About a year ago (as I wrote here), Capulet helped produce and promote a series of videos for Elastic Path, an eCommerce company in Vancouver. They were called “The Crazy Messed Up World of eCommerce”, and asked the question “What if offline shopping were as cruel and difficult as buying online?”. Here’s one of the videos:
Last week, I received an email discussing a series of three videos that another eCommerce company, 7 Billion People, had released and showed at an industry tradeshow. You can see them on the front page of their website, or in their YouTube channel. They claim to ask the question “What if all shopping was like shopping on the web?”. Here’s one of their videos:
Does that seem oddly familiar to anybody else? Let’s see–same format, same setup, same comedic premise, similar dialogue. Their videos are obviously a lot slicker–they have professional actors and, you know, lighting, but I think the similarities are pretty striking. Too striking to be a mere coincidence.
I’m obviously not an objective observer. But it sure looks like they saw the Elastic Path videos and, without acknowledgement, blatantly ripped off the idea. What do you think?
Last night we were watching episode nine from season two of Veronica Mars. It was pretty lame (with the exception of a scene featuring Buffy alumni Charisma Carpenter and Alyson Hannigan), and featured an old television convention. Here’s an excerpt from the TV.com episode recap:
Neptune High School, classroom – Ms. Hauser’s sex education class is in session. Veronica and Duncan are in attendance. It’s welcome to parenthood as the students are asked to couple up and look after a baby doll which has sensors to detect how it is cared for.
This is a TV classic. In sex ed (or ‘health’ or ‘family planning’) class, students are forced to take care of an egg or baby doll for a week. The intent, of course, is to impress upon them how much work it is to take care of a baby, and thus compel to remain baby-free.
Hijinks always ensue, and there’s usually a moral lesson about who’s really the responsible kid, or a disclosure of someone actually being pregnant, and so forth.
I never did this in high school, despite it apparently being quite fashionable at the time. Did you?
Name That Plot Device
I started assembling a list of all the shows that have used this convention:
Beverly Hills 90210 - Julie says she remembers this, but I couldn’t find it. Does anybody recall egg-related fun on this show?
Degrassi Junior High - In the first opener of season two, the kids have to take care of eggs. If I recall correctly, Spike gives her egg to Snake Shane, the father of her baby. I think Snake screws up and breaks the egg.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer - In “Bad Eggs”, the Scooby Gang is given eggs to take care of. In a Whedonesque twist, there are nasty things inside the eggs which take over the minds of the eggs’ owners. Xander boils his egg for safe-keeping. In unrelated news, a couple of cowboy vampires come into town.
Can you name other examples of the egg-equals-parental-responsibility gimmick?
