Booty-Call Accelerator

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The first few HE comics, like the Higgs Boson announcement, are actually lettered in Comic Sans. I never changed the font in those early comics as a way to remind myself where I’d come from and what mistakes I had made. Those were dark times. Times when a man could get a newsletter from his dentist that had Comic Sans all over it. Right in his mailbox. AT HIS HOUSE! Sure, he might see Papyrus in the logo of a local spa or nail salon, but no one should have to deal with such fonts at the place where their children sleep. Dark times indeed.

So I guess the Universe gets to keep on having mass or whatever. S’pretty cool I guess. I mean, the Higgs Boson is neat and all, but I’m saving my excitement for when someone figures out why almost all of everything in the Universe isn’t actually there. I feel like maybe 100% to more than 100% of our resources as a people should be spent on unraveling that particular mystery, because personally it crushes my brain out of existence.

COMMENTERS: If we have sent the Declaration of Independence to England in Comic Sans, I’m pretty sure we’d all not be pronouncing out H’s. So what does a person or product have to do in order for you to immediately NOT take them seriously? Is it specific to your field or area of expertise (ie Is is something most people wouldn’t immediately notice)?

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118 Comments

  1. Also wanted to mention that Im having a lot of fun trying to weave the pop culture commentary into the mini story lines of the comic. It's making it take longer to get to the plot points that I want to, but I think it's preserving the essence of the comic (if that makes any sense).

    • I don't know if it's good, but I like it!. I try not to speak for the universe as a whole. Or whole-nothing, or whatever.

    • Wait… Josh's sexcapades are story? I thought they were just his Thursday nights. Or are we still in the middle of the "Eli has a drinking problem" storyline?

        • If you start having trouble keeping this right in your head, you are doing it right. That's when overarching character stuff has blended perfectly with one-off stuff that comes up.

  2. Having worked for years in graphic design/web design and the like, I immediately write off any company that print their logo in an illegible font on a vehicle or sign. Dark green letters on a black truck? NO ONE CAN READ THAT SHIT! PUT A WHITE STROKE ON THEM FUCKIN' VOWELS AND CONSONANTS! Yellow text on white? SAME PROBLEM! URL too god damn long and has 4 dashes in it? YOU DO NOT GET MY BUSINESS! Prints your logo on one of those 8.5×11" magnetic signs and stuck it to the door of your F-150? F-YOU 150 TIMES! You have to at least show that you want my business bad enough to make your advertising in such a way that I can read it, and understand it. I also go nuts when logos/branding are unnecessarily complicated, poorly laid out or just entirely bad concepts. Last week I saw a van that had Albert Einstein as the mascot for a plumbing company because they were "plumbing geniuses." I immediately hated them forever.

    • I have to drive past a daycare daily that is called 2-4-U Child Care. I guess it's run by a set of twins hence the 2-4-U but I don't think I'd want anybody who can't fucking spell properly on their business sign to have any educational interaction with my kids… if I had any. Text speak is not business appropriate.

  3. I honestly have no idea why anyone cares what font was used in the PowerPoint announcement. This is the most idiotic thing I've been subjected to since I woke up.

    • Pretty hostile comment, but maybe that because you just woke up. Comic Sans has a connotation of being a "dumb person's font." The idea of the smartest scientists in the world using it is a humorous juxtaposition. There. I've explained the joke and thus robbed it of all comedy.

  4. Pretty much any ad—brochure, billboard, poster or store sign—that features "generic face of random person" imagery. You know, so that you can identify with their service or product because THAT person is smiling, so it must be something truly, adequately acceptable.

    • I used to manage a small web design team and after seeing and utilizing hundreds of stock photos of smiling people I started to recognize them in other ads on billboards and TV.

      • Here, in Austin, I noticed a stock face on a billboard for a xxx local club. *wink-wink*
        Unfortunately, I recognized her from an ad in a magazine for a well known cosmetic face cream, for that
        girl next door look. She was lovely. I don't think she signed up for the billboard.

        • I guarantee she didn't. My image ended up in a billboard in Germany for something or other. The photo is sold to whomever wants to use it and that's the end. Neither photog nor model are in the loop after payment is rendered.

          • Yeah, sorry, I was being snarky. As a photographer, I know about model releases, and some people not reading fine print. I felt sorry for her, and took a picture of the billboard intending to send it to the cosmetic company, but couldn't scare up the original ad. It went away soon, though.

