Public Service Depressant

There is a PSA poster I sometimes see in the Metro... It's a picture of a fat Hispanic kid sitting on the couch playing video games. He has a two liter bottle of soda in his lap and a half empty bag of potato chips at his feet... The ad has a message in Spanish urging parents to give their kids healthier snack alternatives, and talks about the benefits of exercise, and blah blah blah...

Two thoughts always occur to me when I see this poster:

[1] My ideal way to end my days is also to sit on my couch playing video games while chugging soda and eating chips.

and [2] How bad must it suck to be the kid they used in the ad? I just picture a photographer approaching a fat kid in the mall and saying something like: "Hey kid, we're looking to put a face on fat adolescent Latin America... You know, someone who's so fat and pathetic looking that it will scare mothers across the DC area into feeding healthy food to their kids... Anyway, we think you'd be perfect!"

Now obviously the actual talk probably was a little more subtle than that, but at some point the thought must have occurred to the kid that "hey wait a minute, they picked me for a reason!"

I wonder if he has seen the ad? Or maybe they never told him how or what they were going to use his picture for... Maybe he thought he was doing an ad for a video game?

This ad made me so depressed I had no choice but to go home and play 4 straight hours of John Madden Football... My healthy snack alternative was Doritos.