Burger King is now producing something called “Buffalo Chicken Fries,” which is fine, I suppose, provided you have an interest in consuming a fast food product that has been mashed into the shape of a different fast food product and then coated with an amount of hot sauce that the average American consumer would consider palatable. Maybe you do. In which case, God bless. I’m not the one who is going to come between a nation of hungry consumers and their curiously misshapen spicy friend chicken rods, even if the commercial for them does make the unsettling and outright incorrect case that they are preferable to actual chicken wings because they make less of a mess. Nope, that’s not me. Not getting involved. Vaya con dios and bon appetit, America.
(Although if that were me and I was getting involved, I might point out that Burger King makes no attempt to claim their product tastes better than actual chicken wings, just that they can be consumed less sloppily. And if I read between the lines there, I could make a pretty decent argument that this is more of an advertisement for moist towelettes than a competing, and probably inferior, chicken product. But again, not something I’m interested in doing.)
The real issue I have with this commercial is that when the wing-eating man’s phone rings, as it begins playing “I Don’t Want to Wait” by Paula Cole to signify that his girlfriend is calling, it also vibrates loudly on the table, and this vibration is rapidly driving me insane.
Two quick notes on background before I continue.
- As a work-from-home type, I generally like to keep the TV running during the day, more for the noise and light than for the actual content. I’m typically 30 percent invested in whatever I’m watching at any given time, at most. Think about you with the TV on over your shoulder while you’re making dinner or something. Like that, but all day.
- For whatever reason, I have what has been described by family and friends as an almost X-Men-like ability to hear vibrating phones. I can hear them in other people’s pockets, in crowded restaurants, and, sometimes, through the thinnish walls of my apartment. It is a largely useless skill to have unless you have lost your phone with the ringer turned off. Then I am a superhero.
Anyway, when you combine that passive viewing and my hypersensitive ears with the fact that this commercial has been running dozens of times a day lately, you begin to see my problem. Every time. Every single time, I’ll be minding my business half-listening to The People’s Court with my nose in my computer, and then the “BZZZZZZ BZZZZZZ BZZZZZZ” hits and I’ll break into a frantic search for the source. “Ahhhhhhh whose phone is that? WHOSE PHONE IS THAT? Your phone? My phone? Is it my phone? Why is someone calling me, here, 2015? Oh wait, nope, either of our phones. Did someone leave their phone here? Where is it-… wait a second. Dammit, Buffalo Chicken Fries commercial!”
The whole thing is kind of like a more annoying cousin of the “character in a TV show or movie has the same ringtone as you” problem. While that can be infuriating, there are reasonable steps you can take to remedy it. One would be change your ringtone. Another would be to stop watching the show. Or, we could demand this very simple fix that I pitched on Twitter recently.
What we need here is one ringtone dedicated solely for TV shows and movies so people don’t get confused when it goes off on the screen.
— Brian Grubb (@briancgrubb) November 9, 2015
Like how all phone numbers on TV start with “555.” This is easily the most important issue facing our country right now.
— Brian Grubb (@briancgrubb) November 9, 2015
But a vibrating phone is just cruel, because the vibrate sound is basically universal. And doing it in a commercial is doubly cruel, because at least with a show or movie where someone shares your ringtone, you have a chance to mentally prepare yourself after the first time. Commercials pop-up randomly, across a range of channels, at any time of the day. You never know when that BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ is going to hit and send you scrambling like a dog who heard a car door slam outside and thinks its master is home. It’s madness, I tell you.
There’s only one workable solution here. No more vibrating phones on television. At all. Ever. There has to be some presidential candidate desperate enough to make this an issue at the next debate. Someone find me that man or woman. I swear to God, I will use all the information I learned from binge-watching The West Wing this summer to get them elected, regardless of political affiliation. I will Sam Seaborn them straight into office so fast it’ll make Chuck Todd’s head pop clean off. It’s the only way. I mean, probably. It’s definitely the only way I can think of right now. As I said, this vibrating business has me a bit on edge.