      • My favourite example of that is when I got bored one day and went looking for pics of teenagers for some original characters from a fanfic I was writing, and found one in particular that I liked because the pretty blonde teen in it was smiling in such a completely appropriately "superior bitch" way. It's the smile the head cheerleader would have if the school nerd went up to her and told her that they should totally hang out because they totally like the same music or something.

        And then, a few months later, she started popping up *everywhere*. Like, when you type in an url and get that list of supposedly related urls instead? Her pic. And then *Walmart* started using her on billboards everywhere. Man, I laughed so hard the first time I saw one. First, because of course to me it's Megan the bitch, and second, because, dudes, I picked that pic because she so obviously hates you. Way to go, Walmart! XD That was an excellent choice.

        • Worse was when we used a program that let you compile your own theme music from snippets for a video training company I worked for. For 2 years, pretty much every training video we produced started off with this song that we put together that sounded pretty good…

          … until Girls Gone Wild started using pretty much the exact same combination of samples as THEIR theme.

  5. It drives me insane when contractual terms are titled "terms and conditions". Conditions are a type of term, titling an agreement like that is as redundant as writing "alcoholic" across a bottle of tequila.

    • My Web host calls their Terms of Service "Terms and Conditions of Service." But that's for the sake of the acronym it spells.

  6. Any product that uses alarm clocks in its ads (and once you start looking for it, it happens a lot)! That is the worst sound in the world and I don't need to hear it while I'm watching Jeopardy, thank you very much!

    Also, that hotel room is making my skin crawl just looking at it.

    • I'm the same way. They always make me feel that flash of "OH GOD EARLY WHHHYYYYYY".

      Disorientation, nausea and despair are NOT feelings you want me to associate with your product.

    • And doorbells. Nothing like getting up and walking across the house to be greeted by a big fat nothing everytime some commercial thinks ringing the doorbell out of the rear surround channel is a great marketing tactic.

      • It's worse when you have a dog. Every d**n time there's a doorbell effect on T.V., we have to go check the front door just to get our dog to quit barking. And forget about backing up to figure out what the last five minutes of dialogue were, because then we just start the cycle over. So obnoxious!

        • We didn't even *have* a doorbell and the dog would *still* go nuts each time (we figured the people we got her from must have had one). And that was the days before Teevo, so there was a lot of trying to hear what was being said whle shouting "Shut up! There's no one there!"

          Every damned time…

    • Police sirens in radio ads. Don't they understand that like 90% of radio listeners are IN THEIR FUCKING CAR and that it might freak them the fuck out to hear a siren while they're driving? Every time I hear one I make a careful mental note of the product being advertised so that I can make sure to never, ever buy it, not even by accident.

      • Traffic noises in general. Though I love the song it's so disorienting when Summer in the City comes on the Oldies station. Right in the middle at the bridge there's a car horn. Just once. Just enough to confuse the brain for a moment.

      • This! I always jump and have look around to make sure it's not a real police car/firetruck/ambulance. So frustrating.

        Worse, there was a business on the street I always had to drive down (or go several miles out of my way). It seemed like it had this motion sensor facing the street that set off a police siren sound so anytime someone drove by on that side of the street, it went off. Evil, vile place.

    • Record scratch sound effects make me want to scream. So hackneyed and overused. Oh this isn't what you thought it was so we'll put a record scratch in to emphasise the point and show how damn funny we are!

    • I'm sure he'd love to give her the old Freudian slip, but there's always that eternal problem. Where do you put it on a mermaid?

      • Duh, she's still got a mouth, hands and boobs.

        God, as a woman I can't believe I just typed that.

        Still gonna post it, though. If someone wouldn't mind putting me out of my misery, that would be great.

    • This always ticks me off on several levels. (same as when big companies used to make myspace pages)

      1: Cheap and lazy
      2: Abusing and spaming a service which is supposed to be there for people to socialize, in order to get free advertisement (you're an F'ing billion dollar company, you can afford to PAY for your advertisements, you don't need use the same means as a garage band full of 14 year olds!)

