pissed off as all h - e -double hocky sticks...

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

I was watching TV tonight, and I saw the new Wendy's commercial. It's a complete insult to the multiplicity community.

Wendy's will run ads later this month showing a customer afflicted with a fictitious disease called MEPS (Multiple Eating Personality Syndrome). There's so much food, he doesn't know which to choose. If the ad is successful, it'll be followed by a campaign touting real diseases. One of the slogans: "Our restaurants are on major highways because we promote clogged arteries."

I can't find a downloadable of the commercial, but it really insulted us...

I for five, lol, are planning on boycotting wendy's.

The commercial featured a guy ordering a combo...when the chick behind the counter asks him which side he wants, he says "fries". simple enough, right? wrong. then a very deep voice comes out of his mouth, as he dramatically cocks his head to one side and says "baked potato". another voice, this one more feminine, says "caesar salad"...and then the voice over comes in, talking about MEPS...Multiple Eating Personality Syndrome...I think it's bullshit...there are those in this system who are rather touchy about being part of a multiple system, and this was just downright rude...

we're seriously going to give them pieces of our minds, and y'all should too...

Wendy's Consumer Relations
Wendy's International, Inc.
4288 W. Dublin-Granville Rd.
Dublin, OH 43017

Phone: (614) 764-3100

Wendy's Restaurants of Canada
Consumer Relations
240 Wyecroft Road
Oakville, On
L6K 2G7

Phone: (905) 849-7685


Rick, Faith, Tara, Liz, Wolf and cubbie
Pack Collective

Comments

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

I found it amusing and Jacob just rolled his eyes. Not true for everyone, I realize, but we'd rather be considered entertaining than dangerous.

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

I suppose, but it's like those cavemen commercials...they're insulting to our intelligence...and these are insulting to our identities...

Liz
Pack Collective

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

I have strongly suspected from the beginning that the Geico Caveman ads, being such a radical departure from their standard ad format, were meant to poke fun at a fact of advertising; you can't make an ad without offending or upsetting someone.

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

my point being, that that is rediculous, there are no neanderthal men or women living today, but there ARE multiples living today...

no one's making commercials making fun of people in wheelchairs...


Liz

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

"there are no neanderthal men or women living today"

Precisely. It's called satire, pretty much. It's so impossible to make a commercial without offending someone that you can't make fun of something fictional without upsetting someone. *shrug*

"no one's making commercials making fun of people in wheelchairs..."

I can't give you an example, but I seriously doubt that's true. There's one commercial out of thousands out there making fun of us, though. Just because I can't rapidly pull up something that does does not mean it isn't out there.

And this begs the question as to whether or not they're actually making fun of us or of people who, when faced with choices, can't make up their ever loving mind and clear the line so other people can order.

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

I see where you're coming from, and i agree with you, but the reason we're upset is because out of all those thousands of offensive commercials, people will remember this one...why? for the same reason they remember sybill. because it's dramatic, and something that's not considered the norm.

and I realize it's intent is to make fun of people who are indecicive, but it ends up being offensive to us.

Tara
Pack Collective

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

In three months, you'll be lucky if people remember Wendy's had a commercial.

Unless they happen to get a lot of free advertising somehow.

[appadil.livejournal.com]

Yeah... unless this somehow becomes the next "Wassup!" or "Budweiser frogs" thing, it'll most likely be forgotten in months except by the people who were offended by it. It's really not the sort of commercial that would be memorable to most people unless they had some compelling reason to remember multiplicity-related things in the first place.

[eridanusus.livejournal.com]

idianshire might remember this, a few months ago (I think), there was a small fuss made about some ads for red meat. Basically, they portrayed a group of butchers dancing down the streets chanting about red meat being good for you, in a similar style to Hare Krishna song/dances. (We have a fair number of Krishnas here, too - at least in Christchurch, I'm not sure about other parts. Chris knows some of them by name and likes to talk to them.)

Around the same time there were also ads for a phone company in which groups of rugby players danced down the street singing what sounded like holy roller music, but nobody seemed to care about that...

