If you have a healthy sense of the absurd, there is great joy to be found in the dumbness of some digital mediacrats.
Last week in this space there appeared a post called Astounding News From Moronsville. The post was about a digital media agency that created an infographic asserting that ads that were "viewable" were more effective than ads that were "non-viewable." I guess you have to be a Certified Digital Media Professional to figure that shit out.
My post was less than complimentary about the nitwits that propagated this stunning wisdom.
Amazingly, some digital media honchos got all huffy about my post. They wrote nasty emails and tweets. I was accused of singling digital media people out for scorn -- which, of course, I did. An article referencing my stupidity even appeared yesterday in Digiday.
In a remarkable torturing of logic, they asserted that since there is waste in traditional advertising, there is nothing absurd about creating a chart showing that online ads that can be seen get more clicks than ads that cannot be seen.
These people are so insulated and engulfed in the arcane minutiae of their narrow little discipline that they can't see the monumental ridiculousness in asserting that things that can be seen are more effective than things that can't. In their bizarre world, this is an insight.
First, let me state the obvious. I've known some brilliant, talented media people, both traditional and digital. Okay, everyone got that?
I've also known a lot of dumb-ass media people. Let's face it, a media agency isn't exactly the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Now, here's the difference between traditional media people and digital media people.
I've known some really dumb traditional media people. But I've never known one so fucking dumb that he would write...
"If an ad is in view, your audience is more likely to act upon it."That takes a wonderful, extraordinary kind of dumbness. It takes a transcendent dumbness. It takes a dumbness that charms, and thrills, and makes you think that maybe life really is just a bowl of fucking cherries.
It takes more than traditional dumbness. It takes cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, up-to-the-minute, undiluted, artisanally curated digital dumbness.
