It's always been painful yet irresistible to watch when businesses try tuning in to "the youth", but the 21st century has an especially abundant array of opportunities for such misguided behaviour. After all, everything moves so fast on the internet that you're out of touch basically as soon as you've reached the end of an article about the latest digital innovation. YouTube? No one has the time for more than a Vine these days. Facebook? Teens are abandoning it in droves. Flappy Birds? Gone in the blink of an eye, leaving only the terrifying idea that its success was ruining its creator's life.
Considering that we're all about to fall off the digital treadmill at any moment, then, there's a particularly smug form of schadenfreude one feels when a huge conglomerate gets it wrong. Here's to all the dads on the dancefloor of social media shoehorning – your failures make me feel that little bit younger. Such as:
Mashtags
Remember smiley faces? No, not those emoticons that you use to subtly change the tone of your office emails from aggressive to passive aggressive, but the tasty snacks you used to chow down in childhood if your mum wasn't one of those MSG-free types. Back in the day, there was little else in the world more important than getting home from school in time to sit down to a plastic plate of dehydrated potato, hot from the oven. Truly, they were simpler times. And that's why purveyors of ready-made frozen food Birds Eye have stepped up to the challenge of the tweet-ridden teatime and created Mashtags (#NEW #tasty. No really, it says that on the bag.) There are little potato hash signs, @s, an asterisk and the odd rebranded smiley in there. Death threats are optional.
Facebook-themed wedding gifts
Now, we all know that Etsy is a kitschy, uber-camp black hole of upmarket tat, so it's unsurprising that one of its sellers assumes you'd want to wear matching T-shirts with your one true love on your honeymoon. For just £15.33 each, then, you can buy your very own rhinestone-encrusted creation which says JUST MARRIED and then – to show you're still "with it" and, y'know, funky – the inscription "150 people like this" next to a Facebook thumbs up. Is it a shirt, is it a social media post, is it something completely nonsensical in between? Passersby will be left wondering for hours.
Republicans on Breaking Bad
Remember the central themes of Breaking Bad, and the circumstances that led to its protagonists' steady moral decline? Thought not. Luckily, ultra-conservative US Republican Ann Coulter was there to remind everyone, when she jumped on the bandwagon of the trending hashtags #BreakingBad and #BreakingBadFinale during – you guessed it – the series' finale. "#BreakingBad shows the importance of having a gun in the home. #BreakingBadFinale," @AnnCoulter tweeted, while we all nodded sagely along.
Keep calm and reblog my posts
Now, I know the Keep Calm and Carry On posters have been abused with a viciousness none of us could have predicted when they first burst back on to the commercial scene. It's now not uncommon to own mugs with One Direction boyband member Harry Styles's face as the background, and Keep Calm and Love Harry superimposed over it (again, seriously, that is a thing). But there's something particularly depressing about a huge purple poster saying Keep Calm and Reblog my Posts. Let's be honest here, how synonymous is reblogging with carrying on? Is it a kooky present for a sweet sixteenth, or is it in equal parts embarrassing and bleak?
Wanting a PSP, "fo shizzy"
It's an old one – ancient in terms of the laws of cyberspace – but a good one. In 2006, Sony attempted to convince its teenage fandom that it was cool by opening the site alliwantforxmasisapsp.com to promote the newest PSP model. It featured a man clearly in his 20s or 30s dressed in "teenage" attire (Adidas tracksuit bottoms and a large medallion on a chain, naturally) and rapping badly about how much he wanted to "ask mum and dad" for a PSP for Christmas. He also made use of the phrase "fo shizzy", because, obvs, he was down with the kids. The stunt was lauded across the internet as one of the marketing world's uncoolest moments. And that's saying something.
Who's your 9-to-5 buddy?
In a PR stunt that fell fairly flat, Jobsite tried to rebrand the idiot you share an open plan desk with as "your 9-to-5 buddy". Considering that the word "buddy" hasn't been used in a non-ironic context since 1989, this one was really bound to fail from the moment they unleashed it on the internet, begging people to upload pictures of their buddydom on to Facebook, Twitter and Google+, and promising rewards for those with maximum engagement. It was meant to demonstrate the cosy capitalist utopia of the urban worker, and yet it just made everything seriously awkward. Because really, "9-to-5 buddy" doesn't just sound horrendously out of touch – it also sounds one hell of a lot like a euphemism for "person I escape as soon as I stop being paid to be in their presence". The fact that the rewards were mostly alcoholic should, indeed, speak for itself.