Advertizing in general

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

Involves scummy treatment of people in general. Women are daimond grubbing hos and men are emotionally moronic assholes.

It's beautiful like that. Actually, no, but it is how it works. Advertisements that leave a strong impression, even a negative impression, over time, help sales. Familiarity is one of those things that decide whether or not someone will buy something. When the initial shock fades, it's just another name you recognize at the counter.

--Me/Us

[echthros.livejournal.com]

Eh, doesn't bother me, really. It's just a commercial. Anyone stupid enough to think a Wendy's commercial is a dramatization of the DSM probably isn't going to have a real good conception of multiplicity anyway.

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

yes, but don't you think it puts real multiples in a bad light? I mean, it's basically making fun of us...

*shrug* I guess we're the only ones who see it, but still...

Liz
PC

[grey-reverie.livejournal.com]

i see what youre getting at... personally, i find it just another dumb corporate america commercial, but i do see why it would offend you. like, before the commercial, when talking to a singlet, when they find out youre multiple, theyll usually go "oh, like from the move identity or whatever hollywood media that portrays multiples horribly" and then you have to sigh and go "no, not like that..."

well now because of this stupid commercial, people are going to go, "oh, youre like those people in the wendy's commercials!"... "sigh, no not like the wendy's people" etc

weve yet to see the commercial, but just reading your description of it... it does irk the crap out of me, now that i really think about it. its so ridiculous and obnoxious... ::sigh::

i dunno, i do understand where youre comin from though. its sad that there has been such advancement in culture, but there are still so many groups like us who have yet to garner any respect..

-lukies

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

exactly...

thanks, I couldn't find the words...(and I'm supposed to be the brain! lol)

Liz
Pack Collective

[melange-fiesta.livejournal.com]

I would wager a guess that most people don't even know multiplicity exists, or would just think of that commercial as a spoof of schizophrenia.

[crystalhellion.livejournal.com]

Bah. This is why we're glad we work at McDonald's. And that's not saying a hell of a lot. :P

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

lol

Mickey D's all the way, Ty!

[idianshire.livejournal.com]

Perhaps because I haven't seen the commerical, and living in NZ I probably won't get to see it, but I don't see what the big deal is. So many times I hear we (the royal multiple we) need to have a public awareness, that we should be given the acceptance non-multiples are given. Now maybe this guy in the commerical is a nutter, I don't knwo I haven't seen it. But from what you describe it si a guy with other people wanting to eat different things. And personally I dont' know how many times I have gone to any resturant and gone through the whole, I want, no I want, yuck I aint getting that, routine. That is the reality of our life, and if anything I chuckled to myself at the idea of a commerical showing that. Sure most people will look at it and go, oh he's crazy, but he isn't butchering the checkout person or doing some insane act in public.

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

granted, but it is overdramatized to make him look insane...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_flute_/]

Us too. Flute like meat. Red, raw, always. Sometimes something green and crunchy. That it. Others like different things though. We argue sometimes, but not outloud. Someone who argues out loud not crazy, they am stupid.

If you want to publicize this a bit more

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

http://www.livejournal.com/community/plural_watching
http://www.livejournal.com/community/pavilion_hall
http://www.karitas.net/pavilion/

Re: If you want to publicize this a bit more

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

feel free to drag this around...

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

The main reason this bothers me is because I anticipate NAMI and their squad will jump all over it, accusing them of 'making fun of the mentally ill,' drowning out the voices of those of us who don't experience being plural as an illness. They have millions of dollars and celebrities and slick ad campaigns backing them, after all, and we're just a couple of pen-wielding folks in the wilderness.

I'm not bothered intrinsically by the fact that a supposedly plural character is being played for laughs. I mean, we laugh at ourselves sometimes when we can't get everyone to agree on something. I think I would actually mind it less if they dropped the 'disorder' part-- as it is, it just ends up as another 'laugh at the funny crazy person,' and implicit acceptance of the idea that multiplicity is crazy. I know it happens all the time, with stuff like "Me, Myself and Irene," but it's just frustrating every time something like this comes up and we're back to Robin Williams doing Sybil jokes. The whole insinuation that it's just 'one person who can't make up their mind.'

