Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for March 20, 2023

Aren’t we happy we can click on “Skip Ad,” or fast forward with the DVR?

Depending on the commercial, attention spans last longer. Of course those would either be fast food or new video game commercials!

At least Calvin remembered what he was talking about 15 seconds ago.

The arm chair is reflecting the quality of the TV today…

Blipverts

“Barrage of non-linear free association”? It never ceases to amaze me what a complex vocabulary Calvin has for a six year old.

Attention span is limited to the length of a tweet.

Four panels to read. What do these cartoonist think we are, scholars?

Neil Postman would have loved that one.

As always, Watterson was ahead of his time.

There are people that can go through 15 tiktoks in 15 seconds. And that’s just the warm up.

And then there are the commercials that after watching them you have no idea of what product they are trying to sell.

This comic strip is old, who has a tv with anattena

Cal would fit right in, into today’s smartphone-obsessed world!

That’s not a commercial, it’s Sesame Street. Think about it…

We’ve been numbed.

Shading that chair was way too much work. Course, if you had to make a pattern…

As usual, the tiger speaks the truth!

I have noticed that about some commercials: they don’t hold a scene for more than 3 seconds. It’s particularly disturbing when it’s a movie trailer. I don’t think I could watch a whole movie where scenes change every 3 seconds.

On a 60 minute program, there’s over 20 minutes of ads!

How sickening is that? America runs on money!

The hype is there to sell something few actually need. The glitz and rapid changes are to distract from that and to ‘hide’ the wordy disclaimers that one really needs to see. Entertainment at its worst.

Screaming funny cartoon ART

Any movie trailer that consists of 47 1.3 second cuts is a sign that the movie isn’t worth watching.

One of the reasons I threw my TV out over a decade ago. I got tired of violence filled programming designed for those with a 5th grade education and the attention span of a gnat.

Except commercials for various potions, lotions, pills, creams, insurance, etc, drag on interminably…

I wonder if this is a fresh strip? today’s date, but no year?

I can’t watch TV these days, ads drive me bonkers.

At least back then the people in commercials were attractive…….and far less annoying.

Don’t ask your doc about it either.

We tape everything and fast forward the ads. I haven’t seen a whole commercial for years and actually kinda miss them.

Black and white paisley, well done.

I love how Bill Watterson makes the TV leap around, constantly demanding our attention!

Sometimes the commercials were better than the television shows.

I used to call it the “MTV style”: quick cuts, rapid zooms and pans, crazy camera angles. I first saw it on MTV “reality” shows, used to give the appearance that the show was being shot by some hack with a Handycam. But people found that the same techniques can also be used to manufacture excitement about even the most mundane things: “OK, I’m going out to get the mail! Wish me luck!” — cue the hard rock soundtrack, cut to shot of the mail box, cut back to the subject, zoom in on their face, pan quickly from the front door to the road, shot of subject walking, cut back to mail box, etc. And now all the amateurs on YouTube use these when they want to create a buzz around, say, unboxing a product. It’s a case of art imitating life imitating art (if you can call choppy videography “art”).

Hobbes is smarter than the average stuffed Tiger…

These two marketing pundits can teach more than the marketing professor.

For a kid who hates school, Calvin has an excellent vocabulary.

Frequently fracturing the stream of thought is one of the fundamental techniques of brainwashing. It is especially effective against children who have not learned to screen all those sensory impressions. Hey, as long as somebody is getting rich … right.

We’re making commercials in my Digital Production class, and reading this makes a lot more sense now.

This strip is from 1993 — 30 years ago! Think how much more advanced we are, um, … what was I saying?

Hobbs is again a victim of ADHD.

Sorry to say but my wife has a tendency to channel surf which drives me nuts. That’s probably why I’m not a big fan of TV anyways. Reading and making comments in Gocomics.com fulfills my enjoyment requirements. ;-p

Haven’t seen a TV ad in.. twenty years?

yes, Calvin, Hobbes is still talking aobut it

At 72, I feel the same way about news broadcasts. They talk faster than I can think and still have almost nothing but bullet points.

See Pearls Before Swine, 3/22/23