far as to be friends with the people who made fun of me. Whatever NAAFA's equivalent of an "Uncle Tom" is ... that's me, I guess.
As always, some old memories came up, and my friend Sean later told me that my other friend had a lot of respect for me because I could take a joke even when it was directed at me. It was deeply encouraging.
It's amazing how far a sense of humor goes. If you can't laugh at yourself, you need a better one. And if you don't have a good sense of humor, nobody wants to be friends with you. And then you actually will have lower self-esteem and a lack of boyfriends/girlfriends.
If NAAFA wants to be taken seriously, it's got to learn not to take itself so seriously. And as anyone will tell you, fat people are supposed to be jolly. Fortunately for me and my friends, that's one stereotype that held up.
