Big Boobies are not Nazi Propaganda

I just used a sexy person to sell this newsletter - groundbreaking

You’d think the world had forgotten the most effective marketing trick of them all — sex sells.

Even as marketing has moved with cultural shifts over the years, the premise has always been there, no matter what colour or body type was on display. Someone will find this sexy, and that person may buy our product.

I was going to write about more serious matters this week — like the age-gated Internet (I’ll get to it soon) — but the meltdown that has ensued after a seemingly innocuous campaign advertising jeans has been consuming my brain all week.

American Eagle released a commercial featuring Sydney Sweeney, the actress known for her performances breasts, in which they make a pretty straightforward, by-the-book pun:

“Great genes” — Sydney Sweeney has big boobies

“Great jeans” – Sydney Sweeney is wearing jeans (the product being advertised)

That’s it. A company hired a hot person to sell a product, a trend as old as time, used to sell cars, cigarettes, household products, fashion, holidays, fitness equipment and more. Even tech products deploy the same tactics, making the product itself “sexy,” and selling the promise of giving you, the buyer, more sex appeal by proxy as a result of owning the product.

There is no deeper meaning to be found here.

And yet, somehow, there are people reading this campaign as NAZI PROPAGANDA.

It blows my mind how the Internet continues to surface and spotlight the dumbest takes — and it’s one of the main reasons as to why the Internet sucks now, its utility is decreasing, the experience of using it is eroding and why we’re collectively becoming more brain dead by the week. Examples like this that show us why a “public town square” where everyone gets a shot of the megaphone to raise whatever is on their minds isn’t necessarily a good thing. Too many feel they need to have a viewpoint on something. And if they don’t, they need to manufacture one or latch on to whichever one is trending or makes them seem most intellectual or edgy.

The consequence of this is too many people spend too much time trying to find something to be offended by, or trying to find deeper meaning or coded messages where they don’t exist.

As Adam Singer puts it—

A short denim commercial has become a Rorschach test for terminally online brains rotted by grievance courses and unprocessed trauma. Some don’t understand that not everything is an attack on them, personally.

I also loved the way it’s framed here in The Tyranny of the Trivial —

We have just witnessed the mark of a civilization that has lost not merely its cultural bearings, but its fundamental capacity for serious thought. A society reduced to finding its deepest meanings in the shallowest possible sources. A culture that has confused the performance of intelligence with intelligence itself, the simulation of profundity with actual depth.

What we’re seeing here is more performative outrage. A self-perpetuating cycle of increasingly controversial or outlandish takes, done to cause a stir that gets picked up by platforms.

And our online world, measured by clicks, views and engagement, thrives off of it.

It’s unhealthy.

You can absolutely spend too much time online, consuming too many terrible takes delivered with just enough bravado and authority to convince you they are correct, and then having this reiterated and reinforced over and over in your algorithmically controlled echo chamber.

Our Internet and social media use has changed our behaviour for the worse. We’re deeply suspicious, confused, distrustful, conspiratorial and divided. And because of this, we can’t seem to accept that some things are nothing more than they appear.

When we’re mixing up boobie-puns with Nazi ideology, it’s a sure sign we’ve collectively lost our minds.

If there was ever a time to pause the Internet and take a breather, I think we’ve reached it.