  7. [ring-ring]
    CSR: "Hello, XYZ Company–"
    Mr. Richard Fore Branes: "Yeah! What's the catch?"
    CSR: "I haven't got the slightest motherfucking clue what you are talking about."
    Dick F. Branes: "The catch! The goddamn catch! Your ad says I can get Dumb Shit for free. What's the catch?"
    CSR: ~sigh~ "There's no catch, sir. None of the companies that I have worked for, which you or your wife or your retarded teen daughter have called, over the last seven fucking years have ever had a catch. You actually get Dumb Shit for free. Just call 1-800-DUM-SHIT, WHICH YOU REACHED ME THROUGH IN THE FIRST PLACE, and we will—You know what, sir. Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck everyone." [racked shotgun][deafening blast]

    This radio advertisement trope has been plaguing me for almost a decade. I don't remember if this started with Rosetta Stone software or Proactive, but it has nearly run the gamut of products and customer demographics.

  8. I know that a good or service is of the highest quality when the ad shows me the "old" or "wrong" way to do things in black and white – preferably with an overweight, disheveled mess giving the demonstration.

    • OMG this. "Are you too stupid to cut a damned tomato without squashing it and getting tomato goo all over your hands? HAVE WE GOT THE PRODUCT FOR YOU!!"

      *Note to self: Avoid anyone dumb enough to need one of these things*

  9. Anyone else noticing that the other guy looks like Joel? Is it because Josh is secretly in love with Joel? Or because Joel secretly loves Josh and puts them together in his comic? The plot thickens.

  10. For those unfamiliar with the sports, I give you the number 1 reason why Comic Sans shouldn't be taken seriously: http://www.geekosystem.com/dan-gilbert-comic-sans

    As for what else keeps me from taking a business seriously, it's when they put a guy/personality in their commercials that doesn't seem to fit. Two examples: 1) Locally there's this guy named Kevin Fear (name pushes it further eh?) who sells cell phones and mattresses (in two separate stores). Whenever he has a sale on cell phones he always offers a buy one get two free deal, which, while sounding great at first, always comes with a huge oversell and corny delivery. Think of the worst informercial ever and you'll get the idea. 2) The second is simple: A LINE (like 8 in the last two years) of commercials for a porn shop whose spokesperson is a puppet of an alligator. 'Nuff said.

  11. I kind of get the opposite vibe from Comic Sans – thanks to so many, many teachers throughout school using it for handouts, I kind of get a condescension vibe off of it. Like the typeface equivalent of talking to a pet or small child.

  12. I enjoyed Josh's fake phone number. When I'm signing up for something where I don't ever want them to contact me, I go by:
    Mr. Fake Name
    123 4th St
    Schenctady, NY 12345
    (123) 456-7890

  13. I work in a law firm. Plaintiff's counsel on one of my cases uses Comic Sans in all of his letters *and* his court pleadings. Court rules only require 12 point font, no restrictions on font face. I die.

    • Betcha they'd change that rule if you handed in a bunch of briefs in a Klingon font.

      Opposing counsel: "Your honor, according to the motion brought forth by my esteemed counsel, I am the son of a motherless targ."

    • I feel your pain. There's an insurance company that my shop deals with that faxes every single estimate for repairs in Comic Sans. And it's not like they're tiny, either, it's a gigantic corporation that somewhere has someone that said, "Hey, you know what makes our industry look professional? THIS font!"

  14. For me, it's video game commercials that don't include any shots of gameplay FROM THE SAME BLOODY GAME THEY'RE TELLING ME TO BUY!!! I'm looking at YOU, Call of Duty franchise! Show me what your GAME looks like, not a bunch of celebrities pretending to be game characters!

    • Now that you mention it, I dont think any video games include actual gameplay in their commercials.

      • Well, not the M-rated games nowadays. Batman: Arkham City was rated T, & that game's commercials showed gameplay. Same for anything on the Wii or Kinect.

  15. I have NO idea why companies don't just buy their own damned domain name. I've told dozens of (small) business owners that for like $15 for a *year* they can have their email be gary@garysbusiness.com, instead of gary@thelocalISP.net. And then they've got an email their customers can remember (and associate with *their* business instead of their ISP's); they can create a wildcard so that it doesn't matter what is to the left of the "@", it'll still get to someone; and (possibly the most important reason, for a business) if they *change* their ISP, they can simply point their domain emails to that new private email and not have to suddenly update all their business cards etc (not to mention suddenly making it impossible for customers who have older contact material to email them).

    And it's fifteen dollars!! How is all that not worth a lousy fifteen dollars a year?! And almost every damned one of them smiles awkwardly, and agrees in a slightly dubious tone that that does sound like a good idea, and never does it, because Teh Intertubes is just that thing over there that they can safely go on ignoring because no one actually uses it. Also, this is Computer Stuff (TM) and therefore too complicated for them to even think about comprehending. As their tech support, that frustrates the hell out of me.

