Pretty Fake Real People

Know what drives me nuts? Pretty Fake Real People.

Let me explain.

Pretty Fake Real People are the ones you see in advertisements that are gussied up to look like down-to-Earth, salt of the Earth, blue collar people. Except they’re ridiculously pretty.

Simple, down-home, salt of the Earth beautiful people invading my computer.

Most of the time you see this in ads for beer commercials. Beer, particularly domestic beer, is marketed largely to the working class. As such, you can only use so much imagery of a lifestyle that appears unattainable to the average bloke before it becomes not so much an appeal to their desire to live a better life as a reminder of the kind of life they aren’t living.

There is, in many ways, a fine line between decadence and despair.

So to combat this, you will see print ads where they show regular folks – your run of the mill Bros and Bettys – enjoying life with or because of their drink of choice. Except…well, look at the image I shared. Do you now anyone who looks like that, let alone someone that works at Sam’s Club?

It drives me crazy because it’s so wildly insincere, but yet it still works and has for the better part of the last two decades. Like, what’s organic about that picture? Do you think you’ll stumble onto that scene and those people anywhere in your hometown? If you do, then let me know where you live. I’d love to be able to impress a girl like that who has such simple tastes in life.