Twitter Fans Make DirecTV's New 'Get Rid of Cable' Ad One of the Bleakest Yet

Putting all that negativity to work

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When you leave people to their own devices, they tend to get nihilistic. When they get nihilistic, they make darkly comic scripts for DirecTV.

Case in point: the satellite-TV company's Twitter-sourced fable—created in the style of Grey's long-running "Cable Effects" campaign—of what happens if you don’t cut the cord.

The satellite giant asked its fans to contribute a story line to the campaign by tweeting one-liners with the hashtag #GetRidofCable. The company then selected the best ideas and made a cohesive, disturbing story—read like a storybook in the video below—of getting addicted to cheese during lab experiments, going back in time and undoing your own birth … all because the protagonist refused to say no to cable.

It's actually a pretty good entry in the campaign, even if the last line is a bit long-winded.

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