Those of you out there who, like me, are too cheap to pay to remove the ads from their mobile apps know all about this: the commercials for other apps that “challenge” your ego by saying (without any data, evidence, science, or apparently conscience) that “only 5% of people can solve this” or by showing that getting so far in the game means that you have a “brain age” or IQ of some randomly generated number.
Indeed some appeal to intelligence (or lack thereof) seems to be the common ingredient to many of these ads. Ridiculously easy problems are never solved in the puzzle apps and jackpots are always won in the betting apps.
But, I just was confronted with the best one of all time, making for the bonehead commercial of the day …
This ad assured me that only left-brained thinkers could solve the puzzle (some 3D tower block-removal game). Now, if we assume that the notion of being left- versus right-brained is not hair-brained and if we subscribe to the theory that lateralization of brain function does determine (or at least is strongly correlated with) handedness, then only a mere 90% of the world’s population can solve this game. Doesn’t sound like too much of a challenge anymore now does it, especially because all those analytical left-brained types already figured all this out. (Me, being right-brained, am still stuck at “Oooh! Pretty graphics …”)
Admittedly, there are a lot of assumptions being made in my “analysis”, with most of them being debatable at best, but 90% is still a far cry from the stereotypical 5% that was claimed in a previous version of the ad.
Say, you don’t think the ad company might be making all this up, do you?
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