Headon Is Crap., Fuck yeah!!!

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2005/...cihealth-04.asp
For those of you who have never seen the briiliant HeadOn commercials, here you go:
DISCLAIMER:
This ad can have adverse health effects such as anger, irritation, and in extreme cases, insanity. Kaiba is not responsible for any medical bills or for any computer bills should you destroy the computer to stop hearing the ad.
[/DISCLAIMER]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is3icfcbmbs
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Anyway, the article says that HeadOn is bullshit. You might has well put a wet cloth on your head.
Maybe this means they'll pull the ads?

i remember seeing a news report about ads, and they featured this one. the people said that if they repeat the phrase more than once it will get into a persons head and they might buy the product.

Oh my GOD I hate these fucking commercials. What's worse is that they have a few more products just like that and once 4 of them went on one after the another. I really thought that I was going psycho.

It was funny at first but goddamnit I want it to die a gruesome death now.

Heh. Homeopathy.

Um, yeah, that's about the worst thing I can say about it, but that's only because homeopathy is one of the stupidest things I've ever encountered. But the add is really good, seeing as it doesn't even tell you what the stuff does.

Anybody here heard the Pratchett gag about Homeopathic Sipping Whisky? Each drop diluted one thousand times - theoretically even being in the same room should get you riotously drunk.

This post has been edited by O'Shuva on Aug 8 2006, 03:59 PM

Hey, I saw one of these ads once! I thought it was a joke.


Good to know I was right

Bwahaha, that is awesome, I'm going to try that one day.

The stuff does jack

Just a clever marketting scheme that will make teh owners an easy couple million

How do you say that with a straight face?

4 in a row? I remember the first time I saw it, they showed it 6 times in a row. I was checking to see if my TV was broken at first

I wouldn't use this shit in the first place. Shit looks like it'll give you a headache more likely than it'll cure one.

That, and the commercials annoy the everloving crap out of me.

This commercial will give me rabies, I'm almost sure of it.

Consider the work involved in this piece of crap: Three repetitions of a sound bite no more than two and a half seconds long, capped off by a product info spot which tells you JACK SHIT about what the product is ACTUALLY MEANT FOR.

First time I saw this damn thing, I thought, "Some jackass is peddling FOREHEAD DEODORANT?!! ". Gather the torches, friends. There's a master tape to burn...

This post has been edited by junior radioman on Aug 9 2006, 10:58 AM

I imagine a big percentage of the consumers of homeopathic pain relievers are people who buy it by accident not realizing that homeopathy is psuedoscientific bullshit. By making an ad which sticks in your head without actually telling you what it is, I think the ad might encourage this.

Not really. They (they being the "owners" of HeadOn) say it's not proven to do anything regarding headaches. However, in my opinion, the chances of a placebo effect taking place are relatively good.

A fool and his money are soon parted, and whatnot. The only difference is that, in this case, the fool actually has a chance of receiving some benefit in exchange for his money.

This post has been edited by I'm Unemployed on Aug 9 2006, 03:13 PM

10 PRINT "HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead."
20 GOTO 10

Heh, I've used HeadOn before. It has a cooling, menthol feel that got me relaxed and got rid of my headache.

I doubt it'd actually work for anything but stress related headaches, though.

BASIC is the bombdiggity.

I swear to God that thing looks just like my glue stick.

Lowrider's avatar has a typo.

This post has been edited by Jimmy B. on Aug 10 2006, 12:59 AM

A product that operates entirely on the user's ignorance or gullibility goes down as bullshit in my book.

true... though i prefer:

10 SIN
20 GOTO HELL

Oftentimes, a product based on said ignorance is all that's needed. It can cure symptoms without having to use crazy-ass chemicals. I wouldn't call it bullshit, but I wouldn't call it medicine in the sense of "this chemical causes the body to react in this way." However, the shit does work, and I can't find any rational basis to call a medicine that works "bullshit" simply because it's not "my kind" of medicine, just like I wouldn't say it's bullshit for a doctor to administer a sugar pill to a patient. That's like those loony-ass motherfuckers who claim that psychotherapy is bullshit.

It depends on what exactly you mean by bullshit. One of the definitions which American Heritage Dictionary gives for bullshit is "something worthless, deceptive, or insincere." Even though a placebo can have worth, I think it is at the very least deceptive. Furthermore, to me the word bullshit implies saying a lot of nonsense with the hope of getting a "nice" situation, which is very analogous to a placebo.

