TIL that in 2020, Burger King ran an advertising campaign featuring a picture of a moldy Whopper, to prove that their burgers are made without preservatives. This unconventional advertising method worked, increasing sales by 14% (according to multiple sources.)
Holy shit I thought only my school had motovation speakers…I swear had to go to assembly every two or three months to hear some bullshit they were peddling.
We had a bunch of them when I was growing up. Some of them were cool, and were just talking about pursuing the arts and stuff. Some were annoying propagandists, trying to convince children that war is dope and that they should enlist. But some of the anti-drug ones were fucked up.
I distinctly remember this one speaker who told us this long, depressing story about how addiction caused him to become so poor that he had to steal food and toilet paper for his family, that he had to break into people’s homes to steal their valuables to buy more drugs, that he spent 20 years in the prison system before finally getting out and getting sober and making something of his life… Then after like 30 minutes of this story, he says “None of that actually happened, but it COULD have, if I gave in to the temptations of marijuana.”
And I was only like 9 or 10 at the time, but even then I was old enough to recognize when my intelligence had been insulted. This man sat there and pulled at our heartstrings for a full half hour, literally making some of the kids cry because of how sad and traumatic his story is, only to reveal that he was lying straight to our faces. But, we should totally trust him that drugs are bad, even though the only thing we know about this man is a lie.
On the bright side, I came out of that experience as a better critical-thinker, and with a fresh sense of skepticism that I’ve carried with me through life. But I still like drugs, sooo…
The anti-Marijuana lies told to schoolchildren are, in my opinion, directly responsible for many of those kids falling to meth and heroin addiction. “Well, if they obviously lied about weed, they probably lied about how bad all the other ones are too”.
I thought they were common, though I am old AF, so maybe it doesn’t happen as much anymore. Was pretty common from grade school all the way through high school.
Felt like the same for me: every 2-3 months, there was a big assembly in the gym and we got to skip out on class for an hour or two while someone talked at us kids. I don’t know how much info I’ve actually retained from those assemblies. I remember McDonald’s burger guy, one time someone brought in a giant harmless snake and we all got to touch it, and one time there was a former pro wrestler who ripped a phone book in half lol.
I remember one that came to my elementary school was a yoyo professional or something. Got the entire school hooked on yoyos haha. This would’ve been mid 2000’s.
During the whole yo-yo craze, did you accidentally break the classroom’s fishtank with a yo-yo, landing you a month’s worth of detention? During a detention session where the teacher is not present, you rummaged through her desk for your yo-yo and discover personal ad written by the teacher, ultimately deciding to respond to it as a prank?
You can probably look him up. But I grew up in the generation of Jonesboro or Columbine. take your pick. Anyway we had this guy from Jonessboro come to speak to us how his wife died and his childeren died. One student popped up and to his face, well at the microphone and called him out that he was bullshit and just milking money He asked the student how dare he challenge him. But the student held his own. And simply asked him how much are you getting paid for talks like this. The he started get on the way he dressed called him anarchist and other slurs. It really told alot about him he ended it about five minutes after my friend sat down. I think he never spoke again about his wife dieing or son. Ever since then I like to go to meeting where there is an open mic and call them out. I don’t want other people to do it just off the cuff. I research the people talking and use the information gathered, When I was back in AR it was funny because I would go to city council meeting then when it was my turn I would fuck them up by having them answer questions about the law and everything else. Its funny as long as you have your information right and putting to the quote unquote MAN