Fear the Psychosexual Wasteland of the Trivago Ads
"Masculinity" (noun): The ability to secure competitive hotel pricing.
Dead Teenagers #4 is out now. Pick it up at your comic shop and the usual digital retailers. Catch up now, because our fifth and final issue is coming out July 15.
If you want to catch Dead Teenagers in collected edition, good news: Barnes & Noble is running a pre-order sale. You'll get 25% off the cover price if you order through this page with the code PREORDER 25. The sale runs through Friday, June 26.
And, of course, we draw ever closer to the first issue of Clayface: Celebrity Dirt, which comes out July 8.
It’s been said that when two men greet each other on the street, one of them loses. Good news: Whoever said that is now the creative director of Trivago, a hotel reservation app for deeply insecure men without family, friends, or (in some cases) their original teeth. The Trivago ads are famous for two reasons: First, they air constantly on Tubi. (At least, they do for me – I seem to have been pegged as the ideal consumer for Trivago, a fact which keeps me up at night.) Second, they contain terrifying amounts of Gender.
Picture this: You, a man in his thirties or perhaps forties, are floating in a pool at a resort. “I got a great reservation at this hotel,” you proclaim, to no-one in particular. Being as you are staying alone in this resort — this is one of the many elaborate tropical vacations you take completely alone, so often that it’s important for you to save money on them — you have very few people to talk to, but you trust that strangers will be impressed by your manly competence in room-booking nonetheless.
Alas! You are not alone! Instantly, another friend of yours — also a man in his thirties or forties, also staying alone at this very resort — floats past you on his little swim raft, informing you that he got an even better reservation. “Did you check Trivago?” he says, leering viciously, as you shrink back into your own pool floatie in bewildered dismay.
For, you see: You didn’t. You didn’t check Trivago. The words leave your mouth, a flaccid heap of excuses, proof that you have failed.
I paid too much for a hotel reservation and must sell enough newsletter subscriptions to keep myself from financial ruin. Yearly subscriptions are 25% off this month; click the button to save me from my fate.