research

Tom Scott-style absurdist research by tom7 for SIGBOVIK 2021, using machine learning to discover letterforms that are 'uppercaser' than uppercase A and lowercaser than lowercase. It is a comedic, technically inventive deep dive with fonts and a paper.

Velcro Brand's legal team makes a short, humorous ad asking people not to use "velcro" as a noun or verb and to say hook and loop instead. It is a tongue-in-cheek lesson in defending a trademark against genericization.

A four-minute Onion Talks parody in which a social media consultant pitches never putting any effort into social marketing. It lampoons TED-style talks and marketing consultants.

Animated adaptation of Tim Minchin's beat poem 'Storm', in which he argues with a hippie at a London dinner party. It satirizes alternative medicine and defends science and reason.

Dollar Shave Club's low-budget launch ad, in which the founder jokes his way through the case for cheap mail-order razors.

Velcro's follow-up to its "Don't Say Velcro" ad responds to viewer feedback, with a humorous take on trademark usage and alternative names for hook and loop fasteners.

Brad Fitzpatrick records himself struggling to silence a set of first-generation Nest Protect smoke alarms that keep beeping and triggering one another.

A short clip of Bill Hicks's stand-up bit telling marketers and advertisers to kill themselves, which is a harsh critique of advertising.

A two-minute clip of comedian Bill Hicks doing his routine on marketing and advertising, with explicit language. He mocks marketers and urges them to get out of the business.

A clip of George Carlin riffing on advertising and the nonsense around it, taken from a longer piece tied to the Zeitgeist movie.

An Adam Ruins Everything comedy segment on why US hospitals are so expensive, covering opaque price lists, surprise bills and penalties for the uninsured.

The 2010 Old Spice commercial featuring Isaiah Mustafa, shot as a continuous sequence with scene changes and practical effects. It became a famous viral ad.

The short printer-destruction-adjacent clip from Office Space built around the cryptic 'PC LOAD LETTER' error message. It pokes fun at unhelpful printer errors.

A short clip parodying Windows Vista's cancel-or-allow security prompts, in the style of Apple's Mac vs PC ads.

A two-minute Bill Hicks comedy bit attacking advertising and marketing people.

A short clip from the film Idiocracy showing a hospital reception computer where staff pick a condition from a board of simple pictorial buttons.

A clip from Futurama's 'A Fistful of Dollars' where Fry and Leela discuss ads appearing in dreams. It satirizes advertising creeping into every part of life.

A viral Squatty Potty ad in which a unicorn demonstrates the supposed benefits of squatting to poop. It is a humorous product pitch about toilet posture.

A clip from Jurassic Park in which Lex says, "It's a Unix system, I know this," while navigating a 3D file system view.

A short Anthropic ad from its campaign saying ads are coming to AI but not to Claude, using a comedic scenario about getting a six pack quickly.

A one-minute clip of Windows Phone 7 and Bing product placement from an episode of Hawaii Five-0, in which a character says 'Bing it!' and another checks a Windows phone.

A compilation of Apple's 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' ad campaign from 2006 onward.

Tom Scott shows a robot double of himself, built from an Engineered Arts Mesmer robot, delivering a VPN advertisement in his place.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on how media outlets report incomplete or untrue findings as settled science. It covers sensational headlines, small studies and pressure on researchers.

A clip from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia season 8 in which a character argues that science is a liar and cannot be trusted.