At any rate, I agree that it is sometimes best for doctors to prescribe placebos. But HeadOn is over the counter, which makes a bit of a difference. People may very often be tricked into buying HeadOn, not realizing that homeopathic products are "of dubious medical value." When a doctor responsibly prescribes a placebo, there in his educated opinion is no good "real" medicine to provide, so it's alright. But very often, in the sort of situations where people might buy HeadOn or other homeopathic products, they would probably be happier with a real pain reliever.

That said, it's not a huge deal, in that I suspect that headaches are the sort of thing very susecptible to placeboes. But even so, the word bullshit seems appropriate. It's not neccesarily bad to be bullshit, it's just not as good as it could be.

This post has been edited by UserGoogol on Aug 10 2006, 12:28 AM

I saw the commercial and could guess that it was for getting rid of Strangers as likely as headaches.

Poor, poor Mr. Quick.

But it's that very deceptiveness which causes great benefits. Without it, nothing would come from it. The root of a placebo effect is being oblivious to the actual chemical and biological reactions taking place, and feeling an effect simply because you expect to feel an effect. It's very possible that people who take an aspirin feel better due to a placebo effect before the aspirin ever gets a chance to kick in. Would that make aspirin bullshit? After all, the only thing the aspirin accomplishes in that case is the same thing as this HeadOn, and absolutely nothing more.

A real pain reliever? So you claim that the placebo effect doesn't relieve pain?

How is there a difference? The patient pays for the medicine, whether it's a doctor-prescribed sugar pill or HeadOn. So you're saying it's better for people to be forced to pay for and take the so-called "fake" medicine then to be able to do it on their own free will?

I mean, it's not like someone's going to be "tricked into buying HeadOn" to treat brain cancer or some shit like that. They don't make any fucking claims about what it does! How the fuck can they "trick" people into buying it? That would be like me selling a rock by putting a sign that says "rock for sale, $5" on said rock then someone saying I "tricked them" into buying it.

This post has been edited by I'm Unemployed on Aug 10 2006, 12:41 AM

I agree. I don't think there's anything inherent in the word bullshit that says it's always bad. Merely that it is "bullshit."

The product is sold in stores. HeadOn would probably be put alongside pain relievers. Even thought it doesn't explicitly say that it does anything, it's kind of implied when you put it on the shelf next to Advil. (Or even if it's on the shelf below marked "Homeopathic," because of course people don't know what homeopathic means.)

In the prescription situation, the doctor has the knowledge to be able to determine whether it is the best possible situation, whereas a guy grabbing stuff from the pain-reliever section of his local store does not. It is much more likely that the over-the-counter consumer will get a suboptimal situation than the prescription consumer, therefore the over-the-counter situation is worse.

It treats pain, but not through any inherent property of the pill itself. But still, I admit I should've put the word real in scare quotes. Merely saying HeadOn real is a bit presumptuous, perhaps.

This post has been edited by UserGoogol on Aug 10 2006, 01:13 AM

Bullshit, to me, entails some kind of "build-up." There is no build-up. They don't say "This will get rid of your headaches!" or "The panacea of the headache world!" or anything like that. They openly admit "It has no painkillers." That's the very definition of straight-shooting. Which is, in turn, the very antithesis of "bullshitting."

Then that is the store's fault, not HeadOn's. Also, according to Sapphire, "It has a cooling, menthol feel that got me relaxed and got rid of my headache." There would be no "bullshitting" if it was placed next to things such as ice-packs, hot-water balloons, ointments, or Icy-Hot and other pain-concerned soothing remedies.

How is that much more likely? The placebo effect take place regardless of whether or not it was prescribed, and regardless of whether or not painkillers could do the job.

The guy buying OTC drugs is basically taking a chance, regardless of what he buys. If the guy's symptoms are cured, they're cured regardless of how he goes about curing them. Sometimes painkillers simply don't work (it's happened to me before). The factor of weighing an optimal situation against a suboptimal situation where OTC drugs are concerned is just so irrelevant due to the nature of the OTC market.

Why does that matter? The pain is still treated. Oftentimes as well as, or better than, painkillers could treat it.

This post has been edited by I'm Unemployed on Aug 10 2006, 01:24 AM