    Pretty much every small business has a magnetic sign on the side of their pickup, though; it's pretty much a standard here as we're in a very small rural town, so it doesn't put me off the way it might in a city.

    • @ Kryss LaBryn

      I'd agree with your idea with one added caveat, handhold the less tech-savvy through the process.
      My sister-in-law's dad runs a successful local landscaping company. As the resident "tech guy" in the family I got volunteered to help him set up a domain for his company. As we were going through the registering process he asked me what to call his personal email/domain.

      This next part is slightly my fault.

      I said, "Well most people name it something like, my name @ my company's name. com."

      I shit you not, when I checked out his domain not twenty minutes later it literally said "Tom@mycompanysname.com". He helpfully explained the software kept kicking the name back because of the apostrophe in "company", and he thought he was pretty clever in figuring out how to get past that hurdle all on his own.

      • Ah. I see you've been talking to our customers again. XD

        What is it about putting a computer in front of certain people that makes normally quite intelligent people's brains shut down? Oh, well, I shouldn't bitch; I'm like that with clothing patterns… Mind you, using patterns isn't something I do every damned day of my life.

  16. I think you're being a little harsh on yourself for using comic sans in early comics. I mean, comics are what comic sans was designed for. It may not be a very good comic typeface, but it's pretty much the one and only place where it's not a misuse of the font.

  17. Back when we were car shopping we had the Chevy Cruze on our list of possibilities…until we saw the commercial about how exciting it was that you could update Facebook verbally from it. The idea that they screamed "every1 luvs facebook lolz" instead of showcasing actual items that make it a worthwhile vehicle made us instantly scratch it off the list.

  18. 1. LOLSpeak (Professionalism is its own reward, folks.)
    2. Text Speak (Please assure me your company is run by grown ups and not asshole TEEEENNNNSS!)
    3. Any intentional grammatical error (I'm looking at you, Toys "R" Us.)
    4. Unnecessary use of quotation marks (Still looking, you bastards.)
    5. Any accidental grammatical error (If you aren't making sure your ads are being thoroughly proofed before going to print, your company is obviously run by incompetent losers who need more supervision.)

    • I think it's meant to be Toys 'R' Us. They're apostrophes, not quotation marks. They stand in for the A and the E in "are."

      That said, I agree. Grammar errors drive me mad, whether intentional or not. Seriously, are we the only ones who remember what we were taught in fourth grade?

      • Yes, this morning I woke up and immediately thought exactly what you just explained about the 'R'. No more posties after bedtime.

        And really, the Toys 'R' Us thing is a silly thing to nitpick. It's a store geared towards children, and they very helpfully indicate by their name how contemptible they find said children. That's just good marketing.

        Finally, your last point is also exactly what I'm thinking when I see accidental grammar errors in any professionally produced print item. Every goddamn year for 12 years they taught us the exact same set of grammar rules. It never changed, the only thing that really advanced was the vocabulary. If I had to learn it and now be driven to the point of being a pedantic asshole about it, SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE.

        The best thing about English classes in college was that no one was wasting my time trying to teach grammar or spelling. You were held accountable for using it properly in everything you turned in, but it was your responsibility to know it in the first place.

  19. 1) The Declaration was never actually sent to England. It was the equivalent of an angry "open letter" on somebody's Livejournal. The war had already been going on well before the thing was written, and continued well after it.
    2) There was a Golden Corral ad with random redneck schmucks extolling the virtues of a chocolate fountain. Rednecks as spokespeople makes me not take you seriously. So does calling the thing a "Chocolate Wonderfall." Why do you need to make up words?
    3) Any movie or TV show that includes a phone call ending, and the person who hangs up second hears a dialtone after the first person hangs up. PHONES DON'T DO THAT. Yet for some reason, most people get it wrong. The West Wing gets it right. So does The Amazing Spider-Man. It's hard to think of more examples because there are vastly more wrong than right.
    4) I'm a Grammar Dalek. If you use "it's" when you meant "its" I will stop paying attention.

    • 3) … "PHONES DON'T DO THAT."

      Showing my age here, but actually, they did really do that, back in the Stone Age, if you stayed on the line long enough after someone had hung up on you. There was a click, which would shortly be followed by a dial tone. If you left the phone "off the hook" for long enough, the dial tone would stop, and you would get a really loud fast beeping noise which you could hear from across the room. Then a recording of a woman's voice would periodically come on saying, "Please hang up or try your call again."

