Thailand's latest viral ad will make you cry over security cameras

[jaywalker]

Tear-Jerker ? Really !!

Yes. It was for me and anyone with an ounce of compassion for those less fortunate than ourselves.

I suppose you'd have no problem with me showing up on your door-step, bumming food from you?

I promise not to stay more than 20 years or so.

While you are at it, maybe you could feed my pet elephant......to keep him away from tourist exploitation.

Looking at it from your overly cynical POV that shop keeper got an overnight security guard for the small amount of food that the shopkeepers daughter gave him. What a bargain. The problem you have is all you can see is the tramp and not the man that was once there.

Edit: I just realized the man is still there, he is just harder to see.

So go pay his bills.

Nah. Just feel sorry for him & vote for liberals that will make me pay for him/them.

Edited September 4, 2015 by jaywalker

[Thakkar]

Sure, the ad is exploitative and plays on our emotions to sell a product, but if that clip didn't move you just a little, the problem isn't with the ad. One would need to posses an unhealthy amount of cynicism to suppress the natural flow of emotion and empathy the clip is designed to arouse.

It is art, of a sort. And all art is emotionally exploitative, though usually towards a higher purpose.

T

Or maybe, some people have some actual experience dealing one on one with the mentally ill, or the poor, or the homeless and know that this scenario is next to impossible?

I never once came across a homeless, destitute male that looked like this. Maybe it was the overdone makeup, the lack of open sores or telltale signs of an addiction or chronic disease, or perhaps, that this Somchai was too well nourished, but something just screamed out to me that someone was trying to manipulate me. I doubt anyone who works with the homeless or poor was overcome with sadness unless it was a reaction to the blatant hucksterism, or the frustration of seeing a serious problem over simplified and used to sell a consumer product.

Well I didn't think of all that. I guess I wasted an empathy from my limited stock of empathy emotions.

*snark off*

From the opening scene , it was clear that this was going to be an ad of some sort. Nobody would have thought this was a conscientious documentary. People briefly suspend disbelief to engage with a fictional narrative. We do this naturally when we click the "play" button, enter a cinema, and, for some, even when entering a place of worship.

If the ad makes a few more people notice and empathise with the homeless they would otherwise pass without seeing, surely that's a good thing.

One can recognise the base commercial aspect while also accepting at face value that it highlights a neglected issue we should all care and try to do something about.

T

[spidermike007]

I sit at home while watching TV, with the remote control in my hand. I always mute every single commercial. If and when the sponsors start paying me 1,000 baht per commercial, I may listen to them. In the interim, who exactly is in control of my household and my TV?

[Artisi]

The best tear jerking one would have to be this one by True.

One of the best ads I've ever seen!

https://youtu.be/JPOVwKPMG8o

Correct, a very well done commercial then and even now after watching it again.

[dragonballs]

yeah right

this will work as well as the ad, where no thai move out of the way of the ambulance and the person dying is his own mother

i live near a hospital , see ambulances on many occasions with sirenes and NOBODY moves out of the way