Credit: Dangerous Minds / TikTok Still

Hey, so, remember that Black Mirror episode where Daniel Kaluuya’s character sees the woman he loves in horrible, degrading, sexually explicit adverts? He tries to look away, but the advert stops and won’t start again until he keeps watching. Yeah, we seem to be months away from that being a reality.

Adverts that aren’t just unskippable, but actively force you to watch them in their entirety, unable to even look away from the never-ending march of commerce, but there are ways around this. Some of them are even legal! However, there are a few adverts that are just so bizarre that they could put as much forced attention technology on them as they want; no pair of eyes that I’m aware of could look away from them, I’d wager.

In fact, that’s basically the only kind of adverts that work these days. Think about it, ads don’t go viral for what they’re selling or for the jokes or for the emotional messages. Today, they go viral for being weird as shit. Mostly in their content, why do you think that Cadbury’s dined out for years on a drumming gorilla selling their chocolate? Then you get an ad getting people’s attention on TikTok recently for a very different reason.

It is a strange-looking ad, for sure. A woman in pink, high-waisted trousers, stands on an industrial rooftop smiling at the camera and going “Pew! Pew! Pew!” while holding what looks like an oversized gun you’d get at a laser tag course. She calls the monstrosity in her hands a “jamming gun” and, with a thumbs up, signs off the video by saying, “contact me!” So much for all those bits in Mad Men where men in suits spend three days intellectualising margarine, few things have made me more interested in a product than this second-long clip has made me interested in this “jamming gun”.

Turns out, these might just be necessities in the near future.

So, what are these adverts selling?

These adverts are coming from China, where the drone economy is much bigger than pretty much any other country in the world.

However, that economy doesn’t just deal with the drones themselves, but with anti-drone technology. We’re talking signal jammers, we’re talking sensors, and we’re talking one of the coolest products you can get, the very thing that these adverts are selling, anti-drone rifles. This might all sound cool, but the reason they’re on TikTok is as depressing as it is surreal.

You see, where in the world over the past couple of years might have needed both drone and anti-drone technology? Yes, there’s a good reason why that advert was shot on top of an industrial rooftop; it’s because these are products that are being advertised specifically towards Ukraine in the fight against the Russian invasion. Much of their technology is bought from China, and warfare is just as much an economy as anything else. It needs advertising.

Of course, it’s all very hush-hush. No company outside of genuine weapons manufacturers would say they’re profiteering from war with their entire chest. However, so much of the world of advertising does seem to operate on “not touching you” rules. If they’re following the letter of the law, they can get away with the fact that they’re blatantly lying to everyone.

So long as it fucks over Russia in some small way, though, I’ll allow it. I’m sure they were all waiting to hear my take on it.