The Most Fascinating Thing To Watch On The Internet Right Now Is NOT What You Would Expect
We live in a time when there is so much stuff to watch between Netflix, HULU, HBO, Disney+, Peacock (you get the point, there are a lot). I oftentimes find myself so overwhelmed by the amount available I just default to something I have already seen a million times like Always Sunny, Arrested Development, The Office, etc (again, you get the point, there are a lot). Saturday night, I found myself in this exact predicament. I popped open Amazon Prime to mix things up and saw this staring me directly in the face.
Now, a stick figure hot dog man roasting his ass on a little fire while a gender-ambiguous child looks along with the words "DRIVE IN MOVIE ADS" in a sans-serif basic font underneath, is not something you come across every day, so I was obviously intrigued. Some further investigation showed that it was one hour and fifteen minutes long, so it must be a documentary about the history of drive in movie ads or something of that nature, right? Wrong. This is just 75 minutes of straight up drive in movie ads. Nothing more, nothing less. I kind of thought it was a joke, like that digital fireplace you can put on your TV, a bit of sorts, but, again, I was wrong.
NOW I understand how everything I described above doesn't sound too appealing, I had the same exact thought myself, but it piqued my interest enough and was so goddamn bizarre that I took to the Amazon reviews out of pure curiosity.
Amazon reviews are the retail equivalent of a website comment section which, obviously, are the most trustworthy and reputable people out there, so I put my trust in them in the moment, and these were a few that stuck out.
"I love it; I am old." What else would you possibly need? If you can't put your faith in the taste of olds then what can you put your faith in?
"I can't believe I enjoyed that" is something I am generally used to hearing after some intimate time with a woman (no big deal), but once I got over the PTSD of every backhanded compliment I've ever received from the opposite gender, I realized that this may be the most straightforward review I've ever seen. "Something you watch when you're bored and don't know what to watch." That pretty much described me at that exact moment. You know what? I'm in.
Spoiler: It was spectacular. I could go super in-depth breaking down both the strange little nuances and drastic differences between that world and ours today, but then there'd be no reason for you all to watch. I will give a few highlights that I found interesting to maybe push you over the edge.
1. This suicidal hot dog ad.
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2. This ad announcing the invention of corndogs
3. How much more realistic food ads looked to the actual product
4. Ads guilt tripping people into attending church
5. This weird cartoon stomach hanging out in a convertible
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It isn't very often we get an unbiased, unmotivated, non-controversial look into the past, just straight nostalgia porn. Even though most of the ads were from before I was born, it was still a really cool glimpse into a time where soda and popcorn sizes were VERY different (we're disgusting now), you were publicly guilt-tripped into going to church and people were apparently remarkably irresponsible with their radios.
Give it a watch, I really think most would enjoy.