Plato said: “Know thyself.” Socrates said it, too. So did Aeschylus. And although those guys were a few graduation classes ahead of me, I always believed they were talking about me when they said it.
Because I always thought I knew myself.
Turns out I was wrong. TV told me so, and TV never lies.
Because these days, the truly wise men who can look into your soul and see the real guy who lives there aren’t a bunch of toga-clad guys sandal-schlepping around the Acropolis. Today they wear suits, and they hang out at TV networks and ad agencies.
They’re called demographers, and it’s their job to know what kind of commercial will appeal to the guy who is likely to be watching any show at any given time on TV. To do that, they have to know who you are, and sometimes they know you better than you know yourself.
After all, consumer spending is what keeps a show on the air, and your show is headed for the dumpster if you’re trying to hawk Maxipads to a guy who drives a Ford F650 monster truck. (Penile enhancement products for those guys, sure, but not Maxipads.)
I don’t usually watch TV commercials. I either record a program and turn the ads into a blurry lightshow when the time comes, or I use the commercial break time to flip from channel to channel to see what else I might be missing. Sometimes I even pick up a book or a magazine and read a page or two.
Because I’m a fast-living, intellectually curious kind of guy.
Or so I thought.
Turns out I was wrong.
Because the other day I was just too lazy to pick up the remote, and I had already read the magazine sitting next to me, so I sat through all the commercials that came with the CNN show I regularly watch.
And it turns out the CNN advertising demographers have decided I’m a guy hankering for some Victoza to treat my type 2 diabetes, longing to drive a Mitsubishi because it has automatic brake-assist when I miss a road hazard, which could happen while I’m shopping around for the best urinary catheters in town.
Wait, what? That doesn’t sound like me at all.
But, hey, what does CNN know? Their pollsters thought the election would go the other way.
I flipped to one of my other favorite shows, “American Pickers.” Mike and Frank are my kind of guy—fast-living and intellectually curious, agile and determined, crawling over any obstacle in their way to seek out the rusty treasures that other fools would overlook as nothing more than old, worn and weary. Although I never paid any attention to the commercials that came with the show, I decided to sit through them this time, just to prove to myself that CNN had no idea what kind of rough-and-tumble guy I really was.
And it turns out that the Pickers think I’m a guy hankering for Trulicity to cure my type 2 diabetes, longing for a Nissan because it has automatic brake-assist when I miss a road hazard, which could happen when I race out to get some Linzess to cure my chronic constipation. And if the Linzess kicks in before I can get back home from the pharmacy, there’s always Depends.
And I thought: “Huh, I guess I never really knew myself at all. Go figure.”
If you watch other kinds of shows, then you have other kinds of products shilled to you, but if I’m not the kind of guy who enjoys those shows, then I’d only see ads for those products by accident.
For example, recently a friend recommended that I watch a show he liked. I don’t remember which show it was, but I sat through it for one episode before deciding that, nope, it just wasn’t for me.
But the ads were a real eye-opener, because I discovered that if my friend liked that show, then he was the kind of guy looking for condoms and sensitivity creams that even a girl would enjoy, and his car of choice was a drop-top little minx of a machine that raced nimbly around street corners and country roads, as he swilled 5-hour energy drinks.
Just when you think you know a guy….
I told him the next day that his show was interesting, but not really my kind of thing.
He looked at me strangely — not because I didn’t like his show, but because I could barely look him in the eye.
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo. com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
