The Man by the Door Will One Day be Your Boss

I love how subway ad campaigns just drench you in product these days. I was on a subway (sorry; the "T") in Boston and the entire subway train was a series of colorful Tide ad wraps, reminding us how incredibly dirty everything was. I had this desire to strip naked and run about the cars, screaming "There's something in the clothes!" But I refrained.

Now I'm in New York, and the daily ad soak continues. Even the government gets in on the fun - some days, it's all security, all the time. Terrorists, take note: There are 16 million eyes in New York. And if they see something, their owners are going to say something (apparently that doesn't go equally for men who decide to get their grind on with daily commuters when the subway reaches capacity at about 9:45 a.m. - the Village Voice even has a "Best of NY" category entitled, "Best Place to Be Groped"). There's also a common reminder that the MTA has some sort of emergency preparedness video on-line. You can check it if you're bored at mta.nyc.ny.us. And I'm definitely going to check out Front Lines: Rebuilding the Rails After 9/11 at the New York Transit Museum.

But the craziest ad campaign of late goes to u-r-connected, which is really a sneaky set of posters designed to get you to go to a website of the same name, view some intriguing text about how truly linked all of us are ("There is a theory that anyone on the planet is connected to any other person through a chain of six people - no one is a stranger for long"), and then answer a series of survey items (example: I am: (a) my work, (b) the sum of my experience, (c) my future, (d) my contribution). Your selections take you to a page which tells that you resemble one of six main characters on the new ABC drama, Six Degrees.

The ads are interesting. I like the two that span the middle of each car. One of them says, "The Man by the Door will One Day be Your Boss," while the other intimates, "The Girl Across the Aisle is Flirting With You." So not only did TV execs take forever to move past the fact that six degrees has been reworked to death in film and finally exclaim, "fuck it, we're going with a show called Six Degrees," they also had to use it as a vehicle for peddling base stereotypes.

And there is no theory which says we're all connected through six people. When Milgram sent postcards to hand-picked subjects and asked them to return them to a target either in Massachusetts or the Midwest, sure, 80% of the successfully delivered cards were sent through four or fewer contacts, and nearly all traveled through six max. But Milgram's research notes reveal that 95% of the letters FAILED TO REACH THEIR TARGET. Similar results can be found post-mainframe computer, even though success continues to be achieved in six or less most of the time.

There's a phrase for the fact that this misconception, which permeates our culture and influences our behavior, lives on: herd mentality. How apropos for a subway ad campaign.

By the way, I took the survey. My new buddy is Whitney. And I'm pleased to report that I'm two degrees of separation from Osama bin Laden. But I have no idea where he is.

Vaya con Dios - brooding presence