General Motors, the company partly responsible for dismantling public transport systems across North America, is running ads in Canada calling public transport users "creeps & weirdos", and recommending that, to avoid sitting next to deranged, hygienically-challenged or psychotically dangerous people, one should buy a GM car and drive everywhere. Ah, laissez-faire transport. I wonder if VicRoads will pick up the theme for its own ad campaigns around here. (via bOING bOING)

Posted by: janaki | http://kerfuffle.org/headphones/ | Tue Mar 25 15:48:41 2003

er, correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't adverts intended to make people wish to have your product/service for themselves? twits. :P

Posted by: Michael S. | http://beebo.org | Thu Mar 27 00:41:41 2003

A Canadian source of mine says they're going to pull the campaign. (Apparently the Vancouver 2010 Bid Corporation (for the Winter Olympics) had a word to GM--their logo is at the bottom of the ad.)

I dislike the ad, although I suppose it isn't "wrong"--it's more a rough commercial equivalent of negative political advertising I suppose.

(By the way, I didn't read it as saying that all, or even many, public transport users were creeps and weirdos.)

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Thu Mar 27 04:08:05 2003

Well, it says that using public transport == suffering the attentions of creeps and weirdos.

Posted by: Michael S. | http://beebo.org | Thu Mar 27 04:25:14 2003

Yes, the ad asserts there's a greater chance of that happening on PT, but this also happens to be true, don't you think?!

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Thu Mar 27 06:59:19 2003

Not to an intolerable extent. And besides that point, there's something very antisocial about encouraging single-occupant vehicle travel through spreading fear of other people. Something right out of the paranoid, gated-community America of Mark Davis and Michael Moore.

Posted by: Graham | http://grudnuk.com | Thu Mar 27 07:49:28 2003

Anyone notice the number on the bus?

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