      • It's amazing which technologies show our age, isn't it? I have to wonder how many people these days have ever actually used a rotary phone.

        • In the late 90s, I had this awesome antique rotary phone in my room. I loved it. Something about spinning the dial instead of just pushing buttons appealed to me. That thing had a ringer on it that made me jump every time, even if I new the call was coming and it couldn't be silenced. 🙂

          • At one of the old place I worked, one of my best friends was a systems administrator. He bought an antique rotary phone and the entire IT department banded together to get it set up on the Cisco network. It was truly a wonder of geek unity to behold.

      • I know this doesnt fit the criteria I established (really its just a pet peeve) but i HATE IT when characters on TV and movies hang up the phone without saying goodbye. Basically no one who uses a phone of any kind on screen says good bye.

        • Yeah, for some reason that's a standard rule of screenwriting, and I'm not sure I understand why. Supposedly it's because it wastes screen time with dialogue that serves no real purpose. But seriously, it's two syllables. Seems like a small price to pay for verisimilitude.

          It's the kind of thing that you could go years without noticing, but once you do, it will always bother you. I wonder though, we're all so used to it now, would it seem strange if everyone on TV started saying "goodbye" tomorrow?

        • I liked how the no-goodbye policy was SOP on Mad Men, but then in season 3 (I think) they sort of lampooned themselves with Don having to put up with Conny's eccentric calls and abrupt hangups.

      • Land lines still do that.

        I know, I know; I'm a dinosaur. XD Still have one. When we move in a few weeks, though, the new place has a broadband Internet connection coming in through the land line, and we're using our Internet connection for a VoIP with local numbers and 911 calling. That we're using an Internet connection through a landline to provide a VoIP that simulates a land line amuses the heck out of me.

        I actually do have a rotary phone, but it's not plugged in. But the awesome thing is that if you call a Canadian Forces base, the "If you know the number of the person you are trying to reach…" recording actually still says "If you are calling from a rotary phone, please stay on the line and an operator will be with you shortly." I get unreasonably excited every time I hear that, ha ha ha. It's like, for just a moment, it's 1988 again.

    • Yes, I know the Golden Corral commercial you speak of, and it does not make me want to eat at Golden Corral. It makes me want to eat a bullet.

      I imagine the film crew going in to film some actual customers, and they maybe see some nice looking kids from the local high school. "Nope, can't use them. I need a fat lady with a mullet, or maybe a guy in bib overalls. What would be best is if we could find someone with chocolate smeared on their face."

      • Oh gross, anytime any ad features people eating or (especially) getting food on their face it basically ruins that food for me. Particularly if they try to portray being a messy eater as sexy. Nothing is less sexy than someone with the dining manners of an 18 month old baby.

  20. Clearly the presentation was sabotaged by Dr. Doom in an attempt to embarrass Dr. Reed Richards in his moment of triumph.

  21. As a hairdresser I can say when someone shows me picture of Jennifer Aniston, Victoria Beckham, or Halle Berry stop listening… you might as well walk in and beg for a miracle "oh please magic hair person make me look thirty years younger, eighty pounds lighter, and three shades darker with nothing but a few ounces of steel and a comb"…. Bonus points if the picture is over 10 years old

  22. I was assisting at a small video game tournament where I met this guy who decided that the event needed a DJ. We started to talk and he hands me his business card. It had three different businesses on it and it was just god-awfully designed. If I cannot find your name, what you do, and how to contact you on a business card on the first glance, you cannot get my business.

    • Yeah, if you have three different businesses, you really need to have three different sets of business cards, and no, you don't give one of each to everyone you meet. What you just described screams of a complete lack of professionalism. My reaction when I see stuff like that is to run away. Run away quickly, before I get any on me.

  23. I used to work as a housekeeper in a Motel 6…my dad referred to it as Cracktown, Motel Sex. Your shady motel room comic reminded me of that sad time in my life.

    Local commercials always strike me as cheesy, ridiculous and ill-advised. I'd love to support local business, but if I see your commercial on TV, at the movie theater when I get there too early, or hear it on the radio I will hate your business and think bad thoughts when I drive past, instead of stopping to shop.

