What are you afraid of?
Mar. 15th, 2007 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI'm afraid of lots of things. Mostly it's minor fears... I worry that some idiot on the road will be doing something stupid, and hit me.
I worry that an earthquake will tumble my house down around my ears.
Those are rational fears, and I do what I can to minimize the effect. I keep good following disatance, I don't drive faster than the general flow of traffic, I have food and water, on hand (and some in the back of the car, in case it should break down. Blankets and first aid materials are there too).
There are other fears, less rational... the fear of a police helicopter falling out of the sky and landing on me, of some serial killer deciding on me as a victim.
There is the vaguest of possibilities that either of those might come to pass, and (barring some minor, and normal, precautions, nothing I can do to prevent them.
Volvo has sold cars for years, on the first sort of fears. Those were decent campaigns (summed up in the film "Crazy People" with an ad "They're boxy, but they're safe). They addressed a real problem, and offered a solution.
Today, however, I saw an ad, by Volvo, selling irrational fear.
A woman's car is the only one in the lot, late at night. She's nervous. The voiceover makes sure you think she has reason(after all, it's dark, it's late, never mind the lights in the parking lot make it possible to see the whole area), and then offers the solution to her nameless dread.
Her car, you see, has a "Heartbeat detector" which lets her know that someone has slipped into her car.
At which point she, having been saved from whatever nefarious intent the unknown person in her car had planned, runs (not walks, but runs) away.
Yep, that's a reasonable fear... someone will lie in wait, inside your car (having defeated the alarm), but never fear, if you have a Volvo, you'll be protected.
If this is the price we have to pay for them making the cars sleeker, let them go back to boxy.
I worry that an earthquake will tumble my house down around my ears.
Those are rational fears, and I do what I can to minimize the effect. I keep good following disatance, I don't drive faster than the general flow of traffic, I have food and water, on hand (and some in the back of the car, in case it should break down. Blankets and first aid materials are there too).
There are other fears, less rational... the fear of a police helicopter falling out of the sky and landing on me, of some serial killer deciding on me as a victim.
There is the vaguest of possibilities that either of those might come to pass, and (barring some minor, and normal, precautions, nothing I can do to prevent them.
Volvo has sold cars for years, on the first sort of fears. Those were decent campaigns (summed up in the film "Crazy People" with an ad "They're boxy, but they're safe). They addressed a real problem, and offered a solution.
Today, however, I saw an ad, by Volvo, selling irrational fear.
A woman's car is the only one in the lot, late at night. She's nervous. The voiceover makes sure you think she has reason(after all, it's dark, it's late, never mind the lights in the parking lot make it possible to see the whole area), and then offers the solution to her nameless dread.
Her car, you see, has a "Heartbeat detector" which lets her know that someone has slipped into her car.
At which point she, having been saved from whatever nefarious intent the unknown person in her car had planned, runs (not walks, but runs) away.
Yep, that's a reasonable fear... someone will lie in wait, inside your car (having defeated the alarm), but never fear, if you have a Volvo, you'll be protected.
If this is the price we have to pay for them making the cars sleeker, let them go back to boxy.
