Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Romance rewind

A common tactic used by marketers to sell something lame and tacky is to make it more appealing by attaching it, however tenuously, to a current trend. You see it these days with the letter E. Every mundane chore or run-of-the-mill product is supposed to be
more exciting, convenient and sexy because somebody slapped an E in front of it: e-commerce (shopping), e-cards (greeting cards), e-file (doing your taxes). The "E" replaced the word "cyber" that was used in the '90s. In the '60s, the trendy term was "space age" before turning to "disco" in the '70s. And in the '80s, everything was "video"...

Don't dismiss this by thinking these guys were simply products of the '80's; they're still out there. Well, probably not THESE particular guys (maybe though) but their direct descendants. They're e-dating now, just like they cyberdated in the '90s and just like their predecessors disco-dated in the '70s and (I guess) space-dated before that. 

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