The that’s progress haiku

 

Some programmer got 
busy – made a box smaller,
saving room for adz.

– Leonard Blumfed (© 2022)

Note
The ugly truth and nothing but. Now that the Congrats box has been shrunk, Microsoft can not only display one ad but two at the same time! Pure genius! Just as we were getting undersugared from too few adz.

Terminology explanation
What are adz? Same as ads (advertisements), only much cheaper! It's like the difference between music and muzak.

The perfect life haiku

She wanted a life
as perfect as what you see
in advertising.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2020)

Note
One of the common experiences with advertising is that you don't necessarily get what was advertised when you buy the product. Advertising has that special knack of making things look better than true. And an old wisdom says that if something looks too good to be true it most likely isn't true. Like the kind of life generally portrayed by advertising. It's better to think of it as staged and paid bliss, I'd say, subtracting at least 75 percent as a reality penalty.

The punishment haiku

I’m being punished
by having to watch ads for
not wanting to pay

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2018)

Note
Whenever I want to play a silly game of solitaire in Windows 10, I get to see a bunch of silly ads for other silly games from Microsoft. Years ago, solitaire was a freebie Microsoft threw in with earlier Windows versions. Everything, including the most insipid stuff, is becoming increasingly monetized in this brave new world. And I mean brave in Aldous Huxley’s sense.

The brutal reality haiku

If it's not fake, it's
most likely war, injustice,
fraud or betrayal.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2017)

Note
A somewhat pessimistic view of what’s going on in the world.
What brought that on?
Looking at the news, I suppose, suppressing the few hopeful items that are reported on now and then as well as advertising, which suggests that everything is fun and games if you buy the right products.

The all pervasive advertising haiku

Nowanights I am
presented sponsored content
even between dreams.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2016)

Note
Only the next logical step in the planning of Google & Co.

The you must watch haiku

You must watch this ad
before you can see what
you wanted to see.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2016)

Note
A little kick at today’s coercive online advertising blackmail practices. (Is that a tautology? Doesn’t matter. Drives home the point.) This forced ad exposure reminds me of Stanley Kubricks’s film A Clockwork Orange (1971), where Malcolm McDowell’s eyes were kept open by force so he could not avoid seeing the things that were forced on him. With the aim of turning him into a nice guy from a criminal. So what’s the advertising forced upon us supposed to turn us into? Idiots who will eventually succumb and consume?

The state of the art in subliminal advertising haiku

Oh give me one film
that does not show a bitten
apple product somewhere.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2015)

Note
Have you noticed how many movies show people (mostly cool, of course) with electronic products from one particular vendor nowadays? I hereby declare that particular vendor the king of subliminal advertising.