Cars Cannot Snowboard

A recent, super fun commercial shows Nissan cars flying around a giant bowl of ice, disobeying gravity in a manner normally reserved for CGI superheroes.

My favorite part of the commercial comes a few seconds in. It’s the disclaimer at the bottom of the screen:

             “Fantasy simulated image. Do not attempt. Cars cannot snowboard.”

This is really great. I appreciate the thoroughness of Nissan’s legal department. I mean, it may seem as though one could assume that all human beings who are familiar with either cars and/or snowboards would understand that cars are not the same as snowboards. But, just in case, this is a pretty helpful reminder.

Now, along with warnings like hot coffee is hot, we are collectively being addressed as though we had the intellect and decision making skills of a toddler—and not a particularly smart toddler at that.

And yet…the other day I got sucked into some ridiculous click bait: tattoo fails.

These are people so smart they didn’t find out how to spell simple words before getting them inked into their skins. Lots of “Your my heart” type of sayings, and a number of people who pledged “No Regerts” (I’m guessing they subsequently learned the taste as well as the correct spelling of regret.) Many of these same folks later used their smartphones to post proud photos of their ink, so it cannot be argued that they didn’t have the necessary tools to find out how to spell or punctuate a phrase so near and dear to their heart (or, hart, in several cases).

Dictionary.com is fast and free. Unlike tattoo removal.

Come to think of it, maybe it couldn't hurt to remind one or two of us that cars are not, in fact, snowboards. Disclaimers are doubtless here to stay. As long as there are those out there who continue to be-live in miracles, it’s probably safer to remind everyone that cars can’t fly.