Just don’t look.
That was Paul Anka’s lyrical advice to defeat the giant advertising mascots that came alive in a 1995 episode of “The Simpsons,” and it’s a message worth considering today as the antidote to another larger-than-life figure seeking our constant attention.
I’m speaking, of course, about Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk, who wields his status as the world’s richest person like Lard Lad wreaked havoc on Springfield with his colossal doughnut. Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy social media platform Twitter could turn out to be only the latest in a long series of actions and statements that are equally hollow.
One of the greatest fallacies held by Tesla fans is that the company doesn’t advertise.
In fact, Musk — the literal face of Tesla, who himself starred in a 2015 “Simpsons” episode — does more to keep the electric vehicle maker on people’s minds than an entire football season of Ford F-150 commercials might accomplish.
By the time it becomes apparent that Musk didn’t really mean what he said about one thing, he and his legion of fans have moved on to something else.
“Funding secured” for taking Tesla private? Nope, a federal judge concluded last month.
Self-driving already “a solved problem,” as Musk claimed way back in 2015 — Not entirely true even today.
A million robotaxis on the road in 2020? Tesla’s still a million short of fulfilling that promise.
There was the mine disaster in Thailand that Musk tried to co-opt, and the resulting defamation lawsuit against him that he managed to win. Few details about the actual rescue that British caver Vernon Unsworth and others successfully completed were memorable, but you probably still know exactly which two-word insult Musk lobbed at Unsworth from thousands of miles away.
Now we have Musk making hourly headlines about his planned purchase of Twitter. From the very beginning, there was widespread skepticism that Musk really wanted to go through with a deal, but he signed one and then put it “on hold” this month, purportedly over concerns about fake accounts known as bots.
Musk skipped doing any of the due diligence that should be a no-brainer in a deal that big, another sign that he was leaving himself a way to wriggle out of it later. The cost of walking away would be high, but only a fraction of his enormous net worth, and he may feel that’s money well spent in exchange for the number of people thinking, talking and writing about him because of it. Some of those people are buying Teslas, adding to the wealth that helps Musk command the world’s attention.
“Advertising is a funny thing,” an executive at the ad agency behind Springfield’s destructive mascots tells Lisa Simpson. “If people stop paying attention to it, it goes away.”
That’s admittedly not easy to do. But like in 1959, when “Lonely Boy” became his first No. 1 hit, it’s time we start listening to Paul Anka.
