Those Annoying Visa Ads

Actually, you may think of them as 'those charming Visa ads', but they annoy me to distraction. You know the spots - there's a shopping mall food court, or a sandwich store, or a zoo, or a toy store, and everything is going like clockwork in a Busby Berkleyan frenzy. There is always a top down shot of the whole kaleidescopic vista. The thing that makes this efficiency possible is the fact that everyone is using their Visa check cards.

But then, of course, some idiot pulls out cash and ruins everything. The whole beautiful clockwork thing grinds to a alt and everyone passively agresssively regards the offender until they either leave or remember that they too have a Visa check card.

Why do I hate these ads so much? It's because, although most ads are full of shit, these ads are full of shit in a profoundly unamerican way.

Allow me to explain.

First, the premise is patent nonsense. Cash is often just as quick as a check card. Or at least, its as quick as a check card machine manned by someone being paid minimum wage.

Second, businesses love cash. Especially restaurants. Want to know why? Most restaurants skim a whole bunch of untraceable cash (typically 10%) off the top of each days take and squirrel it away somewhere before accounting begins. Thats just basic restaurant practice. Add to that the fact that check card and credit card transactions cost businesses money, and the whole 'we hate cash' thing kind of falls apart.

But third, and most important, who wants to just be a cog in a machine? I remember a friend who lived in Japan telling me about a tv commercial for garbage bags that ran over there. Everyone was taking out their black garbage bags and when some poor sap brought out his white garbage bag, everyone pointed at him and laughed. That was the whole commercial. At the time, I thought that was fascinating, and also something that wouldn't fit in the United States, because of this countries huge cultural mythos of Rugged Individualism. In this country, we want to be the person who stands out. We want to be the car that stays on the track while all others fall in the holes. We want to be the hammer and not the nail. We want to be the clever woman who is eating Lean Cuisine and not her poor colleagues eating tasteless mush.
And thats where the Visa commercial is the most wrong. Like I said, it's just plain unamerican.