Supraliminal Seduction

Is it just me or are you too getting YouTube ads for say Carpet Cleaners that are-- how shall we say? --hard core pornographic in nature?  They aren’t video ads, they show up at the top of the recommendations whilst a video is playing and just sit there kind of like print ads, but are linked to (we presume) the carpet cleaning business.  The graphic of the ad is generally a poorly veiled image of a lady ingesting a thick cylindrical member—tinted unnaturally or otherwise obscured only enough for some vague plausible deniability but not enough that you’d be ok with it showing up in say a sharing of your screen in a zoom meeting or a visit from a child.

 When I was in junior high school in the seventies, a bestseller among my classmates was a paperback ostensibly written for adults called Subliminal Seduction.  The author was Wilson Bryan Key, a writer and associate of Marshall McLuhan specializing in mass media and communications who in this title stumbled upon a thesis that captured the pubescent imagination and gave its author his career.  The premise was that just below the threshold of consciousness, advertisements were rife with barely detectable erotic suggestions that were doing the heavy lifting on persuading the consumer to have to have the product.  Many copies of the book were worn out by being passed between the hands of middle schoolers taking turns leafing through the generous supply of illustrations to stare at the configuration of ice cubes in a whiskey glass or the haze of smoke from a cigarette or the reflection of studio lights on the paint job of a new car to try to spot the images of naked bodies supposedly floating barely below the level of detection.  

The jury is still out on whether something extra nefarious was actually going on with those images (above and beyond the nefariousness of the normal activity of the advertising business) or whether the eagerness to see them was merely an epiphenomenon of the hyperactive pareidolia of pubescent middle schoolers.  The "science" on which Key based much of his thesis has been found by other researchers to be flawed.  Nevertheless, the sleazy nature of advertising invited the hopeful scrutiny of the prurient, and the advertising business has never minded the heightened attention of the public.

Sex has always sold, but in the sixties of my youth, advertising was largely known for its bland caution.  Over the years, however, the temptation for an advertiser to hide a powerful suggestion below the radar of the viewer has been obviated by relaxed standards that appear to have kindled an arms race of open lewdness and scatology, from Big Ass Fans to country western songs about diarrhea to bears who "enjoy the go."  Entrepreneurs frankly discuss the loci of every odor and secretion of the body and invite viewers to elide the aptness of a blue pun with the body part or intimate act it's meant to conjure.  Outright pornography is a frontier I hadn't expected advertisers to cross in my lifetime, but these are unprecedented times.

After seeing 3 variations of these ads, I did report it to the YouTube authorities.  I mean how far do I extend my tolerance for such things?  If I were to post a video with that image as my thumbnail I’d probably be banned.  It’s ok if some random “business” does it?   I don’t know if I succeeded in nipping a bad YouTube trend in the bud but since reporting it I can’t seem to conjure up an example to show you but if I come across one, I’ll share it if I think of it.  Unless you too have already seen enough.