When did it become cool?

I've noticed a disturbing trend in the past few years. I think it started with Beefy Boy -- was it for Chef Boyardee? -- he'd smear his face with sauce and say "Mmmmm, Beefy." Gross.

Now we seem to be moving out of the gross out trend and into an even less attractive quality: rudeness. The milk ads piss me off everytime, and even if I wasn't already lactose intolerant, these ads would be enough to make me stop drinking it for good. The latest in the series is a kid who goes into the store to buy chocolate milk. At the cooler, he looks around furtively before using a quarter to scratch through the UPC symbol. At the register, the woman tries to scan the milk, but cant't get a reading because of the scratch, so she runs it past the scanner repeatedly before finally calling for a price check. Now, the point is that the stupid numbnuts customer gets someone else to shake up his chocolate milk. Mmmm, yum. He's so clever and isn't that milk yummy.

Little shit. Shake your own damn milk. It's not that hard to do.

The thing is, these ads and others like them are meant to be funny. But I can't help but see them as a giant insult to my intelligence, and to the intelligence of the shmuckity actors who get paid to be in them. That's our "anything for a buck" American culture at its finest, I suppose.

Gah.