This LG Commerical Shows Just How Bad Millennial Oversharing is
The scene opens on a decorated apartment and a nervous man eyeing the door. A woman walks in looking confused and the man drops onto bended knee. The camera zooms in to show him pulling out a ring box as he asks, “will you marry me?”
It’s your standard Hallmark moment. A cliché until the woman says, “hold on” and proceeds to pull out her LG Optimus G Pro phone to record the moment with the new “FabShare” capability. A part of every sane human watching this commercial proceeds to die a little inside.
Millennials get a bad rap for being “lazy, entitled, and narcissistic.” Researchers even gave us a moniker for it, “Generation Me.” Some people blame our Boomer parents for all the participation trophies or for hugging us too often. Others wag their fingers at social media and millennials being reared in the time of selfies and status updates. Whichever theory you elect to believe, the millennial in this commercial proves we’re on the verge of becoming completely detached from reality.
Gender stereotypes of this ad aside, it’s bothersome we’ve reached a place in society where pressing pause on a major life event to record it has become so commonplace, it's used as a sales pitch. The reason it’s even thought of as a sales pitch is because it’s becoming our new reality. Generation Me is getting so attached to screens it’s becoming hard to step away and just live life.
When something exciting happens, a job promotion or an engagement or the birth of a child, it doesn’t really count until it’s on Facebook, or tweeted, or Instagrammed or texted. The expression, “is it Facebook official” is no longer an ironic commentary, it’s the truth about the direction we’re headed.
Technology, social media and the ability to experience interconnectedness on a global scale are gifts. However, these gifts of are keeping us from experiencing life because we’re too busy recording and snapping and tweeting away for posterity. Wouldn’t it be better to remember an intimate moment because you were present for it and not because you have to re-watch it later to recall what happened?
(Watch full commercial here.)
The alternate ending of this commercial should feature the man snapping the ring box shut and storming out the door as the woman continues her fake hysterics into the camera. When she looked up from her phone and he was gone, at least she’d have the moment recorded.
