Vitriolically lame-brained? — culturally indicative Internet comments regarding Jeep's 2021 Super Bowl commercial

09 February 2021

Preface

A noticeable proportion of Internet comments seem to be written by people, who appear to lack the ability to see other people's perspectives and how those might have been shaped.

As a result, online comments are too frequently blazingly stupid, irrelevant and occasionally nonsensical. Many, perhaps unconsciously, miss the point to the original posting.

A noticeable proportion of those also incorporate aggressively delivered vitriol for no discernably "good" reason.

Political relevance of this observation

The following are taken from reactions to the 2021 Super Bowl Jeep commercial. It constituted a corporate appeal to reunite factionalized America:

Jeep, The Middle, YouTube (06 February 2021)

Note — (11 February 2021)

Jeep has since pulled this ad from YouTube.

Its protagonist, Bruce Springsteen, had reportedly been arrested for driving under the influence in November 2020.

Somehow, no one at Jeep thought to check before making the Super Bowl commercial. As of 11 February, the ad is still accessible on Springsteen's Instagram account, here.

And a further note — (24 February 2021)

Happy news:

The government dropped drunken driving and reckless driving charges against Bruce Springsteen on Wednesday stemming from an incident in November, admitting that the rocker’s blood-alcohol level was so low that it didn’t warrant the charges.

Given the Jeep commercial's sugary, clumsily delivered content . . .

. . . meaning, among other things:

New Jersey city boy

and flaming Democrat

Bruce Springsteen —

pretending to be a western rancher-farmer type,

and

driving a comparatively ancient

non-Fiat, non-Stellantis

(much better constructed than today)

CJ-5

. . . I was curious how Jeep's appeal to unity would be greeted online.

I went to two of my favorite auto-related websites, Jalopnik and The Truth about Cars

Comments on both sites customarily include noticeable portions of intelligent, sometimes genuinely witty observations regarding automotive subjects.

Uncharacteristically, both sites published provocative op-eds regarding Jeep's Super Bowl advertisement. And those two short essays led to the torrent of the empty-headed hostility that I addressed in the preface.

See . . .

Raphael Orlove, The YouTube Comments Are The Only Thing Good About Jeep's Stupid Bruce Ad, Jalopnik (08 February 2021)

Tim Healy, Opinion: Jeep’s Super Bowl Ad Won’t Unite Us, The Truth about Cars [TTAC] (08 February 2021)

Orlove's is the slightly more insightful of the two blurbs

He observed that:

For reasons beyond my understanding, noted rich person Bruce Springsteen broke his decades-long prohibition on doing any ads . . . for a schlocky promo about reconciliation and “meeting in the middle,” as if the country didn’t just elect the center-right politician most famous for the Crime Bill.

How this sells Jeeps, I don’t know. How this makes anyone feel anything but pandered to, I also don’t know!

What I do know is that I could trust the one pure place left on the internet for sage insight: YouTube comments.

The immediate, unvarnished responses of people who don’t care at all what they say online.

As with YouTube, what people said in direct response to Orlove often fell into the "id-expressed" basket.

The same proved true for Tim Healy's article

Healy, though, overtly invited angry political hornets to respond.

Consider, for example, his snarky statement that:

Except the problem is that a fringe element isn’t interested in unity. Part of that element, driven at least in part by misinformation and disinformation, refuses to believe the factual truth regarding who won the 2020 presidential election.

Part of that element stormed the United States Capitol in an attempt to overthrow a democratic election. It was an insurrection. On American soil.

Read the last bit again and let it sink in. I’ll wait.

Good, you’re back. I want to make something absolutely clear here. I am not calling out an entire side of the political aisle for the actions of a small percent of the population.

I’m fully aware the percentage of the population that has broken with reality is relatively small . . . .

I know there are reasonable conservatives out there who want unity and bipartisan compromise where possible.

My point is simply that it’s difficult, if not impossible, for reasonable people with reasonable disagreements to come together in a show of unity when a small but very vocal part of the population has been sucked into a vortex of unreality and is willing to storm the nation’s Capitol building because they didn’t get their way in a free and fair election.

There’s no room for compromise with people who literally will resort to violence to avoid it.

Let's think about all this — in relation to Jeep's national unity goal

First, it seems to me that people can reasonably — and on the basis of some evidence, as well as the arguable non-existence of genuinely thorough vote-count investigations — disagree with Healy's above-stated perspective.

