In the ad above, rock’n’rolla Ozzy Osbourne tries to order coffee, tell a cabby where he wants to go, and share his feelings with his therapist. But when his inaudible, mumbled words don’t travel, he resorts to texting his wants, via his Samsung Propel.
It struck us as odd to see Ozzy submit himself to this kind of self-deprecation. When ‘The Osbournes’ were on MTV, producers solved Papa-O’s mumbling problem with subtitles — and we barely noticed his verbal follies (though watching him stumble around was definitely disheartening).
But to watch him eek out even the most basic communiques, unsuccessfully, took us out of the realm of “ha ha Ozzy can’t talk” and dropped us right in, “Good Lord, Ozzy can’t talk and Samsung is using that to sell phones”.
Maybe we’re being too picky here, but the notion that a phone can replace one’s ability to communicate verbally is absurd. Text will never replace the intonation of the human voice — and we will do well to remember that cell phones (et cetera) are a tool, not an alternative.
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