  24. Comic Sans is my nemesis. Yes, call me a hipster font elitist (Helvetica? I knew it when it was called Das Neue Haas Grotesk) even I'm not interested big on typography, but I just find it so ugly it's offensive. And it's everywhere! I don't think it's suitable for speech bubbles, whether all caps or not, and I have special hate for it because the capital D looks like someone stepped on it.

    Sure I used Comic Sans for a couple things myself when I was a kid and did not know better, but if you're older than 10, it's not justified. Go with Arial or bloody Times New, perhaps they're not "fun", but the comedy in Comic Sans is of the trainwreck type. A train full of kittens, nuns, orphans and your grandma, there are no survivors and then Michael Bay and Tommy Wiseau direct a movie about it.

    I'd like to make a font that would be both easy to read and easy to the eyes, and call it COMIC SENSE.

    • SUPER SECRET COMIC FACT: A lot of the time when I write "iPhone" or "iPad" in the comics, i have to use comic sans for the "i" because my font doesnt have a lowercase. Lately Ive been using a capital "I" and just drawing over it to make it lowercase.

    • All caps Comic Sans is never appropriate in any context, because the kerning is so atrociously bad that it almost makes the font unreadable. Go here and look at the poster with the word "IMITATION" on it. Jesus Christmas. What does "imit a tion" mean? Is that Latin? The second TI looks like some fucked-up Cyrillic letter.

      Also, the Comic Sans capital A looks like it just had a stroke.

      It should never have been anything more than one of those goofy gimmick fonts that clutter up the font list in MS Word. I think ultimately you do have to blame Microsoft for popularizing it via Windows.

  25. Power Balance wrist bands, or anything else that pruports to do things "with the power of Holograms". Wear one of those, and you've instantly lost any credit you might have gained from me.

  26. I work phone-in tech support for (insert pretty much country-wide internet provider here) and I instantly know I'm going to have to use phrases like "the yellow cord" "the black cord" and "the third light" when troubleshooting a connection if the person calling me starts off with "I know what I'm doing" or "I work for (completely unrelated technology company)" or "I'm not an idiot!"

    People who actually have a clue about how their internet gets into their house don't feel the need to open with any of those lines or any equivalent. They just tell me "here's what's going on, what does your stuff tell you about how we can fix this."

    I actually honestly prefer the little old ladies that only ever check email because they listen to me, follow the steps I ask them to take in order to diagnose the problem and attempt to fix it without rolling a truck, and don't do things I don't tell them to do.

    Also, if you're frustrated about your internet service (completely understandable) and you have to wait on hold to get to support to get some help with it, complaining for ten minutes about a five minute wait time is not as helpful as you want it to be. I'm there to help you with your connection problems, and I'd really like to get started on that. I'm more than happy to listen to you vent your frustrations but PLEASE give me your account information first so that I can get to work on the problem while I'm distractedly murmuring sympathetic comments at appropriate break points in your spiel.

    • FarmGirl, is the phrase "rolling a truck" a euphemism for getting angry/cracking the shits? If so, it's my new favourite phrase, and I'm going to steal it 🙂

  27. Looking at the screenshot, it appears they might have been going for something more like MarkerFelt or Architect. Something that suggests a Post-It note. And speaking of Architect, whatever happened to it? I swear it used to come with Windows, but it's nowhere to be found on my machine. And MarkerFelt appears to be Mac-exclusive, sadly.

  28. Three things will turn me off of any product:
    1 A car crash in the commercial. I've been in 13, I don't need any flashbacks!
    2 Any print in the ads that is unreadable. That includes those stupid disclaimers as well as unreadable fonts in poorly chosen colors.
    3. Really engaging ads that leave you going "What was the product they were advertising?"

  29. Sorry to break it to you, man…but people are stupid. It would not phaze me one iota to learn that using comic sans in the presentation was a deliberate decision to try and make it more "appealing" to the layperson. If you really look, you'll find examples of this happening all over the place. Linkin Park bent over backward to describe how their "Thousand Suns" album was such a departure because it was an artistic experiment, and they still lost half their "fan" base because it sounded different. Hollywood has been dumbing down smart films for decades…It's gotten to the point now that they outright canceled the Lovecraft Mythos film that was being made, because they didn't think anyone would understand/appreciate it.

  30. As an herbalist, misleading common names drive me nuts.

    There is a plant that is a common allergen that is often sold as a type of incense, and is almost always sold as "desert sage."

    Also, I have a hard time taking any product seriously that's spelled lIke tHis.

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