Scare Em' Straight campaigns

Everyone has seen graphic ads once in their lifetime. However, our reaction to them varies. How do you personally react to graphic, scared straight advertisements, and do you think that these types of Public Service Announcements work for their intended audience?

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This type of PSA reflects the targeting of a different audience with a different method: visceral people as opposed to the more detached, and visceral images as opposed to statistics or other education, respectively.

So while I do not have any statistics on their effectiveness, and while they do not appeal to me specifically, I appreciate these as something other than the same-old same-old.

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I think that Scare Em' Straight campaigns are fun. Scary PSA's are entertaining. Fear gives your endorphins, plus it's a good message. Endorphins + good message = win!

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Personally, I find them disgusting and don't think they help much if at all. Like, say, an anti-smoking commercial showing nothing but graphic images of the effects of smoking (e.g.: black lungs, closeups of yellowed teeth, etc.) would probably make me think, "Geez, that was horrible! I need a cigarette to calm myself after that!" if I were a smoker.

Or those "ADOPT THIS PUPPY YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD LOOK AT ITS SAD ABUSED FACE THAT ONLY A MONSTER COULDN'T LOVE" commercials that usually feature Sarah McLachlan. Those are disgusting in a different, exploitative way.

edited 18th May '12 6:12:58 PM by 0dd1

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I think teenagers are more likely to laugh at those things and indulge in dark humor than be scared off of anything. Really, you should talk to them like the intelligent people you're trying to teach them to be. That might actually work!

I think it really depends on how ham fisted it is and what its actually warning about.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

I'm not sure I've seen any of these. Can I get a link to one?

Oh gosh I hate those ads with the dogs and cats and the sad song playing in the background. They make me feel so guilty. Jerking the heartstrings.

Very good example here for drunk driving...

edited 18th May '12 6:44:47 PM by nigelstack345

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That's awful and depressing.

I'm sure they're very effective.

Here's a news report talking about some anti-smoking ads:

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Those campaigns are nothing new to me. I live in the NY/NJ area, where those ads were (and still is) commonplace. Not to mention those from the internet.

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Same here (both with being commonplace and living in the NY/NJ area).

Actually, what I've seen the reaction from most people my age to the ads with smokers who are suffering the consequences to be is "You deserved it you <expletive>!" Horrible, but understandable I suppose.

edited 18th May '12 6:59:47 PM by 0dd1

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Actually, I find those ads to be more convincing than others. They're less melodramatic, and there's no smaltzy crappy music playing in the background. Not to say that there's no melodrama, but they rely much less on exaggerations and show actual problems. Very understated compared to what I watched when I was a kid.

Namely, those "this is your brain on crack" commercials of kids frying eggs and trashing the fuck out of kitchens.

I just tend to assume that nobody actually pays attention to any of those ads anymore. From my experience, most people who actually try to stop smoking or <insert bad habit here> usually do so after being told by a doctor that they're gonna die if they don't stop or if their family is extremely concerned and shows it. As for driving, everyone's a crap driver anyway, so it doesn't really matter whether or not they're drunk.

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Compared to those seen in the past (like the Brain on Drugs psa) I'd have to agree with that, however these types of PS As could seem at times to be too effective. Like the drunk driving psa I posted, a comment said that these types of ads would actually deter non-drivers from driving out of fear that they would end up like that.

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my beef with "scare 'em straight" advertising is simple; the people employing it are complete hypocrites.

Take smoking (and the resident anti-smoking crusade) as an example. Sure, it's no secret that the tobacco companies have distorted the facts to sell more coffin-nails. Personally I'm surprised that people were outraged by this (what did you expect? They're selling something that kills you slowly and painfully, of course they're going to distort facts to make their product seem appealing) but that's another matter.

Anyway, the zealous crusaders have wasted a lot of breath attacking Big Tobacco for its use of omission and fact distortion to purvey its product...while said crusaders use exactly the same tactics in their own advertisement.

Now, I'm a smoker but I've little respect for the companies that service my habit; they're great examples of corporate rapacity at the expense of the common good. But I've even less respect for the "grass-roots" groups that attack them, for the reason I just mentioned. Both sides employ the same tactics, but one has the gall to claim moral high ground as a sort of justification.

"It's okay to lie and twist the truth, as long as you feel your cause is just" is a load of bullshit.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

ALSO!! ...

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...They just don't work.

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@Odd: and what I said is why they don't work, pretty much.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

Oh, I get that, I just felt like bluntly stating the obvious.

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Yeah, it is obvious...which makes me wonder why the powers-that-be haven't gotten that yet.

Hell, I got the full-bore D.A.R.E education in grade school...one of the big reasons I ended up experimenting with drugs in high school was, I finally tried a few and found that what I'd been told about them was complete and utter bullshit *

so I wanted a bigger sample base from which to draw a more correct conclusion.

The reason I stayed away from hard, addictive drugs? My mother's completely honest statement about them...that they'd make me feel way too good. I remembered that quite clearly when someone offered me a line of cocaine at a party, and ended up declining.

Honesty > Scare Tactics. Trufax.

If I were to write some of the strange things that come under my eyes they would not be believed. ~Cora M. Strayer~

I've always kind of wondered how people don't realize that drug education is more-or-less just providing people with a menu. Being raised as a sheltered suburbanite, I doubt I would've even heard of half the drugs I know about until I had a drug education class in high school.

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Edited by fanty on Sep 28th 2019 at 2:14:54 PM

Scare em straight campaigns sometimes have a positive effect, but not uniformly so, no matter what their advocates will tell you.

There are still people who drive while drunk, there are still people who drive without insurance, there are still people who drive without wearing their seatbelts, there are still people who use hand-held mobile phones or fiddle around with their sat-navs and radios and there are still people who do ALL of the above. And, sadly, they tend not to get killed themselves but kill innocents.

If you want to stop kids taking drugs, launch massive co-ordinated press and media blitzes showing adverts with the message that drugs are cool, that doing illegal drugs have a positive outcome, that drugs are the thing to do.

I agree with the last paragraph: in order to keep kids off drugs, don't make them look scary, make them look square. Pick any writing team known for Totally Radical Narm and let them have at it.

Stuff what I do.

I don't know, they can be pretty funny.

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