I'm a big fan of absurdist comedy. One of my new favorites is "The Birthday Boys" on IFC. This show is excellent and parodying a myriad of pertinent topics. This week they poked fun at social media marketing and the hash tag trend. See the video: Birthday Boys- Freshy's
They demonstrated how companies believe that by engaging their consumers, they will be changing peoples' lives (while also increasing sales). In this shortened skit, the guys become super enthusiastic after they see the "How do you Freshy" campaign and immediately decide to film their own clips. After doing so, they contact the creator of the campaign and relay to him how amazing it was and how he had changed their lives. The final punchline is in the end, when we are told that these sort of events have never actually happened in real life.
In actuality, marketing campaigns are just that: they want to drive sales. I also think that I'd be fine without ever having to see another hashtag campaign again. I laughed really hard at the end of the episode when the Birthday Boys themselves tried to engage the audience by directing them to facebook and asking #howdoyoubirthday. When deep cable sketch comedy shows are making fun of something, you know it's pretty bad.
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