Evidently, Healy was doing what — "Montreal litigator turned YouTuber" — Viva Frei calls "confession through projection".

As a result of Healy's no-quarter-given demeanor, it is not a surprise that many of TTAC's readers would take angry issue with him.

Pertinently, though perhaps legitimately-taken, statements on both sides of the argument often seemed reflexive, unreasoned and evidentiarily unsupported.

The totality of those comments probably proved Healy's point about unresolvable national disunity.

But maybe not in exactly in the — "I'm exclusively right" — way that Healey seems to think applies to him.

One such exchange was, thankfully, sarcastically funny

There's sometimes hope in sharply delivered humor:

tonycd — February 8th, 2021 at 5:38 pm

Tim [Healy], the fact that you’ve incensed this many fascist denialists means you did a pretty good job.

Evidently, no, one can’t unite everybody in today’s America . . . .

But those who are capable of adult thought can unite around a shared set of facts.

Those who insist [on] stuffing their fingers in their ears while loud[ly] reciting the Murdoch alt-truth will just have to be luxuriate in their wish of comforting denial without assent from the rest of us.

Cicero — February 8th, 2021 at 5:54 pm

“Fascist Denialist.”

Wow. I can feel all the Tolerance and Unity pouring right over me.

Another exchange demonstrated Healy's own, intemperately displayed . . .

. . . lack of ability to extend the courtesy of reasoned debate to his political opponents:

Jerome10 — February 8th, 2021 at 6:00 pm

I generally turn to sports for entertainment. Not for lectures.

Now I’m told “Part of that element, driven at least in part by misinformation and disinformation, refuses to believe the factual truth regarding who won the 2020 presidential election. Part of that element stormed the United States Capitol in an attempt to overthrow a democratic election. It was an insurrection. On American soil.”

So I’ve got TTAC deciding what is truth and what isn’t?

TTAC is the determiner of what is or is not an insurrection?

“we’re fighting over reality.”

Oh, I got that too. Any Americans that might see things differently, or have concerns whether an election was legitimate or not….we’ll that’s just not reality, as declared by an automotive website.

Basically the same story you hear everywhere else.

If you disagree or have concerns, you’re labeled as something terrible, banished, and then after that is completed told to come together and have “unity”.

Yeah ok sure.

Ban me. What do I care.

I’m used to things that used to be fun being political cesspools. Another one off my list isn’t gonna cause me any grief at this point.

Tim Healey — February 8th, 2021 at 6:17 pm

You didn’t have to click…but thanks for taking the time to read the piece!

Notice that Healey evasively dodged the issues that Jerome10 has raised

Who decides what's true?

How do they do that?

Both queries are pertinent to the alleged Trump "insurrection" issue. Yet, Healey ignored both questions and ended with yet another admonition, as well as an unnecessarily prickish "thanks for" bye-bye.

Healey's pretense at objective analysis is what the Democratic Party and the Deep State consistently extend to the arguably "other" half of the American population.

Note

Here, I am not siding with alleged Trump idolators.

However, I am saying that — given how superficially circumstances have played out, having been quickly and airily spirited along by the Powers that Be — reasonable people can legitimately question what has been proven and what has not.

Healy's cavalier evasion of the Jerome10's implicitly raised issues does not do Healy credit. Either as to motive, or his ability to reason with charitable intent.

"Confession through (hostile) projection" is an apt description of this process.

And there is way too much of that going around, these days.

The moral? — As online comments often indicate — divisiveness and hatred build . . .

. . . when we (more or less arbitrarily) discount differing viewpoints and parade in justification, false or superficially analyzed evidence in Reason's place.

Our lives are generally led in societal confines that are impervious to contemplating notably different points of view, which come from other places or culturally different people.

This characteristic (of cursory dismissal) is not a societally beneficial thing.

Training ourselves to be alert to our apparently innate tendency to cut other people off, would be a desirable practice.

Naturally this weakness of ours is something that Establishment propagandists take advantage of on a daily basis.

I'm not holding my breath for improvement or unity. But one is allowed, at least occasionally, to hope for better times.

PeteFree.com

Vitriolically lame-brained? — culturally indicative Internet comments regarding Jeep's 2021 Super Bowl commercial