Steve Mays
4 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2020–2025
1:02 · 27K views · Apr 15, 2012
A one-minute clip of Max Headroom's fictional 'Blipverts', ultra-short ads so stimulating that they make viewers explode. It is a snippet of 1980s sci-fi satire about advertising.
Used mostly as a joking reference to overstimulating media and attention-grabbing advertising.
4 comments from Hacker News
Is Covid-19 a Geopolitical Game-Changer? I hope and pray that this is the case. This may be the best time for us to make a change in the way the world works. Our lives have been disrupted, and we need to strive to make lasting changes for the greater good. The internet, and our world is over-commercialized. The pandemic causing an economic re-evaluation which may be the best opportunity we have to re-evaluate our position. If not, and you think the advertiser/marketer/retail market was invasive before... you aint seen nothing yet. They will need to try every trick in the book x10 - repeatedly, at lighting speed - and invent new tactics to boot. I know, this type of talk makes it seem like the Max Headroom blipverts are the future. this video
Since we are bringing up Max Headroom, I would like to put a word in for Blipverts. These were part of the fictional subject matter of the first Max Headroom TV Show. They were advertisements that make old people watching them explode. Bryce, the engineer behind these adverts, uses the wonderful line, "I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it." This was amazingly prescient back in the 80s given where we are now in adtech. this video
When I was young my parents were scared that the MTV generation couldn't focus long enough to watch the "real news". Not long ago I feared that twitters short form content was shortening peoples attention spans so much that they would stop being able to appreciate nuance at all... Then came TikTok. I don't know what comes next, but I promise you it will be worse. Either way, it's a race to the bottom and we're not there yet. Maybe it will be Max Headroom's blipverts? this video
This reminds me of "Blipverts" on the 80s TV show "Max Headroom". TV commercials that were so stimulating they would cause some viewers to explode. this video