Ugh.

I think that commercial is the most profound thing I've seen in weeks. I'm going to be thinking about it for the rest of the day, although I suppose, as a man, I'm not supposed to think about much of anything: "Math is hard; let's play football!"

Something interesting started happening over the course of the past few decades; it's still playing out. In education and the workplace, men in, say, the top quartile intellectually (whatever the hell that means...but walk with me a moment) still do very nicely for themselves, even with the necessity of sharing a few of the spoils and the plum jobs with the other gender. There's room at the top. But move a rung down the ladder, and--hey! What are all these damn women doing around here? A bright woman and a dim man compete, and the bright woman occasionally wins. Not so often at first, but more and more with the passage of time. A straight-C average and maybe "some college" used to get you X, but now it gets you a lot less. The opportunities for male mediocrities shrivel as the wholesale discounting of half the population wanes. It's hard to find good nurses these days because the women who would have done those jobs are all going to medical school.

Then too: good jobs in manufacturing are little more than a memory; real wages are stagnant or falling. The seats in Economy class just get more and more cramped.

At least that's what I think: the pond's a little bigger, and that makes especially the small fish feel smaller. How do they compensate? You used to be able to just denigrate and bully women--that still has some play in it, but works not nearly as well as it used to. The "reverse discrimination" line has never really caught on, because, frankly, everyone knows that Emperor isn't wearing any clothes. It isn't the high flyers who can't get into law school because of diversity targets. And, similarly, you can't appeal to the intellectual pride of men who have been proven to have second-rate minds. What's left but anti-intellectualism? Thinking is for wimps. What did people ever accomplish by _thinking_?

That's the great thing about marketing/advertising: you can say drink this, eat this or wear this...

Then deny all corporate responsibility when something goes wrong by saying "the consumer should know better".

Craig - spot on sir. And besides those who, for the sake of this post, I'm going to refer to as beta males (obviously not the best term but I can't think of another), there's another group who have a huge vested interest in stopping feminism - not hugely bright but reasonably good-looking women. They typically get the beta males (people mate mostly within their own bracket) and their vested interest is for said males to have the corner office. Along comes Ms Alpha and beats him to it, and you bet beta wife is mad, because instead of a nice house in the country and private schools for beta man and his wife, now alpha woman, who was once no threat at all because sexism was keeping her down, has snagged the next house over from alpha man. Even worse, single beta man is looking at alpha woman and thinking 'hm, I wonder if I can marry that instead of a less successful woman', since there's such a shortage of alpha men and alphas often don't pair up together. Now if beta woman wants life's pretty things she's got to work for them herself, elevate a beta husband by doing the corporate wife thing (which is damn hard work even for the smartest women), or raise her attractiveness enough to get an alpha male. Feminism is great for men and women who want to achieve things on their own merits, but it does massively reduce the scope for lazier or less capable women to marry their way to the good life. A Good Thing in my view, but then, the whole trophy wife thing never appealed to me (despite it having been very explicitly offered!). This I think is why some surprisingly educated women sometimes self-identify as not feminist.

Craig you sound like a very smart guy. I am sure all this is no threat to you!

I can see the virtue of the commercial's message from a psychological point of view. Anxiety and depression are often the result of one's tendency to give in to negative thoughts. Overthinking and overanalyzing prevent one from doing everyday activities, much less the dangerous "daredevil" activities portrayed in the commercial.

Cognitive behavioral therapy teaches one to combat negative thoughts in order to overcome anxiety and depression. While I see the sexism and partiarchal problems in this commercial, I, for one, wish I could "stop thinking" sometimes.

Don't forget that the anti-intellectualism ends when it comes to the top of the career pyramid, at which point you have people like Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, suggesting that women aren't as good at science as men.

Don't forget the addition groups that have had the charge of being "too smart" leveled at them: Jews, and today, Asians.

It's all about power. When even the least bit challenged, the group in power defines as unnecessary or even hindering the skills developed by other groups.

