I saw my first “Obey” ad recently and it reminded me of your blog post and, I must admit, was quite awesome. This anigif expresses exactly the strange yet hypnotic nature of these ads.
I can’t believe you only recently saw your first one! They seem to have been everywhere for a while now. Although they do seem to have been more ubiquitous and increasingly overt of late.
I’m fascinated with the way they have evolved over time as well. At first, the Obey command was in red, very in your face, but then they changed it in the later versions to the same blue as the rest of the headline but in increasingly bold type. And as this was happening, the body shots in the before and after became increasingly focused on the chest, to the point where the face becomes excluded from the picture altogether. It is a really quite clever subliminal trick; shifting the visual emphasis all the while amping up the command to Obey. It completely adopts the language of spam. And I love the fact that it is authenticated with badges for CNN and ABC. It’s a bit like saying: Viagra, as seen on Hotmail.
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I saw my first “Obey” ad recently and it reminded me of your blog post and, I must admit, was quite awesome. This anigif expresses exactly the strange yet hypnotic nature of these ads.
I can’t believe you only recently saw your first one! They seem to have been everywhere for a while now. Although they do seem to have been more ubiquitous and increasingly overt of late.
I’m fascinated with the way they have evolved over time as well. At first, the Obey command was in red, very in your face, but then they changed it in the later versions to the same blue as the rest of the headline but in increasingly bold type. And as this was happening, the body shots in the before and after became increasingly focused on the chest, to the point where the face becomes excluded from the picture altogether. It is a really quite clever subliminal trick; shifting the visual emphasis all the while amping up the command to Obey. It completely adopts the language of spam. And I love the fact that it is authenticated with badges for CNN and ABC. It’s a bit like saying: Viagra, as seen on Hotmail.