Tumblr: The Pikachu man Advert
Audience appeals of the Pikachu man advert:
This advert could possibly appeal to a Mainstream audience, as the Written codes suggest ‘where your interests connect you to your people’ designed to invoke a sense of potential belonging and a feeling of community within the audience.
The thing about this advert that may alienate the mainstream audience, however, is the Pikachu man himself. He is a cursed being, one that a mainstream audience may find disturbing, or a perverted idea of a beloved children’s cartoon character.
This is immediately made irrelevant by the knowledge that this advert is only on the Tumblr website itself. Which is not only weird (a social media platform advertising itself on itself) but also the fact that this is an exclusive advert is strange, because this ad is targeted toward a mainstream audience, but Tumblrs demographic isn’t. Tumblr is a social media platform for the reformer, as it is a platform that gives voices to those usually silenced on regular social media platforms, and gives them space to speak on their own experiences, curate their blog to their own interests, and generally explore things outside of societal norms and expectations.
What is usually not taken into consideration however, is the fact that objectively speaking, Tumblr is bad at being a social media site, not for the consumer, (although it is also bad for the consumer lol the mobile app is incredibly broken) but the system is inherently flawed and so in a world where algorithms and monetary gain are needed to keep a website afloat, Tumblr does not have much of either.
BoJack Horseman:
The explorer
It’s a show about confronting various issues such as mental illness, homophobia, substance abuse and the effect that childhood abuse/neglect has on an adult throughout their lives.
The explorer may take an interest in this show as they tend to look out for alternative experiences, things that challenge the normal conventions seen in media and makes them think. BoJack Horseman will make you think, as the various plotlines deal with the differing moralities of the various characters, and how they interact with each other and the consequences of said interactions. It deals with the concept of being a famous TV star, 20+ years after the show is over, and how the main character, BoJack Horseman, tries and fails to bring himself back into relevance in various ways, all whilst dealing with his childhood trauma and his various substance abuse issues and all of this results in him pushing the people around him away with his behaviour.
The show isn’t entirely depressing however, as the show uses gratuitous amounts of humour alongside the realistic experiences of the main characters.
The reformer may be a target audience for this show as it challenges perceptions of people, minorities, and the issues that we are aware of but do not suffer from and ay have misconceptions about. Being a reformer means to seek out authenticity, and BoJack Horseman provides authentic experiences with sexuality, substance abuse, childhood trauma and the cycle of intergenerational trauma and abuse, and how all of these things can affect the way a person perceives life and the people around them. It gives an insight into the affect that fame, especially childhood fame, can have on the psyche and how that can lead to various substance abuse issues and addictions.
BoJack Horseman is a program that challenges social norms on a variety of topics and issues such as:
Sexuality (they have multiple queer characters, one of whom is a main character) and the struggles queer people can face both in the 1990’s in LA and how the people around them react to their sexuality.
Substance abuse: Various characters within the show are shown to have various addictions (BoJack has alcohol/drug issues, so does Sarah Lynn and others) and this is treated with the respect and nuance it deserves.
Trauma: the show is brilliant at exploring the complex motives behind even the ‘bad’ characters. Beatrice Horseman is a great example of this, as we see throughout the show just how much of an effect her neglect and abuse of BoJack impacted him throughout his life, leading to substance abuse issues and trauma, but we also see in various episodes the childhood trauma that she herself went through, and that even though she was seen as progressive for her time, a lot of the ideals that she had grown up with had internally shaped her worldview and it demonstrates the cycle of intergenerational trauma that neither Beatrice nor her son were ever able to break.
Forgiveness: In season 1 episode 6 we are introduced to Herb Kazzaz, BoJacks ex-best friend who is dying of terminal cancer. As they catch up on their lives after they went separate ways 20 years ago, we begin to learn the story of how they met, and how they ended up splitting ways on negative terms. It comes to light that BoJack had abandoned Herb after he had been arrested and outed as a gay man during a bar raid. Herb had been fired off of the show that he had made, and BoJack made no attempt to reach out to him. When this comes to light and BoJack ‘attempts’ to apologies for what happened, Herb says this. ‘I don’t forgive you’ The show takes this idea that you always need to accept an apology and breaks it in half, because if someone hurts you, you do not need to forgive them, especially not if they aren’t even sorry.
The way these issues are handled expertly within the show means that it can appeal to both a reformer audience and an explorer audience, and it does a great job at appealing and curating an audience of both.
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