Aloha, porn, missiles and the unchanging human race

Image by Minky Stapleton © www.minkystapleton.com republished with permission from Damon's Brain.

Now, of course the question is, what the f*ck do you do? Do you find shelter? Perhaps, look for an underground bunker or quickly commandeer a small boat so that you can be out to sea when the mushroom cloud obliterates every golf course, resort and spa within 1,000 miles of Magnum PI’s home.

This is what people were probably doing and thinking at 8:07am, when the alarm came in. At 8:45am, the ‘all clear’ signal was given. I am sure many people were relieved to find out they were not going to die. At 9:01am there was a 48% surge online with people looking for one thing.

You are probably thinking ‘searches for how to build a bomb shelter or how to survive a nuclear explosion’. You would be wrong. They were looking for porn. At 9am in the morning.

Pornhub reported 48% surge in views.

I suppose when it comes to releasing tension, porn is as good a tool as any.

So, what does this says about this strange thing called the human race. Are we very predictable or very unpredictable?

The human pattern

Damon Stapleton  4 Oct 2017

I would argue, after seeing the stats above, that human beings are quite predictable, especially if you wipe away all the jargon and double-talk you hear these days. We are definitely more emotional than rational. There is an honesty to this data that might make some uncomfortable. The fact that we are animals. That we are feeling beings that occasionally think.

What it really does prove is what Bill Bernbach said over 50 years ago. We are in a world that is obsessed with change and nuance. I have had many stupid conversations in advertising about people and plotting their intricate emotions over the years. There is one event in particular that I remember, where a complicated matrix was created and one of our jobs was to decide what emotions people have on Wednesday mornings. This went on until we had decided what emotions people had for every day of the week. An utter waste of time. F*cking ridiculous.

We create more and more information, which in turn creates more and more complexity. This complexity has to be explained and this creates even more jargon. This noise and fury creates the impression that human beings are very layered and hard to understand. It creates a well-crafted argument that makes lots of money. It creates the idea that people are constantly changing.

The unchanging human race

However, in a life-and-death scenario, where there are a few nuclear warheads above our heads, our needs and motives become quite simple and perhaps, some might argue, unfashionably basic. You see the truth. You see the unchanging human race.

Survive, succeed, take care of your own, be admired and, out of respect to Mr Bernbach, I will use the word 'procreate'.

Or, in Hawaii’s case, I guess, whatever is close at hand.

“It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.”- Bill Bernbach