Baby cream and summer camp

Hulu is a great website—no one can really say that they don’t like Hulu.

Sure, its got its flaws but it is better than the alternative. In the Internet age before Hulu we all searched the Internet far and wide for our favorite television show, and some of us still do (that means you “Mad Men” fans).

That said, Hulu gives us the shows we desire for the low price of free. Therein lies the problem. They cannot provide the next episode of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” if they aren’t making any money to pay their bills. What is the solution to this problem? Ad Tailor.

The idea is pretty simple: Hulu plays advertisements and you tell them if the ad is relevant to you. It sounds good in theory, but in application it’s the devil in a new dress. Every other commercial for me is a commercial about baby’s rash cream. Is this ad relevant to me? No it isn’t, but Hulu doesn’t care because they are getting paid thousands of dollars to let me think that I have a choice. Maybe the Hulu gods know something that I don’t. Could it be that they keep pushing rash cream because I’m going to have a baby soon? It wouldn’t be the first time someone not having sex got knocked up. Between the commercials about creams and denture glue, there are some commercials that I quite enjoy.

My favorite is definitely the “Because of Camp” commercials. In case you aren’t familiar with these commercials, they feature various celebrities (some more famous than others but none really famous at all) telling the viewer what they learned at camp. The celebs don’t discuss anything profound — just things like teamwork and friendship, the values that you would find in an average college essay. My roommate, a non-summer camp kid, scoffs every time I mention the commercial, but to me it’s more than an annoying 30-second break from some soap opera plot point (is she or isn’t she his sister?).

As a summer camp kid, I think the commercial fails to portray the true essence of camp. You get to spend weeks at a time away from your parents. This sounds stupid, I know, but try and follow me. You have no parents, essentially no rules, other than don’t die, and everybody’s hormones are at their peak levels. What could be better than three weeks of random hookups with a few trips to the lake in between? This seemingly fictional summer camp does exist, and I am a proud alumni or alumnus or alumna. What I’m trying to say is that I went to that camp. At the end of the time, you can go home and do all of those summer assignments that you meant to do at the beginning of the break and e-mail that cute boy from camp?. I have finally found the reason why Hulu keeps playing me all of those baby cream ads. They want to remind me that when I do have a baby, that kid should go to summer camp. I fully agree.

Ariel Smallwood is a Trinity sophomore. Her online column will run every Tuesday.