A week or so ago I talked about the worst take on the Internet that involved some dork on Bluesky saying everyone with fewer than 100 followers (or whatever) was a troll. Now on RogerEbert.com comes the second worst take!
So basically this "author" watched some TV recently and decided that in ads black couples were as rare as "unicorns" or "UFOs" or "Bigfoot." Which I thought was utter bullshit. And the "article" is utter bullshit because it is all anecdotal evidence. It really is, "I watched some TV and didn't see this, so here's a think piece!" And he quotes some other crap whining that there are too many interracial couples instead of black couples. Because I guess he's part-racist against interracial couples? Though admittedly I complained a couple years ago when companies like Amazon were suddenly showing interracial lesbian couples, which in real life probably are as rare as UFOs and unicorns. Still, what is the problem of showing interracial couples? It's not realistic compared to the population but it's a way for Madison Avenue to check two diversity boxes without a ton of extra casting.
More to the point, I started doing my own anecdotal evidence. I mostly watch streaming TV like Pluto TV, Tubi, or Xumo but they all have ads. It only took an hour or so to find my first "unicorn" in I think it was an Air wick ad. Wow, if only it were so easy to find unicorns in real life! Over the next 24 hours (though over half of that I was asleep or not watching TV) I saw about a half-dozen more though one was animated.
You might think, well only 7 in 10 hours or so of TV watching? Well, consider how many ads you see that don't have couples at all. Many have just one person or a group of "friends" who are usually of all races to check those diversity boxes (though you're unlike to see that in real life any more than lesbian interracial couples) or celebrities like Martha Stewart, Tina Fey, or Jay Leno (who looks terrible, BTW) or characters like Minions, Deadpool, or whoever else has a movie coming out. And some ads don't show any people at all!
Now consider that I saw 7 black couples in however many commercials over 10 hours vs in real life what the percentage of black couples is in the real population. Filter it further to those 7 in however many ads that featured couples at all and the percentage is probably higher than that of the real population. My anecdotal evidence then would say not only are black couples not "unicorns" but they're over-represented compared to real life. Which I'm not saying is a bad thing. I didn't care at all until this idiot spouted off.
The problem with these lame think pieces is it relies on absolutely no evidence. And because it's supported by a site using the name of a famous film critic, people will read it and think it's true. When if people probably gathered their own anecdotal evidence like I did they would soon realize it's untrue.
It just seems like content-free bullshit quickly churned up because an author needs to meet a deadline or make a few bucks. And in this case it's worse in a way than that other one on Bluesky because more people are likely to see it.
Anyway, if you read this, maybe you can start paying attention to the ads you watch and count how many unicorns you see. What would be great is if a bunch of grad students or something counted the ads on various channels/apps and cataloged how many ads have black couples, white couples, interracial couples, or no couples at all for a week or two. Then we could have real evidence instead of anecdotal evidence. That's what the author should have done, but it's easier to just watch TV a couple of hours and spout some nonsense than to actually do it right.
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