Magnetic bracelets dis-informercial

Television shopping blows me away. And the one reason why I cannot wrap my head around the idea is this one word: overhead.

Now, I have no idea whatsoever about the cost of televising anything, but I am sure that the cost is in large part dependent on the time of day for obvious reasons: it'll cost more money to reach more people. But let's just assume that you're advertising on the cheapest, lamest, least watched time and channel. My guess is that you'd still be looking at tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for a given time slot. So obviously, one would expect to make more money from the advertising in that time slot than it cost to pay for it. It doesn't matter if we're talking about a 30 second commercial or a 30 minute program on the Shopping Channel. The fact stands that you expect your advertising to reach enough people who will actually go out and buy your product, to make you more money, than it cost to air that segment.

So I'm watching the History Channel and they break to a 2 minute commercial selling magnetic bracelets. It was one of those infomercial segments that must have been around since the dawn of colour television, with fake customers attesting to how great their fake experiences with such-and-such fake product was. The segment is concluded--always--with a blue screen (thus the colour television) with video continuing to loop in the top left; maybe a mailing address on the top right; a big, bold eleven digit phone number in white text with symbols for Visa, MasterCard, and American Express maybe right above it. Usually you make four simple payments plus a less than modest shipping and handling cost. On this specific infomercial, there strangely was no cost displayed. Oh well.

I tried to remember the website that it displayed, but forgot it five minutes later. Too bad. I could have grabbed some awesome quotes. What stood out about this infomercial was that they claimed that it "balanced" your negative and positive life energy to equally distribute you "chi." Just so you knew they weren't talking Bullshit there were several Asian actors hired to appear for brief moments. I think there was even a graphic showing how the chi became equally balanced around your body due to this magnetic bracelet. How this seemingly cheap piece of metal--which, if I were to describe it, looked little more than a poorly twisted bar of copper with balls on the end--could work its magic from your wrist to balance chi around your whole body I fear will forever be concealed from us behind the impenetrable shade of Oriental mysticism.

Unless, of course, it was all Bullshit. And it is. There is no such thing as "chi" or "life energy" or "the Force," for that matter. The whole marketing ploy that's being played upon is Western society's perceived awe of Oriental mysticism. Like people who get tattoos of Japanese characters on their back, our culture has come to understand itself too well that we want something new. There is definitely nothing mysterious about ours anymore. We've almost even killed all of our gods. So now we're attracted to whatever else might hold a hint of mystery. It's curious human nature, and I can't blame that, but come on! BALANCING CHI?! This infomercial didn't even make the claim that I was expected, that the bracelet pulls the iron in your blood to a certain location (your wrist). But that's only for arthritis. Why limit yourself? Why not claim that you're balancing the WHOLE BODY'S CHI instead? There's probably four times as many people with unbalanced chi than those with arthritis in their wrists.

By the way, that arthritis claim, that magnetic bracelets pull the iron in your blood to your arthritic wrist is Bullshit too! The iron in blood is not even ferromagnetic! It isn't attracted by magnets! Think about that the next time you go to the Dollar Store and put down, what, three or four dollars for one? What? No? $150?!

Check this out: NO RELIEF WITH MAGNETIC BRACELETS: STUDY

Science at work!!

So why does television shopping blow me away? Because in order for commercials of any kind to still be around today, they must be working. That means, entrepreneurs, quacks, con-artists, whatever you want to call these people who are trying to sell you "chi-balancing magnetic bracelets" are making more money selling these things than it costs to televise the advertisement. And my uneducated guess is that they would have to make more than maybe a couple bucks more than it cost in the first place, or else it wouldn't really be worth it, would it? That means thousands of people are buying into this BULLSHIT!

I bet now my show is over too. Fuck.