What we deserve.

This item on the Great Lileks's site incited a riot -- well, some worthy comments -- the other day:

 

The 70's-era ad, from Penny's (the supermarket, not J.C. Penney's) makes an assumption that goes back at least to that decade -- that "you" the customer, deserve something special. I noted that in that same decade McDonald's had success with its "You Deserve a Break Today" campaign. 

The question was: Who says? What's the standard for deserving? Why does someone deserve the best just for reading this ad? I could be an absentee dad grifter with a long history of broken hearts and stolen wallets, but reading this ad makes me deserving of the best? 

Pure flattery, I know, but it is everywhere these days and as empty as ever. Because they don't know me and they don't know what I deserve. Why should I take that any more seriously than I'd take a random person insulting me online? 

Here's another one, garnered from social media. It's trying to be nice, but how does it know anything? How do you know I'm worthy of anything more than a fist to the face, CryptoNaturalist? What are you, Thor's hammer?

Then there's the ones that go beyond the affirmations to stupidity, the kind that assume you're awesome and you know you're awesome and tell you how to go out and spread your awesomeness to the world. Dove chocolates, which are in fact awesome, has apparently solicited various dumdums to promote these kinds of messages: 

Could I be authentically fearless instead?

Isn't the word "tribe" racist now?

I was making fun of affirmations years ago, and the ones I see now are even worse than the ones I was targeting then. Knowing that the writers don't know anything about the readers ought to give the latter an empty feeling, because the only thing the writers really seem to believe is that the readers are suckers for flattery. Even children know when affirmations are worthless, and know better than to trust adults who spew them. 

Anyway, I have enough trouble believing compliments when they come from people who do know me, because I expect they don't know the real me. And if they did, they'd be disgusted. But maybe that's where affirmations leave off and my own neuroses take over.