No, Princess, You Don’t Deserve Anything

What copywriting genius came up with that one?

The world abounds in things that just annoy the bejesus out of me (nod to Tommy Ueland) and one particularly tiresome example marred my breakfast. Having had my breakfast marred, now I’m going to mar your day — or not. What do I know? Maybe you enjoy a good, meaningless rant. I do but only if it’s entertaining.

Let’s see what I got.

This advertising trope is everywhere and it is total BS. On what planet is it a given that anyone deserves a fresh and nutritious egg? I am insulted when told that I “deserve” whatever thing it is that some company is pushing. What exactly did I do for this honor to have been bestowed upon me? Well, I didn’t steal whatever it is — not a given for a former and largely unrepentant shoplifter — so maybe by virtue of paying for your eggs, I do deserve them. But that’s a stretch.

I mean come on; what did any of us do to “deserve a break today”?

What copywriter thought that telling prospective customers that they deserve anything was a good idea? And how many copy-cat-copywriters jumped on this completely bone-headed bandwagon? (Quick answer: too many) And does the prevalence of the tiresome and completely meaningless “you deserve” trope indicate it works? Dear Lord, do people go around actually believing they deserve a new Lexus or a rent-to-own three-bedroom house in the Poconos?

Wait.

Could it be that people do go around thinking they deserve Big Macs, free-range eggs, new cars, three-bedroom houses with attached two-car garages, and tummy tucks?

What a revolting thought!

But — now that I think about it — that would explain a lot of what’s bass-ackwards in this part of the world. After all, we’re indoctrinating kids in their role as consumers before they can walk (t’is the season, parents, roll out the credit cards and get ready to be jolly!). This juggernaut has been crushing creativity, curiosity, connection, and understanding of what “enough” is for generations but it’s gone into hyperdrive in the past ten years. I see little kids in strollers completely lost in their own hopeless little screens and I don’t know whether I’m going to laugh or cry or run howling down the street.

When generations of people aim their ambitions, efforts, and even their dreams at acquiring “things” and then take it to the natural next level of feeling that they deserve these things, Princess, we are in trouble.

Judging from a quick look out my window I’d say that, yes, we are indeed in trouble. 70,000,000 people — presumably many of whom are college-educated and reasonably intelligent — voted for a failed real estate developer to continue “leading” this country. I’m thinking a lot of those people didn’t get what they felt was their right. After all, isn’t it like in the Constitution or something that everyone gets to have a great job with benefits and a pension straight out of high school? And, while we’re at it here, who says every one of those 70,000,000 doesn’t get to be famous Instagram influencers? I bet Obama came up with that one.

I guess I can’t really lay this one at the door of some poor hard-working copywriter. The schmuck only had to look around on his drive into the office to see that, yes, we are surrounded by the deserving.

The problem, of course, is that all those people who are sure they’re being deprived of the things they deserve are actually interacting in our world. They go to our schools, work next to us, bag our groceries, hang our drywall, do our nails, read our horoscopes, and inspect our car’s emission controls. And they are simmering. They’ve been quietly pissed off for a long time. They — we — have been fed a line of BS for over a hundred years.

Maybe it’s time to sit back and ask ourselves exactly what it is that we really do deserve.

Get back to me on that, k?

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