[eridanusus.livejournal.com]

If Datharin were out, you'd now be subjected to a long rant about that movie. He saw it when it was on tv here, and hated it.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Oh, could you please have him write it up for us anyway? We can put it in the Pavilion media review library. We've actually wanted a review of it for a while, but nobody in here was willing to subject themselves to watching it.

[appadil.livejournal.com]

Amusingly, despite having hung around here "too much" to the point where I embarrassingly misinterpreted the use of the word "integration" when the context made it completely clear that it was discussing race relations rather than psychological phenomena.... I still didn't immediately think of multiplicity when I saw that commercial the first time.

My initial reaction was, like yours, to see myself in the situation and laugh (and I'm a singleton!) I do the EXACT same thing in restaurants all the time, with the exception that it's obviously all one 'voice' in my case arguing rather than several- my mom has chewed me out numerous times for my indecisiveness when we eat out.

[salustra.livejournal.com]

Sorry, we're just not all the horribly offended. General concensus among us is that political correctness about every little thing ends up becoming intellectual facism, and we're solidly against it. We'd much prefer to save our energy for things that are *truly* offensive, like the stock use of multiples as villains in murder mysteries.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

I'm not bothered by it, at least from the description here. In fact I'd rather people were cracking annoying jokes than treating it as some 'untouchable' subject, like oh, psychopathy.

[redrainstorm.livejournal.com]

It kind of bothers me and it kind of doesn't. It bothers me because the only "advertising" showing "multiples" is in a mocking manner. It wouldn't bother me so much if they could portray multiples in a commercial. Though I'm sure even if they did, it would be seen as mockery by many. We have to get in the "media" somehow. It just sucks they put it as MEPS. If it said simply MPs I would have laughed a lot more.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Well, we are talking about the dominant culture. Most people understand that commercials aren't usually accurate, they're exaggerations. Lots of ads show people acting up and behaving in bizarre ways. (Remember the one about the man embarrassing his adult daughter by cooing syrupy babytalk to what you think is his grandchild or something, but turns out to be a White Castle hamburger?) I'm more frightened by commercials showing that driving an SUV is normal and acceptable.

This ad won't do the large-scale damage that the Sybil film continues to do. However, it does reinforce the stereotype. It's based on the same premise that gives us those "Bob's Furniture is having a LUNATIC sale, look at these INSANE prices, has Bob gone NUTS?" then Bob is shown in a straitjacket with "cuckoo" on the soundtrack, etc. NAMI do get after this type of thing -- they raked some national fast-food franchise over the coals a few years ago for the "1.99 are you out of your mind?" ads.

What letters do in this case is let them know there's a few of us out here. Simply that we exist.

[ghostwalker.livejournal.com]

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

I saw that one as an obvious satire and it killed me laughing. Like, "Madison Avenue thinks you can use sex to sell anything!"

*laughs*

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

Shit, that's comedic gold. The burger looks so out of place, it doesn't even do it's job. Nevermind she's not my type and I don't like the outfit. Doesn't look sexy to me at all. If Sherri Zombie was in it, I might be in trouble, though.

--Me

[screamingshiva.livejournal.com]

Its actually a bit offensive and a bit ammusing... because it takes "US" 20 minutes at restuarants To all come to one decision as to what the body needs to eat... not just what we want. But I can definately see the commercial being a bit more absurd than that.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

An even greater injustice in all of this is that there are no programmes or commercials depicting multiples who are perfectly normal and don't behave like lunatics of one kind or another. Multiples are either invisible, or they are something to fear or ridicule. A fine cultural role model, that is.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

True, but I don't think Wendy's is responsible for that as they're not a media outlet.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Precisely. It's not Wendy's, it's the general attitude in the dominant culture as reflected in the entertainment industry.

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

Media infiltration, begins at home. No matter how insignificant each instance seems, it can chip away at the dominant perception, paving room for more instances, and eventual saturation, if one is not careful. Saturation isn't the goal, because that will cause it to be picked at just like all the rest.

Ideas? *conspiratory grin* Pardon, I'm in a chaotic subversive mood.

--Me