I’ve spent the vast majority of my adult life not watching TV commercials. I didn’t own a television for a long time, and when I finally did get one, I never had cable. My viewing has been provided, for the most part, by DVDs and streaming services.*
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had some version of the following conversation:
Acquaintance: You know that TV commercial where…
Me: Blank stare
Acquaintance: You know. The one with the guy who…
Me: Slow head shake. No. No, I never saw it.
Some cultural phenomena pass me by altogether. It’s only in the last few days I’ve become aware of someone known as My Pillow Guy. I saw a news report saying My Pillow Guy visited the president at the White House to urge him to invoke martial law. Wait, what? Does anyone else know how odd that sounded, even without the martial law part, to someone who’d never heard of this particular peddler of headrests? Why did a pillow salesman have the ear of the president, and an interest in dictatorship? Was he hoping to force the populace to buy his cushions?
I quizzed my friends about him. Did everyone already know who he was? Has he been around a long time, or was he a manifestation of 2020, like the murder hornets? Did he come here from an alternate universe, maybe the same one that sent us evil J.K. Rowling? Are there other genres of him that I should be aware of? My Spatula Guy? My Throw Rug Guy?
By and large, my friends were aware of him, with one exception. None of them were surprised he was someone who would pal around with a person like the soon-to-leave head of state. I was told he’d been around for years, producing terrible infomercials, though his universe of origin has not been verified to me. There was no My Spatula Guy as far as any of them had heard — yet.
So now I know. I guess when you live in a really, really capitalist society, you have to watch the commercials to keep up with current events.
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*This isn’t a judgment on anyone else’s viewing habits, only providing context to explain my ignorance on this topic.
Nomadic Noesis 