Saturday, July 08, 2006
Povich and The Pickle
If you haven't seen it already, you probably know someone who has: Maury Povich is doing a show on odd phobias. One of his guests is a woman who has a problem with pickles. They scare her to death. Just talking about pickles is enough to make her start to sob and shake uncontrollably, but the real magic happens when the woman comes within visual range of a pickle. She freaks out. I mean, she completely and totally loses her mind, running around the studio screaming gibberish and cowering under a table.
Maury, of course, has two stage hands come up on the woman from behind with plates piled with pickles. The results are memorable. Remember that science experiment everyone did as a kid where you simulated a volcano by pouring vinegar into a well filled with baking soda? Okay, her reaction is sort of the mental equivalent of that.
Putting aside Maury's cravenness and whether or not this is all a put-on, it's undeniable that this snippet from the Povich show has a train-wreck watchability factor that's off the scale. You can't look away. You watch it and then you send it to your friends.
Oh, that's right. You send it to your friends. Because if you've seen the Pickle Phobia show, chances are you didn't see it when it was originally broadcast on daytime TV. The incident has only become part of pop culture since it started making the rounds on the internet. Usually via the clip posted on YouTube. That's how everyone has seen it. When it was originally broadcast, it slipped past the cultural consciousness completely unnoticed. It wasn't until it entered the virtual world that it caught fire and became a phenomenon.
The same is true with the Honda Element ad that features a cartoon Element at the beach talking with a cartoon crab. The crab is fixated on his purpose in life and can only repeat its mantra: "I pinch.". It's hysterical.
I bet you didn't see it on TV, though.
The evolution of these two snippets of video from standard broadcast fare to cultural touchpoints points out what seems to be a technological milestone: evidence that the technorati may have become, for the very first time, that segment of the population that steers the pop culture.
Maury, of course, has two stage hands come up on the woman from behind with plates piled with pickles. The results are memorable. Remember that science experiment everyone did as a kid where you simulated a volcano by pouring vinegar into a well filled with baking soda? Okay, her reaction is sort of the mental equivalent of that.
Putting aside Maury's cravenness and whether or not this is all a put-on, it's undeniable that this snippet from the Povich show has a train-wreck watchability factor that's off the scale. You can't look away. You watch it and then you send it to your friends.
Oh, that's right. You send it to your friends. Because if you've seen the Pickle Phobia show, chances are you didn't see it when it was originally broadcast on daytime TV. The incident has only become part of pop culture since it started making the rounds on the internet. Usually via the clip posted on YouTube. That's how everyone has seen it. When it was originally broadcast, it slipped past the cultural consciousness completely unnoticed. It wasn't until it entered the virtual world that it caught fire and became a phenomenon.
The same is true with the Honda Element ad that features a cartoon Element at the beach talking with a cartoon crab. The crab is fixated on his purpose in life and can only repeat its mantra: "I pinch.". It's hysterical.
I bet you didn't see it on TV, though.
The evolution of these two snippets of video from standard broadcast fare to cultural touchpoints points out what seems to be a technological milestone: evidence that the technorati may have become, for the very first time, that segment of the population that steers the pop culture.
# posted by Jim O'C @ 2:27 PM 
