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Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

A really good piece of writing with one nice little tidbit, because it feels true:

> you will never see a commercial for anything that is actually and authentically liberating while watching the Super Bowl; that space is just too expensive, and too valuable, for anything but the institutions invested in the opposite of liberation to be able to afford access to it.

It feels true (with pithy, bonus), but now I'm uncertain. What does "authentically liberating" even mean? Which institutions are "authentically liberating"? What do those look like, communes? Collectives? Medical aid NGOs? Maybe more interesting: can liberation be a product?

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I would grant a commercial selling a lifestyle like scene with family or camping or adventure as … touching on a topic that could be called “liberating”.

I know they are selling me a car but that’s about as close as it gets for a commercial.

I also wonder what that phrase is supposed to mean.

Planting your own vegetable garden is authentically liberating. Going for a run is authentically liberating. Learning a language is authentically liberating. Reading a book is authentically liberating.

I can't really give you a definition of "authentically liberating" but I know it when I see it.

What are these things liberating you from?

Something along the lines of your last question is the key: can a product be liberating?

Super Bowl ads are overwhelmingly going to be brands or products, because of the economics - I agree with the that far on what the price restricts things to.

But if you believe a product is liberating, then you would have to disagree with the author, I think. Sticking with a famous Super Bowl example: was the Macintosh liberating? Were cell phones liberating? (If you take the AT&T commercial that Wikipedia tells me aired in 2003 at its face value, where Gilligan from Gilligan's Island uses a phone so they are all rescued... yes? ;) )

I am reminded of the short film More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk

I am reminded of Fully Automated Luxury Gnosticism: https://unherd.com/2021/09/welcome-to-fully-automated-luxury...

It reminds me of the "Tenryuubito" from One Piece, elites who put their heads in bubbles to breathe only their own air because they are too good to breath the same air as the common folk, but its kind of the inverse. They'd like the common folk to wear the "bubble" which will inevitably convey implicit connotations of inferiority. "Nobody wants to see your face".

https://media.giphy.com/media/aSeNfB1aAO7rG/giphy.gif

I had the exact same thought! More was also re-licensed as the music video for the song "Hell bent" by Kenna, to (in my opinion) greater emotional effect: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5mmgow

It was played a fair bit on MTV2 late at night in the early aughts. It's entirely possible this Super Bowl commercial was made by someone who saw that video 20 years ago. A deeply depressing dystopian vision.

I couldn't handle the meta commentary of trying to watch that video. Microsoft azure adds periodically covered half the screen. When the music video hit 2.5/ 5 min it paused to give me give an actual drug video commercial, and I closed the window.

Apple's 1984 ad was promising liberation as a selling point

For a sealed product that the end user didn’t even have a tool to open.

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