It IS Complicated!

Corporate person in disguise AT&T is bombarding us and our kids with false information.

In a video ad, actor Beck Bennett–he seems to be a person in fact–asks very young children three seemingly uncomplicated questions to which they give uncomplicated answers which, taken together, lead to an uncomplicated conclusion: buy phone and internet service from (you guessed it!) AT&T.

Q1: "What's better, faster or slower?" A1: "Faster."

Q2: "What's better, doing two things at once, or just one?" A2: "Two."

Q3: "Is saving money better than not saving money?" A3: "Yes."

So simple. So uncomplicated. And so horribly misleading. And just plain so wrong.

Q1: "Faster or slower"? The right answer depends wholly upon what you are talking about. Is fast food better than slow food? Is driving faster better than driving slower? Is it better to make an important decision quickly or to give it some thought? Would you rather speed-read great literature or take time with it? Is allegro better than adagio?

Q2: "Do two things at once"? Studies show we cannot "do two things at once." If we are doing two things we are dividing our attention and our skill-sets into half, actually alternating between doing each of those two things, doing each of them one at a time. Are such back-and-forth exercises the best way to do anything, especially things that matter? Usually not. Ever try to teach math facts to a fifth-grader who is texting her best friend?

Q3: Saving money is often a good thing. Except when you buy a piece of junk that doesn't last a year when spending a little more would have bought you something that might last five years. Or when you feed your kids cheap food that harms their health. Or when a tanking economy needs you to spend your money.

Or, I take it, when you spend your money on AT&T phone and internet service.

AT&T is exploiting the minds of young children to take advantage of them and of the rest of us who are to be hoodwinked by their apparently innocent truthfulness. It is playing a childish game with consumers' ability to think clearly, spreading simple lies as if there were simple truths. What's it is doing is not complicated: in the best traditions of American enterprise it is bamboozling the public to sell snake oil.

AT&T is acting like a person: a complicated, deceptive, partial-truth-telling person out to take us for all we are worth. How would Alexander Graham Bell answer its message?