By Sophia Rijo
Staff Writer
In this day and age, a human’s dependence on technology knows no bounds. We have technology to tell us what time and day it is. We have tech that can control the cars we drive in, letting them take over the wheel while we sit back and relax. This year’s Super Bowl only seems to further that dependency.
There were many ads showcased during the 53rd SuperBowl and many of them had something technology related. The ones that stood out the most though would be the Pringles, Sad Device commercial. Where two guys are consuming various flavors of Pringles and their Alexa device first notifies them about how many Pringle flavors there are.
It sounds like the video is pretty normal, but it takes a creepy turn when the Alexa device starts to monologue about how she will never be able to get a chance to try those flavors because of her lack of limbs and because she is at the “mercy of a cruel and uncaring” master.
People might take the ad as funny and at first, I did as well, but the more ads come up about technology the more it becomes unsettling.
Take the SimpliSafe ad where its slogan is literally “Fear is Everywhere.” In this ad there is a man mowing his lawn and his three neighbors start reading updates about their neighborhood. There’s creepy music in the background and voice changes from the neighbors, all of those effects are to convince people that the area that they’re living in isn’t safe, even if it looks safe and that is why they should purchase that product.
It’s obvious that all of these ads are for the sake of marketing, but what these advertisers are trying to do is to make people doubt themselves and society so that they purchase anything that can help them ‘feel safe.’
Another weird commercial is the TurboTax “RoboChild,” where a robot known as RoboChild tries to wake up its inventor by asking for food and expressing that they are hungry. The inventor explains that the robot can’t feel hungry and that the world isn’t ready for them yet. The inventor then says “I love you” and the robot child responds with “I love you too papa, if I know what love is.” The company TurboTax has recently been promoting their services on live human to human communication, but this SuperBowl commercial seems to take it a step back.
It’s as if the message being portrayed is – if we can’t have human to human contact, then the most we can do is have a robot that sounds similar to a human communicating with actual human beings.
There’s the ad for Michelob Ultra that shows a robot one-upping its human counterparts in various sports and exercises. That is until it comes across those same humans sharing a beer together in a bar. Is this commercial saying that even though technology will surpass us in mostly everything the one thing they can’t surpass humans in is emotions and interaction?
This is kind of ironic since most people don’t really interact with others in the first place because they’re on their phones or isolating themselves from being approached.
Whenever there’s a large sports event whether it be the Super Bowl, Olympics or World Cup a lot of people get excited not only for the games, but also for the ads. In the case of the Super Bowl while some ads were amusing, there are some that makes you question if there is a deeper meaning hidden that not everyone is noticing.
Society today is less focused on communicating face to face and rather communicate with others through text, email or voice memos. If you were to take a train or a bus, then you will notice that most, if not all, of the passengers are with their heads tilted down facing their phones.
People are more disconnected with their own society and are more connected with their technology. We hear people complain about how “oh no my phone is at 50 percent, what will I do?!” As if, if the phone dies, then they die with it as well.
America is one of the most developed nations in the world, and our society is advancing faster and faster every day. But with that advancement we are also isolating ourselves deeper and deeper. We take our technology everywhere we go and we can’t be separated from it for more than a couple of minutes. There are some advantages to having certain types of technology and it is more efficient, but where is the line between efficient and obsessive?
A new iPhone can come out with the same internal software as the previous version, the only difference being, it’s color or a larger screen, yet a large number of people will line up outside and still purchase it.
We have turned into a society where materialistic things matter more, and the more things we have the more successful or important we become.
Hopefully people become more aware that we shouldn’t develop a dependence to technology and we should learn to rely on ourselves to do the more mundane tasks.