Having said all this, I think the images in the ad were really cool. I wish there some women and more varied men in them. You need to be able to think and act in this world.

i love how being a firefighter is analogous to doing a sick jump on a dirtbike

Without being ignorant of its potential for negative effects - I'm kind of excited about this. If it draws enough attention, there will be backlash. In an essentially 2-sided debate, the first side to make itself known is just paving a path for the opponent to come behind it. I'm confident that if a Men Be Stupid movement comes around, it will be squashed by a Men Be Smart revolution. And then, hey, we've empowered another generation, and essentially made progress. Call me crazy.

For me the most strange part was the idea that thinking cannot correlate with any sport or activity. And they didn't give any reasons why a thinking person wouldn't do these things... Why he will think exactly these things?

Also the dominant words - do not, do, stop...
I am under the impression that the advert creators are absolutely sure that their public are idiots.
And do not know why but I associate this with the 10 commitments.
You can tell much about somebody by the way he is communicating with others and they communicate back.

So what I think is that the main problem with the AD is the relations with its viewers, not the actual "stop thinking", but the belief that you are supposed to do that because they said so, instead just suggest it and keep in mind that people actually have free will.

is it bad that the most annoying thing about the commercial to me was it didn't specify what the hell it was selling?

Wow, for people unhappy with a 'stop thinking' ad there sure is a lot of willful ignorance on display! (nb: glib play on words, not intended to insult)

First point, nowhere does it say that any of the men portrayed are not smart. It merely suggests they don't think 'too much' i.e. they are not restricted in their activities by either their own fears, doubts, sense of inadequacy or socially accepted wisdom.

How exactly is this not a good thing?

If you look at the actual message of the ad - rather than taking the reductive slogan at face value because it suits an agenda - I see a worthwhile aspirational concept. It's true that throughout history, humanity has been advanced (and individual lives enhanced) by people doing things that conventional wisdom, and their own left-brain logic may have said were impossible, or too...something...to be attempted.

Is it not also true to say that in extreme situations, situations of danger and physical hardship, it has been often said that 'instinct takes over'? Climbing a cliff face I'm not going to rely on my rational thought processes to get me to the top. I'm far more likely to trust muscle memory, embedded experience and kinesthetic sense. The same could be said for all the activities in the ad.

Ok, so this barely-related message has been co-opted to sell jeans...well, Wrangler is neither the first no the last to do this. That's another issue, if it's an issue at all.

There may be something objectionable in the ad...it may be a tiny part of a global devaluing of intellectual accomplishment amongst men, but I think this reading is highly suggested by proximity of the recent post about university achievement and gender.

What the ad is patently NOT saying is - 'It's good to be stupid.' To suggest that it is, is...well, stupidity.

Yes, this is thesocietypages.org, but surely the first job is to read the submission on it's own terms, without prejudice, and then wonder how it fits into a social context? Not to take a theoretical social paradigm (men are taught to devalue intellectual accomplishment) and view anything that may relate through the lens of that paradigm.

Also:

That is, many men learn that to be a real man means rejecting prissy intellectual pursuits. Thinking is for chicks (and fags).

This commercial for Wrangler, aimed at men specifically, asserts this exactly:

Ah...no it doesn't.

Where's the homophobia in the ad. Any or all of those men might be gay. Or 'fags', if you prefer.

Guilty of framing the lens through which we *must* view the ad.

Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

WEAREANIMALS DOT COM
YEAAHHHHH being a man is so awesome

I thought it was a well-worn trope that one of the problems with traditional masculinity was its focus on rational thought to the exclusion of emotions and intuition. But then again, I could have sworn Eurasia has been at war with Eastasia all this time.

Stop thinking. Because animals don't think. Indeed. Interestingly, REASON is what is being used to determine that we should stop using reason - that is, stop thinking - but "instinct" is named to justify exploiting a bull and turning him into a furious, dangerous animal. Because apparently, we don't need to think about our relationship to other animal species... using them is instinctual.

