Facebook Ads

Back in the day – the day being sometime in October 2006,when I joined Facebook – there were no ads. However, as life teaches us all, there is no such thing as a free ride. Facebook doesn’t get a free ride either. I think all those photos, videos, Booze Mail drinks, sexy gifts and sundry other stupid applications take up some space on the internet and the internet wasn’t storing all this ridiculous shit for free.


Today, I discovered that you can up/downvote ads like Digg or Plime or whatever user-generated news site you follow. The best part is when the window pops up asking you why you downvoted it. Aside from waxing intellectual about non-existant movies while smoking reefer, this is one of the greatest wastes of time.
Regardless of what the ad was for, I always chose the same reason for downvoting it.



I love to think there's a guy at Facebook HQ whose job it is to sit and scrutinize the ads, trying to figure out how they could possibly be pornographic. And then I questioned how successful these ad campaigns were. The answer for all but one was, preposterously unsuccessful.



FAIL
Are you frustrated with whatever job it is that requires you to stick post-it notes all over your face? I would be too. But I hope you’re sitting down because CCVS is about to take you on the exhilarating thrill ride that is COURT REPORTING!! You could be living your dream in this lucrative career of sitting in the corner of a courtroom and typing out everything everyone says. I bet your friends would be pretty jealous. Why aren’t you applying already?



FAIL
Make and control phone to phone calls? This sounds far too elaborate for me. I’m guessing by make, they mean dial and by control, they mean pick up or hang up the phone. You know what else is good for making and controlling phone calls? A FUCKING PHONE. They’ve been around for a hundred years. Guess what you can use them for? Calling other phones.



FAIL
If someone could explain how walking cures other people's diseases, I'd love to hear it. I appreciate the sentiment, I really do. But if you want to help cure something, put on a lab coat. If simply donning a commemorative t-shirt and moving your feet cured any diseases, the people with cancer/leukemia/lymphoma would be out there running their asses off. For more info on this, please see Stuff White People Like.



FAIL
Do they mean The New Look of Speed? Congratulations Budds: you're The New Sound of Dumb.




FAIL
Aside from the fact that this girl looks like Beetlejuice from The Howard Stern Show, the headline alone is enough for me to deem this pornographic. I’m not sure what she’s gonna do with that clown shoe and I’m not sticking around to find out.



PASS
I was going to downvote this ad, but I decided that there was no way the face of Jesus mid-orgasm could be deemed pornographic (notice it doesn’t say “I’m finally coming.”) This could possibly be the best ad link on Facebook because, answer me this: where else does Jesus advertise, huh? This guy knows how to reach his target market. And churches don’t count. That’s equivalent to Ed Mirvish advertising for Honest Ed’s at Honest Ed’s.

Actually, the ad is for a new movie by Matt Stone and Trey Parker called Hamlet 2. But it’s still the best ad Facebook has on their site, for two main reasons:

1) the website is called WhatWouldSexyJesusDo.com. That's so offensive, it breaks some sort of cosmic law and becomes hilarious.
2) The promo video contains the lyrics, “Rock me, rock me sexy Jesus, all night long.” Ditto on the offensive cosmic law breaking.

On second thought, it would be really eerie if the Rapture actually happened on August 22nd. I’m going to work naked that day just in case. Because if the Left Behind* series taught me anything, it’s that people go to Heaven naked.

*I’ve never actually read any of the Left Behind books. But I have it on good authority that peoples clothes get left behind in a crumpled pile when Jesus comes. I mean, returns.