Hacker News Reader

Comment by cik2e | Hacker News Reader

Real life has product placement every time you go outside in civilization. I'm getting upset about you guys getting upset over something so trivial.

Edit: read further down and I have to say that I've never seen (or noticed) anything so blatant as characters going on about features of a car. That would indeed be frustrating.

View on HN

> Real life has product placement every time you go outside in civilization. I'm getting upset about you guys getting upset over something so trivial.

That's a false equivalence and a poor way to think about things.

People making those real-life product placements are not deliberately placing those products in view of others in exchange for money for the sole purpose of manipulating viewers to buy said product. I agree with the GP. At least with ads you know that you're being manipulated.

If they treated a product just the way they would have treated it in real life I probably would not be upset. But that is usually not the case. Companies that pay money usually require special treatment. If you are lucky, it would be the camera lingering on the product for a long time. Or perhaps the product being painted in extra bright colors (I saw some Fedex boxes that were specially painted for product placement on a set once, they were so bright I literally could not look away from them. )

But if you are less lucky it would be completely disruptive to the world the show or movie is trying to create. For example, in the show love, the silverlake hipsters that the show took such long pains to describe would have never touched mcdonalds. Yet in the show they go around saying how great it is.

It's not the same thing, product placement is paid for by the brand. And it's upsetting because it's deceitful - designed to appear to be something other than it is, legitimate use.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com