Culture Feature

11 of the Weirdest Commercials of All Time

Most commercials only want your money. These want your sanity.

In the world of advertising, grabbing the viewer's attention is key.

Sure, you could just list off the benefits of whatever you're selling in a straightforward manner, but is that going to leave an impression?

You want your audience to take notice. You want to keep them thinking about your ad for days and weeks afterward — to infect their brains with a little consumerist parasite that reminds them to cough up their money in pursuit of a false sense of fulfillment. So anything you can do to make your ad stand out from the crowd is a good thing, right?

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Late Capitalism Diaries: Comedy Central and Awkwafina's New Marketing is Pure Evil

They have found the key to making my morning commute even more unpleasant

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Photo by DFree (Shutterstock)

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MUSIC

Spotify Is Suspending All Political Advertisements in 2020

The streaming giant follows Twitter and Google in limiting political ads.

Photo by: Haithem Ferdi / Unsplash

Spotify is suspending all political advertisements in 2020, joining other tech companies like Twitter, Google, and even TikTok who've placed limitations or bans on ad spending for the 2020 election.

In a statement to AdAge, the streaming giant said: "At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our process, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content. We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities."

Maybe Spotify is learning from Facebook's mistakes; just this fall, the social network infamously walked back a policy that banned false claims in advertising. That means political advertisements on Facebook are essentially free to mislead and deceive voters. Their reasoning? Advertisements from politicians currently in office or running for office are particularly difficult to fact-check, so they're just letting the ads run anyway.

A more rigorous fact-checking policy should be implemented across the board, from smaller news outlets to our favorite music streaming platform. But until then, eliminating political advertisements is a positive step for Spotify.