Hil...... wait for it .....larious, Hilarious!

Judging by these pictures life is tough being white upper middle class....

Why is Harrison Ford so upset???

classic. I also enjoy the taking off of the glasses and leaving credit cards out on the desk.

All of these are completely accurate depictions.
Except for the woman making paper donkey ears.

Judging by paper bills and their circa-1980s calculators, they could also just be confounded by all this new fangled electronic billing and internets.

Sing along ...

I don't have -
Any money left.
When I get new bills in
I touch myself.

I had some cash
before the last woot off
I could not resist
I could not get e-nough
Got a monkey
(passed on the fondue)
I f5 all day long
I'd pay one dollar for you

I don't have -
Any money left.
When I get new bills in
I touch myself.
...

you really paid for these pictures? What is your Blog budget?

I am a little boggled by this whole thing. Making a point of spending money on photographs of people who are supposedly ill at ease because of a lack of money seems unnecessary or perhaps misdirected. Somehow I think if you offered even half of what you paid for these, instead to your wooters, you'd have gotten higher quality face palms and head touchings alike and more of them! I truly feel that you've wasted money that could have been better distributed to your loyal wooters as a reward for a little bit of effort. They'd have likely turned around and reinvested it on something from your wonderful inventory as well. In summary I must don the sadface for everyone involved. The readers for being blatantly informed that money has been wasted on sad people pictures and woot staff that missed out on a good opportunity to give back to the community a little.

My favorite is definitely the last one.

"I can't afford to pay these bills, so I'll make antlers out of them!"

Extreme Like! Beast Mode Like!

Now help pay for a new keyboard. There's coffee spat all over this one.

I think the couple in picture nine is the couple in picture ten twenty-five years later. And they still have problems paying the bills.

darkdeity wrote:I am a little boggled by this whole thing. Making a point of spending money on photographs of people who are supposedly ill at ease because of a lack of money seems unnecessary or perhaps misdirected. Somehow I think if you offered even half of what you paid for these, instead to your wooters, you'd have gotten higher quality face palms and head touchings alike and more of them! I truly feel that you've wasted money that could have been better distributed to your loyal wooters as a reward for a little bit of effort. They'd have likely turned around and reinvested it on something from your wonderful inventory as well. In summary I must don the sadface for everyone involved. The readers for being blatantly informed that money has been wasted on sad people pictures and woot staff that missed out on a good opportunity to give back to the community a little.

The point of this post isn't just a collection of people with bills touching their heads.

The point is that stock photos are a type of cultural barometer. Since the recession, photographers (the ones who make a living off stock photos anyway, all 25 of them) have been asking themselves: "What looks like people stressed out in this economy?" Their answer: people, looking at a pile of bills, touching their heads.

Its funny (and it's not funny to explain jokes, I know) because they are all doing the same thing. I guess we have no other way of showing stress than touching our head.

The reason the author needed to use stock photos is because they show us our cultural cliches. The fact that there are so many pictures like this make it cliche. Some other blog ideas would be people looking happy with the wind in their faces or people looking into the sun during moments of joy.

Anyway, If Woot asked for pictures of people hanging upside down from their ceiling fans screaming (and touching their heads), they would get TONS of entries (and a few lawsuits to boot). But wouldn't that just be a bunch of pictures of the same thing? What's the point of that?


Oh, and the donkey ears comment made me laugh. Hard.

All I know is that sexy woman in picture 9. Will have no problems in this economy. She will just look at some other wealthy dude with her piercing eyes and move on. Notice she doesn't look too upset. Now you know why.

As a neuroscientist, we have pinpointed the regions of the brain responsible for this type of head-touching behavior.
http://blog.ketyov.com/2011/02/scientific-acupunture.html

I love these kinds of tropes. They're the advertising and journalism equivalents of political talking-points that the Daily Show makes fun of.

#10 isn't looking at bills, they are either looking at the results of a pregnancy test, or a std test.

You've got it all the wrong way round. Cause and effect - touching your head too much causes you to develop an urge to pile up papers and credit cards.

Another example: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/108269709/Vetta

grantdavis wrote:Why is Harrison Ford so upset???

He owes Jabba money. He is in deep poodoo.

I call bogus - didn't see a bottle (or glass) of hooch in any of these pix.

And none look like loyal wooters - getting all bent over numbers on paper as if they were real.