Every day for the last ten or so years I have been bombarded by dozens of banner ads on the Internet.  I have probably seen over 10,000 banner ads in my Internet career, yet this ad for Black Cupid was literally the first one that intrigued me enough to actually click through and learn more about the advertised product and/or service.  Is this just because I’m a bored stupid person who does stupid things, or is there something bigger going on here?  Because I’m so bored, I’m going to say it’s something bigger.

I feel like I’ve discovered the logical endpoint of the “ironic advertising” trend–you know, those ads where they explicitly avoid talking about the actual product in order to tap into some underlying, “hip”, “ironic”, “winking”, sentiment (i.e. every Geico ad).  Pretty soon, ads targeted at hip, white 20-somethings will just be straight-up disguised as ads for black people who desire fulfilling relationships with other black people.  Because what’s more ironic than clicking on an ad for a service you would never use?*  I imagine in the future you’ll click on an ad for those motorized chairs on rails that help old people get up stairs because you think “it will be funny” and–holy moly!–it’s actually an ad for a new limited edition Feist CD that comes with a free Macbook Air.

Meanwhile, old people and black people are going to be kind of screwed.  How will they be able to tell what ads are actually targeted at them, and what ads are just ironically for them?  Ideally they would also get into the ironic advertising trend and will be able to just know that if something looks like it’s appealing to a hip, white, 20-something it’s probably actually appealing to them.  For example, an ad for a new Feist CD is actually an ad for a revolutionary new osteoporosis medicine.  In this way, a sort of bizarro order will be restored to the world and commerce will continue as it has for thousands of years.

JOB SEARCH IDEA: Advertising?

*NOTE: Is this racist?