Monday, May 23, 2011

Grow a beard to save water....drink shitty beer responsibly

I don't want to pick on large corporations with green-washing goals and some 25 year old "social marketing guru" who dreams up frivolous campaigns to save the world, but this Budweiser campaign on facebook is infuriating.
Grow a beard to save water.... Only a kid who grew up with The Simpsons as a third parent would promote this insanely contradictory campaign via a beer company. Or maybe he is a genius trying to mock the world that isn't smart enough to recognize lunacy when it is under their noses. But the chances are that it is a real world example of something too crazy to be spoofed. It's like a condom company encouraging masturbation. Or Ford sponsoring a "Bike To Your Car" week.
Do I need to point out that beer is made from water so if you are drinking a case of beer a week and have a beard then you are still an asshole. You are a bearded asshole. And the amount of water used nationally brewing beer must dwarf the amount we use shaving our faces so all men look like Katie Holmes.
Maybe I'm missing something because I haven't slept in days. Is this a genuine campaign or the way a social marketing division of Budweiser justifies their ridiculous salary? Or is it a spoof and I'm gullible?

I admit that I've looked at the razor packaging and the shaving cream cans and could not bring myself to buy them. The plastic, metal, over engineered madness makes me put them back on the rack. Yeah, it's so important that mustache hairs don't fall in my Ramen noodles that I need 4 blades that pivot on an indestructible hinge so I can shave. So I used an electric beard trimmer for years and accepted looking like Don Johnson. Then I would reclaim water from my kitchen and use that for shaving but my razors were always dull and my face got a rash. In Mexico I shaved in the ocean. These days I let the beard grow wild so I will look more credible in the wilderness of Labrador. The wolves need to know I'm their friend. But if Budweiser wants to save water they should shut down their brewery and teach people to brew their own beer from reclaimed rain water. I mean, if they recognize that national water supply is actually in a crisis situation because of pollution and depleted groundwater then shouldn't they do something serious?! It's either serious or it isn't, but this game of sticking one toe in the water and running back to the house doesn't do anyone any good. Let's get serious about reclaiming rainwater, conserving the water we do use by letting lawns die, not shaving, showering twice a week at most, washing clothes less, ceasing all silicone chip manufacturing, shutting down nuclear power plants, and let legs and male chins grow hair like our good looking cousin the chimp. But I guess that just sounds insane. Better to pay lip service like reusing cups to drink coffee from Morocco.

In other news Toyota has created a social networking site that records and posts conversations between you and your car. Soon, cars will be talking to each other and the owner can elect to post that conversation on Facebook. Eventually cars will create their own networking site and only cool people will be allowed to join. But the big question is if the cars will decide to shave their beards.
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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.