Jamster

If you ever brave the murky depths of cable channels, you’ll find yourself swamped with hundreds of tiny advertising nuggets. These aren’t proper ads. They’re visual and sonic assaults on the mind designed to tattoo a brand on your brain with deft swiftness. You fnd yourself remembering the product and the company name completely involuntarily – usually items which are of no use to you whatsoever, taking up valuable brain space you’d alloted to be filled later on in life with the works of Heidegger, Kant or Linsey Dawn McKenzie.

Jamster, the mobile ringtone, wallpaper, gimmick and pornography augmentation service, indulge in such examples of advertising. Their marketing output is the equivalent of an infectious sales-rottweiler, dribbling on the sidelines of MTV2, ready to pounce when the ads come on and happy to sink teeth into your temples when you’re buried to the hilt in the middle of their ten minute ad breaks.

The ad that got me scratching my head and shouting at the television set (again – I must curb this habit) came on this morning without warning, and was attempting to sell an X Ray mechanism that you can apparently download onto your mobile and, as a result, see through your hand and, at a push, LADIES’ PANTS using its incredible machinations.

I am an adult and am aware that this is guff. Though if I were a child, I might not. I invested in some X Ray Specs from a ‘Smiffy’s Joke Shop’ catalogue (anyone remember them?) when I was pre-10, so if I were a nipper now and blessed with a cell phone – they seem to dish them out at birth these days – I’d probably waste a fiver or however much they sell this shit for on this useless, unamusing and rip-off rubbish.

Even more disturbing is the advert for a mobile phone ‘Partner Tracker’.

Apparently this enables the user to find out where their other half is using mobile technology. So if you’ve jumped to the conclusion that your beloved is up to no good, you can find out if they’ve gone where they’ve said they’ve gone as you sit alone, drinking own-brand gin in your bedsit. Healthy!

So, jealous lovers, if you’re an untrusting brute or you feel you’ve been saddled with a two-bit, cheating swine who may be making a cuckold of you, for three or four quid you can use this application to ruin your life whether your suspicions are confirmed or not.

Brilliant!

Except it’s not brilliant. The small print sadly gives away the cold hard facts… and they make for saddening reading. I’ve been duped.

This software is for entertainment purposes only and does not require GPS or a network connection. It doesn’t locate your real whereabouts but nevertheless it is a fun application

I’m sure it is, Jamster. I’m sure it’s a lorry load of neverending fun, you shameless, no-good shysters.