I agree that spontaneity is something to be valued. My Aikido instructor sometimes tells me to stop thinking. A balance both of gender and between thinking and not thinking here would make it a better ad. My main objection is just the bull-riding and the whole "we are animals" part. Whether by invoking our "animal instincts" or our distinctiveness as not-animal humans, we always find a way to justify exploitation of other animal species.

I think you're misinterpretting this ad. It's about hesitation, not 'anti-intellectualism'. Just chill out.

Wrangler is also the company that did the (possibly) raped/beaten woman lying in a puddle ads. It's pretty clear that they're not big on thinking.

If you think was ad was based around anti-intellectualism, you're overanalyzing.

The only thing I actively disliked about the commercial was how the narrator tells me what I would conclude about all of those 'extreme' activities; "this would be too frightening, this would be too far.." Bah! Nonsense!

I've engaged in some activities that have made extreme sports enthusiasts tell me I was crazy but I'd explored and analyzed the risks very carefully before I crossed the point of no return. I like to drop off waterfalls on a foam riverboard (a boogie board for rivers), so 'point of no return' is very literal, like with BASE jumping or hang gliding. To an outside observer unfamiliar with the activity, it may look reckless and possibly even stupid. Judging the risk based on my previous whitewater experience and after working my way up to the largest rapids as I became comfortable with using a board instead of a boat makes the decision to drop a particular waterfall much less risky in actuality than it might appear to someone else, though there are still myriad ways to get killed doing it; the most likely is driving to the river. Commercials can't show years of dedicated practice and effort that go into making those peak moments possible (and less risky).

Oddly enough, humans are such lousy assessors of risk that we can't bring ourselves to get a narrator with a deep gravely voice to mention commuting to work in the morning: "This is more statistically likely to injure or kill you than hang gliding." I guess the more mundane life-threatening activities we do don't count because there is no corresponding adrenaline rush or intention to push any limits; getting obliterated by a cement truck thanks to being distracted while trying to talk on the cellphone and drive is apparently not Wrangler-worthy even though it's probably the riskiest behavior of the bunch.

And whether running Class V rapids on a small piece of foam, jumping motorcycles insane distances, or climbing an extreme pitch on a cliff face, there are moments when thinking WILL get you killed. Thinking is ideal right up until you enter a rapid, open the throttle for a jump, or climb at the limits of your ability but once you take that step out on to the Razor's Edge you need to react much faster than thinking allows. There is no time to analyze anything; thought and action must be simultaneous, and if you have the wrong thought you get injured or killed. It's a sublime feeling, and well-worth the risk IMO.

Anyway, as I understand it Wrangler makes jeans for women, too and I've found women to be just as able to stop thinking as men. When I first ran the biggest water I'd ever run on my board, my risk analysis dictated it'd be better to go with someone who had experience running that river on a board since it handles differently than a kayak. I asked around and met a very experienced raft guide that boarded it, and I talked her into showing me the routes which is why I didn't get killed (I had to bribe her with a quart of moonshine). I was taught how to hang glide by a female instructor, and one of my ex-girlfriends taught me how to be a mountain bike mechanic. Is there an ad for women's jeans like this one for men?

Frankly, the only thing all these activities have in common (and it's true for both men and women) is that jeans are among the absolute worst choice of attire while actually doing them.

Oh, and one more thing (a reply to Fangirl above):
It becomes over-analyzing when you analyze something further or deeper than the person who accuses you of over-analyzing. It doesn't mean that either party is more or less likely to come to inaccurate conclusions. In fact, it doesn't really mean much of anything; an analysis is either valid and insightful or it's not. You'd have to have perfect powers of flawless analysis to know exactly when that line between 'just enough' and 'too much' is being crossed.

wow

cos like, not thinking before doing stuff always helps you to do it right. I mean, im shure the base jumper didnt think about checking his gear, the fireman didnt think about the best way to attack the problem.

what a pile of shite.

dont think, and you will make adverts like this

The irony of this thread is staggering considering the message of the commercial witch is "Stop Thinking". It's the same message that Nike put out "Just Do It", and the "no fear" campain. Everyone is overthinking this. lol The irony.